“You can’t tell how much spirit a team has until it starts losing.” Rocky Colavito
The Spirit of a Tiger
by Larry Fangman
It was the summer of losing. So in mid-July, the big league club traded Johnson, Watson, Hamilton, and Escobar for seven prospects who would transform the Detroit team back into Tigers in a few years. The new guys, all younger than twenty-three, needed seasoning in the minors, so on July 14th, Detroit, needing to fill out the roster, spare the prospects from the scars of defeat and a loss of confidence from playing in the big leagues before they were ready, and wanting to lose games to secure the number one draft pick, called me and my .233 batting average and three other career minor leaguers up to the big league club.
Ol’ Gus Grayhorn, the Detroit Tigers manager for the last fourteen years, had always been loyal to his regulars. He penciled in the same line-up, day-after-day, letting his guys play through a slump instead of benching them. So in the summer of losing, and even with four of the guys who helped him be named the AL manager of the year three times, traded to other teams, Ol’ Gus stuck with a “new” regular line-up. So for fifteen games, I sat on the bench.
Ol’ Gus Grayhorn, managing his last team at age seventy-six, chewed, spit, and as the summer heated up, napped. When he ambled out to the mound, Ol’ Gus shuffled his feet through the foul line as he gave a hurler the hook.
Tiger fans and team ownership loved Ol’ Gus. His ‘hunch” three years ago to play Corky Cummings in game seven of the World Series had paid off with two home runs and the championship. The season after the championship, Ol’ Gus guided an aging team to the playoffs, so no one complained when during his last summer as skipper, his mind wandered, or he nodded off for five or ten minutes during a hot afternoon or night game.
But as a scorching hot July turned into an even hotter August, Ol’ Gus’s naps became more frequent and longer, so as his last visit to Wrigley Field approached, the Tigers held a press conference to announce that after the last game of the series against the Cubs, Ol’ Gus was going to retire, and Hank Birch, my Triple A manager at Toledo, would lead the Tigers for the rest of the season.
Ol’ Gus agreed to manage his last game at Wrigley Field because in his playing days, he had been the Cubs backup catcher for seven years. And the Tigers planned to retire Gus’s number over Labor Day weekend in Detroit, so he’d have his last moment in front of the home fans.
Ol’ Gus had been a popular player in Chicago. Known for his wit, his most famous quote was a modified version of what Satchel Paige said about the Negro League star, Cool Papa Bell (“Why he was so fast he could turn out the light and jump into bed before the room got dark.”). Ol’ Gus joked, “I’m so slow, I can turn off the light, and before I jump into bed, it’s morning.”
So in the fourth inning at Wrigley Field, in my sixteenth game, and Gus’s last one as manager, he bellowed, “Hamilton!”
My name is Hampton, Alan Hampton, (dubbed Ham by the guys), but when Ol’ Gus barked, “Hamilton,” even louder, I thought, Is he talking to me? Is this finally it? My big league debut? I went through the roster in my mind. My name was almost identical to Alex Hamilton, nicknamed Burr, a former all-star who, batting under two hundred, and on the wrong side of thirty-five, had been traded.
We trailed 9 to zip and the Cubs had the bases loaded with two outs. I wasn’t sure why Ol’ Gus would be calling for me, a second baseman, in such a situation.
“Go get him, Hamilton,” Gus said. He yawned and pulled the bill of his cap down over his eyes.
I looked down the bench. Since Hamilton was in Fenway Park playing for the Sox against the Twins, no one knew who Ol’ Gus was talking to.
When I stood up, my teammates watched to see what I planned to do. These moments with Ol’ Gus had made this last place season not only tolerable, but fun. He had a dozen viral videos this season, the first being when the guys sat a Baseball Barbie doll on his lap while he napped. After that video went viral, Gus’s grandson taught him about Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tik Tok, where the “Baseball Barbie” post had over a million views. “The way we’ve been hitting, I was thinking about sending her up to bat,” Gus joked after the game, a 12 to 1 loss to the Yankees. After his first taste of social media fame, he started tracking his online views more than he did the Tigers’ stats.
In the weeks I’d been with the team, I’d witnessed a number of Gus’s viral moments as they happened. I’d seen the guys replace his Tigers cap with a red Trump MAGA hat, (After the game, Gus, a diehard democrat, cut the hat into pieces and flushed them down the toilet while the team cheered.), give Gus a “hot foot” by tying his shoestrings together and lighting them on fire. Gus jumped up and did a dance the team dubbed, “The Gus Gallop,” until he managed to stomp out the flames. After he put the fire out, Ol’ Gus kicked off his spikes and socks before he dozed off. When Flop Olsen heard the first sound of snoring, he borrowed some nail polish from a girl in the stands and painted Gus’s toenails pink. That ended up being the ninth Ol’ Gus video to go viral, thanks to Curt Mann, the assistant team trainer who had become the official Ol’ Gus videographer. The tenth viral video happened in the next inning when Gus walked out to the mound barefoot to give Art Whitson the hook.
Since Ol Gus’s naps had increased of late, some guys thought he was faking a snooze or two, since most of his viral moments happened while he napped, and he was enjoying his fame.
If Ol’ Gus was talking to me when he said, “Go get him,” I didn’t understand what he wanted, so I walked over to him. I felt like I was eight, and my dad had told me to wake up my grandpa because dinner was ready. I extended my index finger and tapped Gus on the shoulder. I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me, Gus, but get whom?”
Ol’ Gus lifted the bill of his cap. “That imposter pretending to be a pitcher. Go get him, Hamilton.” He covered his eyes again.
The players came to life on the bench. They stood up and stepped up to the railing as if we were in the middle of a ninth inning rally. They saw some fun coming, possibly another viral video, which is what a team that’s lost fourteen straight lives for.
I looked for help from our pitching coach, Shady Jones, who was slouched down at the end of bench. But if he were a movie, he’d be the sequel to Ol’ Gus. Shady had been Gus’s pitching coach for years and was retiring at the end of the season, so he never budged. Plus, he knew the plan—-lose, lose and lose some more—-so the Tigers could start rebuilding by securing the number one draft pick and the chance to draft Tommy “Heat” Tanner, the seventeen-year-old pitching phenom whose fastball, with movement, clocked at 99 mph.
The Tigers were paying me the major league minimum, $3,500 a game, which my wife, Susie, calculated would get us out of our apartment and into our dream 3 bedroom ranch-style house if I lasted the season. The Tigers saw my being a cheap addition to the payroll as an added bonus to my weak hitting. I didn’t cost much and didn’t hurt the Tiger’s chances of drafting the best high school pitching prospect since Clayton Kershaw. I figured my roster spot was safe, even if I pulled a crazy stunt or two, as long as I didn’t screw up our losing the game because we’d been playing in front of sellout crowds since Ol’ Gus started going viral.
I’m a second baseman, but it hit me as Ol’ Gus sat with his head down, cap bill down over his eyes. chin drooped down to his chest. I love playing baseball, and I love having fun. Here was my chance to do both.
No pitchers were warming up. “Get Lyle and Hart warming up in the pen,” I said, naming a lefty and righty reliever.
“I’ll make the call.” Johnny Braggs, a starting pitcher who was recovering from Tommy John surgery, picked up the dugout phone.
I grabbed my glove and walked onto the field, making sure to jump over the foul line. “Time!” I tried to recall the last player-manager in baseball. Pete Rose? Frank Robinson? There hadn’t been many, but I figured the number of players making their major league debut as a player-manager was going to be a list of one—-me! “Alan Hampton pitching for the Tigers,” I said to the ump. “Replacing Grant.”
The umpire took the line-up card out of his back pocket and made the change. “Is Grant injured? You only get the eight warm-up pitches if he ain’t hurt.”
“He ain’t hurt. He just ain’t getting any outs, and that’s hurtin’ Ol’ Gus.”
Grant heard what I said to the ump, but he didn’t protest. He’d been getting clobbered, so a shower and a cold beer on a steamy summer day was an invitation he couldn’t accept fast enough. He flipped me the ball and headed toward the dugout.
“You’re crazy!” Lug bumped me on the rump with his catcher’s mask. “Just try to throw the ball in the area code of the plate.”
My first pitch sailed a foot over the head of Lug and hit the backstop netting on the fly. The runner on third jogged home with the tenth run, and the other two runners moved to second and third. The crowd jeered. A fan yelled, “Hey, Nuke LaLoosh,” referring to the wild pitcher in Bull Durham. “What are you doing in Chicago?”
I picked up the rosin bag and squeezed it. In the stands, Susan stood up and waved her Tigers cap in the air. A month ago, she had taken off work at the hospital to see me play in my first major league game. She thought it would be a three or four day vacation, but as I sat on the bench, game after game, her short break had become a long one. She only had two days of vacation time left, but now she was seeing my dream—-our dream—-come true.
The next pitch, I tossed a blooper pitch that I lost in the sun for a moment. The batter swung so hard that he fell down, but he hit a sky-high ball to centerfield. Noah Rocker camped under it and one-handed it for the third out.
In the dugout, I yelled at a dad and mom with five kids sitting between them. “Can you get me thirty orders of Dippin’ Dots. Tell them Ol’ Gus sent you. Get larges. Make half of them chocolate and the other half vanilla. And get some for your family, too.”
“Good pitching out there,” the dad said. “That blooper pitch was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen at a ballgame.”
“Well, hurry back. There’s more fun to come.”
The dad stood up. “I’ll need everyone’s help.” His family filed behind him as he walked up the steps toward the concourse.
Lug put his arm around me and said, “Guys, meet our new manager: Ham.”
“Look, this inning, don’t anyone swing,” I said. “And take your time between pitches. It’s hotter than Beyonce out there. We need our ice cream before we go back out on the field. Slim, I’ll coach third. You can stay out of the sun for an inning.”
I jogged to the third base coaching box. I tugged on my ear lobe with one hand, wiped my hand across my chest, and tapped my shoulder three times, so Susie could get video of me flashing signs like a legit big leaguecoach.
Danny Shaw, our right fielder, stepped into the batter’s box. He waved his bat in a menacing manner, but he let the first pitch go by for ball one.
“Time.” I met Shaw halfway between home and third. “The next pitch he calls a ball,” I said, “I want you to argue with the ump. Tell him he should’ve called it a strike.”
“Gotcha, Ham. I’m going to get tossed because if I have to go back out onto the field, I’ll have to gulp down my Dippin' Dots. And if I spoon ‘em down too fast, I get brain freeze.”
“That’s fine, but delay the game as long as you can.”
The next pitch was a called strike right down Broadway. But the third pitch, a curve ball, broke high and a foot outside. “Ball two,” bellowed the ump.
“What!” Shaw tapped his Louisville Slugger on home plate. “That caught the corner. Ten years in the show, I think I know a strike when I see one.”
I walked a few steps toward home plate. “Come on, ump, get it right.”
Shaw stepped out of the batter’s box. “Can I appeal the call?”
“Why? I called it a ball.” The ump took off his mask. He scratched his head and walked toward me. “Shaw’s arguing because I called a ball. He wants the pitch changed to a strike. Why would he want that? No batter wants that.”
“It was a strike,” I said. “If you call strikes, balls, you’ll screw up his batting eye. The next thing you know, he’ll be letting strikes go by because you’ve made him think they’re balls.”
“It was one pitch. And it was a foot outside! Hey, who the hell are you?”
“Ham.”
“Ham?” He walked closer to get a good look at my face. “Hey, you pitched last inning. Now you’re coaching third?” While the crowd booed me, he took the line-up card out of his back pocket. “Alex Hampton. Never heard of you until today. Why isn’t Slim coaching third? Did the heat get to him? Okay, listen, Hampton, the pitch was so far outside Shaw couldn’t have hit it with a two-by-four.”
I looked up at the sky. “How many suns do you see?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Don’t tell me your hearing is as bad as your eyesight.”
“Watch it, bud.” The ump walked back to the plate. “Play ball.” Shaw remained standing five feet from the batter’s box. “Batter up.”
“I’m not hitting until you change the call.”
“You know we don’t change ball and strike calls. And it was a ball.”
Shaw dropped his bat and jogged down to first base.
The home plate ump yelled, “Where are you going? That was only ball two.”
“If a strike is a ball, then why can’t two balls be a walk?” Shaw moseyed back down the first base line. He collapsed on his back on top of home plate.
“Okay, that’s it. You’re out of here!” The ump made a grand gesture and threw his arm in the air. Shaw remained motionless.
“Hampton, you’ve gotta get your guy out of here. I gave him the boot!”
I jogged in and knelt down next to Shaw. He winked at me. “It’s my back. I’m having spasms. I can’t move.”
“I need a stretcher.” I gripped Shaw by the shoulder. “Hang in there, buddy! I know it hurts.”
“He looks fine to me,” the ump said. “He doesn’t seem to be in pain.”
“You ever have a back spasm? From what I’m seeing today, if you did, you probably called it a headache. A back spasm is nothing to sneeze at.”
Jack Cantlay, our head trainer, came out and examined Shaw. As we knelt next to him, Cantlay whispered to me, ”Mann got it all on video.” Then he motioned for the stretcher.
I saw the family, followed by a small parade of stadium workers, returning with our Dippin’ Dots. “Our ice cream is here.”
Shaw hopped up, bent over, picked up his bat, and jogged to the dugout.
“Talk about a miracle cure.” The ump took a brush out of his back pocket and dusted off home plate.
“Yeah, Jack is a hell of a trainer. He works more miracles than Jesus.”
I started back toward the coaching box, but then I realized we didn’t need a third base coach this inning because we weren’t swinging. If we scored, it was going to be because we walked around the bases, so I abandoned my position to get my dots before they started melting.
I sent up Gabe Klosterman, who rode the pine like I did for the last fifteen games, to finish Shaw’s at bat. I enjoyed my chocolate dots as Klosterman and our next two hitters, none of them swinging at a single pitch, struck out.
After I threw my last warm-up pitch in the fifth inning, I saw Susie plop down in an empty seat in the first row behind home plate. “Give me a good pose, honey,” she yelled. I extended my arms above my head, with my right hand that gripped the ball, inside my glove, like I was ready to go into my wind-up. “Got it! ESPN should strip that uni’ off and put you in their body issue.”
The first batter smashed a line drive so hard it knocked over our third baseman, Kenny Slope, when he shagged it. Then after I walked two batters, Babe Kissinger smacked a blooper pitch over the top of the scoreboard and out onto Waveland Avenue, to make the score 13 to 0. The next hitter hit a long fly ball to Rocker in center that he caught on the warning track.
When Sam Shanahan, an old minor league teammate from Class A, stepped up to the plate, I jammed my right hand into my glove, switched my pitching arm to lefty, and managed to get enough oomph on the pitch so it reached home plate.
Sam hit a gapper between Rocker and Klosterman that rolled to the wall. He tried to stretch his triple into an inside-the-park home run, but Klosterman fired a bullet to the cutoff man, who fired a strike to Lug who tagged Sam two steps from home plate,
Sam and I crossed paths as we headed back to our respective dugouts. He took a swipe at knocking off my cap. “Let’s get a drink after the game.”
“It’s a plan,” I said. “Susie’s in town, too.”
As I ambled the rest of the way to the dugout with my head down like a star pitcher saving his energy and thinking of the batters he’d face the next inning, I counted my major league records: A player/manager in his first game in the show. The only pitcher to get a batter out throwing left handed and right handed in his first game. The only manager in the history of baseball-—at any level--to argue that a ball should have been a strike-—when his player was the batter!
In the dugout, I sat next to Ol’ Gus. He stirred and swiped across his mouth with his right hand, but he didn’t wake up.I shook Gus by the shoulder. He snorted, sat upright, looked at me, and instinctively glanced at the scoreboard. Apparently, 13 to 0 didn’t shock him. He yawned and stretched out his arms.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” I said, “but you have to leave. The home plate umpire gave you the boot. I yelled that he was a bit short for a cyclops. He thought you said it and gave you the heave-ho.”
Ol’ Gus squinted, peered through his glasses to see who the ump was behind the plate. “Is that McKenzie? He’s the worst ump in the league! He’s not going to give me the boot without me getting dirt on my spikes.” Gus got to his feet, rubbed his eyes, and made his way up the three dugout steps and onto the field. “How’d you miss that call? I could take a nap and call a better game than you.” Gus waited, apparently hoping the ump would come to him, so Ol’ Gus wouldn’t have to walk any more than necessary in the heat. Or maybe he was just resting before he continued on his journey. As McKenzie moved toward him, Gus bellowed, “You got a phone call in the dugout. I took the message. Your eye appointment is tomorrow morning.”
“Gus, what are you mad about?”
“I’ll show you what I’m mad about,” Ol’ Gus said, even though he really didn’t know. As far as Gus was concerned, he could’ve been mad about a play at home plate, a fair ball/foul ball call, or a ball/strike call. I guess hewent with the ump calling a ball a strike because when Ol’ Gus got to home, he started kicking dirt on top of the plate until he’d buried it. “There, at least now we know you’re guessing when you call balls and strikes.”
“I have to run ya, Gus.” McKenzie made a dramatic gesture of giving Ol’ Gus the thumb.
Satisfied he’d gotten dirt on his shoes and gotten his money’s worth, Ol’ Gus waddled back toward the dugout. When he reached the top step, he turned around and let out one last string of profanities at McKenzie, doffed his cap to the visiting crowd who gave him a standing ovation, since after all, he was an ex-Cub and Ol’ viral video Gus.
When Gus stepped into the dugout, I said, “There are some Dippin’ Dots for you in the clubhouse freezer.”
“And some cold beers in my fridge.” As Curt Mann filmed, Ol’ Gus gave me a long look. A bead of sweat ran down his red face. “Hamilton?”
“Hampton. The guys call me Ham.”
“Ham, what kind of Dippin Dots did you get me?”
“Vanilla.”
“Next time make them chocolate.” Then Ol’ Gus disappeared into the locker room.
“It’s not good to drink alone,” Shady Jones said as he wiped a splotch of melted ice cream from his upper lip. And Shady headed to the locker room, too.
In the top of the sixth, I was the second batter up. I wanted to get on base in the worst way, preferably with a hit, but I would have been happy with getting beaned or walked. I wanted to feel a major league bag under my feet, take a long lead off first, and take a stab at stealing second.
When I stepped into the batter’s box, I lifted my bat high above my head and pointed it out toward centerfield, copying Babe Ruth’s called shot at Wrigley in the ‘32 World Series.
Apparently, Hoot Johnson, pitching for the Cubs, didn’t like my showmanship. He fired a ninety-six mile per hour fastball right at my head.
Bat and helmet went flying as I hit the dirt. While I wanted to get on base, doing it by getting hit in the head was not an option.
I took a deep breath and dusted the dirt off my pants and jersey until I regained the courage to get back in the batter’s box.
I readied myself to pull the trigger on a fastball. Since Hoot was behind in the count, he’d want to bring the pitch he could throw for a strike. Who knows, maybe I could get good wood on a fastball and hit it into the bleachers. There’d be no greater thrill than the Wrigley bleacher bums throwing my home run ball back onto the field.
The heater came, and I took a rip at it.
I hit a swinging bunt. The ball dribbled down the line. The third baseman let the ball roll, hoping it would go foul, but a foot away from the base, the ball stopped right on the chalk line, and I had my first big league hit.
As the guys in our dugout waved for the ball so I could have the souvenir for my mantle, I planned how I’d swipe second base. I decided to go on the second pitch, if the first one was a strike, because that would increase the odds of the next delivery being a breaking ball, an easier pitch to steal on.
“Hey, we’re in the record book,” Babe Kissinger, the Cubs’ hulk of a first baseman said. “They’re saying the homer I hit is the longest one ever hit at Wrigley Field. 655 feet. That’s longer than the one Kong Kingman hammered back in ’96.”
“Who threw the pitch to him?”
“Beats me.”
“So I’m in the record book for giving up the longest home run, but everyone will only remember your name.”
“Probably. But you’ll be the answer to a great trivia question.”
“I’ll take that.” I took a one, two, three step lead off first.
Bryson Gibson, our leadoff hitter, took a rip at the first pitch and hit a ball down the right field line that drifted into the stands.
Expecting a curve, I added a fourth step to my lead. As Hoot’s left leg lifted and moved toward home plate, I took off. I kept my head down and drove my arms. Five steps from the bag, I went airborne into a headfirst dive. With my entire body in the air, I reached out with my arms. I slid through the dirt, stirring up a cloud of dust. I felt my fingers hit the base an instant before the second baseman slapped the tag on me.
“Safe!”
I hopped to my feet. I spit the dirt out of my mouth but never slapped it off my uniform because this dirt, unlike when I hit the dust to avoid getting knocked in the noggin, was a badge of honor.
On the next pitch, Gibson hit a seeing-eye single between the third baseman and shortstop, and I sprinted home with the first run of my career.
In the dugout, I slapped high fives with the guys and accepted their congratulations. As I caught my breath and sipped orange Gatorade, the next three Tigers struck out.
I decided to focus on managing to get outs. The guys had enjoyed the fun, but it was hot. We held the Cubs scoreless in the bottom of the sixth, and we went down in order in the seventh.
Before the home half of the seventh, the Cubs decided to join in the fun. Since Ol’ Gus was out of the game, someone from the Cubs’ front office had gone down to the locker room and asked Ol’ Gus and Shady Jones to lead the crowd in the Wrigley tradition of singing, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” during the seventh inning stretch.
When they heard Gus’s voice, the whole team stepped onto the field to get a better look. “Does Gus have a beer?” asked Johnny Braggs.
He did! After the first line of the song, Ol’ Gus leaned his head back and took a long draw from a bottle of Budweiser. Then he waved the microphone and the bottle like a conductor while Shady belted out the words.
Then, As Curt Mann filmed him, the manager of the Detroit Tigers did the funniest, most Ol’ Gus thing of all. After Shady sang the last line of the song, Ol’ Gus bellowed into the mic, “Let’s go Cubs! Let’s get some runs!”
Our team loved it! We took off our caps and held them above our heads as a salute and chanted, “Gus! Gus! Gus!”
The Cubs didn’t score any more runs because after I took my regular position at second base, I brought in the one all-star still on our team because of his no-trade clause: Joe “Smoke” Johnson who on a good day, hit 101 on the gun, and on a bad day, 98.
It was one of Smoke’s good days. He blew three fastballs by Craig Kapp, one of the toughest guys to strike out in the National League. The next hitter, Brandon Franks, put up a better fight, swinging late and sending two pitches into the stands down the first base line before Smoke blew a high fastball by Franks with such speed that he swung after the ball smacked Lug’s mitt.
Then on the second pitch to Kirby Fox, Smoke hung a curve. Fox jumped on the pitch and sent a searing line drive toward left centerfield. Rocker took off at the crack of the bat. He sprinted to the warning track, and at the last moment, he leaped and reached over the wall. Rocker shagged the ball with his glove on the home run side of the fence and brought the ball back into the ballpark.
The crowd gave him a standing ovation. I guess they figured the Cubs didn’t need the run since we weren’t going to be staging a twelve run comeback.
After three quick outs in the top of the eighth, we took the field in the bottom of the inning for the Cubs last at bat. Smoke set the Cubs down one, two, three, with the last batter hitting a pop up that I caught in foul territory down the right field line.
After the game, Ol’ Gus joined me on the field for the postgame interview on WGN. “Hamilton’s a hell of a guy. I’d say I’m going to play him more,” Ol’ Gus said, “but as of right now, I’m officially retired.”
“I figured when Ol’ Gus said to go get Grant,” I told Skip Hicks, the WGN broadcaster, “he didn’t want his last game to be an ordinary one.” As I did the interview, Susie hopped the railing and ran over and kissed me on the cheek. I draped my sweaty left arm around her. “So I tried to make today special. I think the team, the fans, and Ol’ Gus had fun at the ballpark today.”
The crowd’s chant of “Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her,” got louder and louder. So I gave Susie a long kiss on the lips, a first kiss at the wedding altar type of smooch that lasted for a full minute. The WGN cameras, and Curt Mann (Yes, the kiss went viral), filmed every second of it.
The next day, the commissioner fined me $10,000 dollars and suspended me for eight games for conduct “detrimental to the game.”
A fan in Detroit set up a Go Fund Me account that raised over a $100,000 dollars (Yes, we bought our ranch house.). And I made another hundred grand after I signed endorsement deals with State Farm, Pepsi, and a mental health clinic.
My first game back after the suspension, Hank Birch started me at second base. He played me in ten games in August and twelve in September, but I hit even worse than I did in the minors, so my playing career ended after the last game of the season.
As for Ol’ Gus, at the Labor Day Celebration in Detroit, the Tigers gave him a Bass Buggy pontoon boat and fifty cases of Budweiser, one for every year he worked in baseball.
Ol’ Gus said a few words to me on his big day. “Thanks, Hamilton, you made my last game legendary. After the season, you should come out to my cabin on Lake Erie. I have plenty of room on my new fishing boat,” he said. “It’s a seven seater.”
I said I’d come see him, but I never saw Ol’ Gus again. I did watch him on season three of Michigan Fishing Nation TV. He was on his pontoon boat with Shady Jones and Curtis Creech, the host of the fishing show. Ol’ Gus spent more time telling stories than he did fishing, but he looked happy.
After the season, TV and radio stations in Chicago and Detroit offered me jobs as an announcer. Susie said to follow my heart, not the money, so I declined the offers.
Instead, I took a job with the Tigers, managing their Single A team. The pay is a lot less than the TV jobs, but what can I say, baseball is in my blood.
Now I’m managing to win, teaching young players the game, and following the rules.
But I’m still having fun. And I’m still married to the woman I love.
Life can’t get any better.