So Ernie Harwell is on the other end of the line, talking baseball. Or rather baseball literature. We’d been at it for nearly an hour, long distance. He was down in Lakeland, Florida, where the Detroit Tigers were about break camp, head north and defend their World Series title.

While the players were anticipating the most special of Opening Days – the one where they get their championship ring – Ernie was looking forward to that most special of all days for a writer. His first book, “Tuned to Baseball,” was about to drop, and that was what we had been talking about. . . until I’d suddenly realized that Ernie had turned the interview around and now I was the one answering the questions.

“Keith, I’ve met a lot of the writers at the Free Press, but I don’t recall our paths crossing,” he said. When I explained that I was new to the paper, assigned to the City Desk despite years as a sportswriter covering baseball with The Associated Press in Chicago, he began asking me about where I was from, about my family, and so on.

I told Ernie Harwell about growing up in the Detroit area, the son of a factory worker who instilled in me deep and abiding love of the game.

“And who was your favorite player?” Ernie asked.

“Al Kaline.” I responded without a moment’s hesitation. “My father told me if I wanted to learn how to play the game the right way to watch everything that guy does, from warming up in the outfield, to choking up an inch or so on the bat with two strikes – for better, quicker bat control.”

“Your father gave you great advice,” Harwell said with smile in his voice.

“He always did, Ernie,” I said. “I only wished I’d listen to him more often.”

After about 90 minutes on the line, as we were about to hang up, Ernie encouraged me to phone him back any time lest I forgot something I might need for the story I was assigned to write. In fact, he said, never hesitate to call me any time about anything, ever.

Maybe it was because we had been talking about my father for a few minutes. Maybe it was this man’s overwhelming kindness to a virtual stranger who’d just taken up so much of his time on a warm Florida evening, but at that moment I got a lump in my throat – and I did something very unprofessional.

“Um, there might be one thing, Ernie, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“What’s that?” he inquired.

“Well, my father is pretty sick. Breast cancer, actually. And I’m afraid this might be his last Opening Day. Would it be possible for you to give him a shout out like you sometimes do to loyal Tigers fans?

“I’d be honored,” he said, then asked for my father’s name and where he lived.

I thanked him profusely, and I fired up my laptop to begin writing a review/feature story about his book, how it read like Ernie was just telling us stories during a rain delay, and how the words seem to resonate more deeply when in your mind’s ear you can hear that voice, that sweet Georgia accent, in every syllable.

When I’d finished, I felt my mind wandering to the very day my father introduced me to baseball. We were living at the time in what could best be described as the lone tenement building in a little fishing village on Lake St. Clair. Two upstairs flats in a hulking cement structure sitting over what had been, when we lived there, the printing press for the Anchor Bay Beacon, owned and operated by Detroit Free Press alum Warren Stromberg. (Perhaps that’s where I started getting ink in my veins.)

One day that summer of 1954, when a teen-aged kid named Kaline was tearing the cover off the ball all around Briggs Stadium, I was playing in the yard as my dad pulled in from work. He was all dirty, as usual, from his day in the shop, one of those American lunch-bucket workers who took his shower after his workday. But he was smiling as he called to me. In his hand, he had something strange, a hunk of leather, rawhide with a rather strange odor – my first whiff of linseed oil that I would grow to adore.

It was a pre-War three-fingered baseball glove. After he slid it over my hand, making sure my fingers were tucked in the right places, he pulled from his pants pocket a shiny white rubber ball. Then he stood behind me about 8-10 feet from the apartment building and tossed the ball underhand toward the cement wall. It bounded back toward us, and, thanks to his artful direction, the ball landed right into the pocket of that old mitt.

Plop.

And that is the moment I fell hopelessly in love with baseball.

We did it several more times, with varying degrees of success. Then my dad put the ball in my hand, showing me how to execute the perfect overhand throw. I fired it against the wall, and it sailed far over my head.

“Practice,” he told me as I ran after it. “You’ll figure it out.”

And while Al Kaline was on his way to winning the American League batting title at 19, I would learn how to toss that ball against the wall and catch it. I’d stand maybe three feet away and get it to land in my glove most times – using both hands, as my father taught me, because that’s how Al Kaline does it.

My story about Ernie Harwell’s book played nicely across most of the front page of the Freep’s sports section on April 7, 1985. The next day, after getting their World Series rings, the Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-4, the first of six straight wins to start the season.

I was one of a handful of reporters covering the game for the Free Press that day. During the eighth inning, I made a quick call home to check in. My mother answered the phone and quickly passed the receiver.

“Hey Dad, how’s it going? Are you listening to the game?”

“Oh hell yeah,” he said. “And guess what?”

I was breathless with anticipation, because I could tell something good was coming from a voice that hadn’t had much cheer in it lately.

“Ernie Harwell said ‘Hi’ to me.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“He said, “I want to send greetings to a longtime Tigers fan Al Gave out in New Baltimore, Michigan!” my said. “I was the first one he said hi to this season!”

That’s when I felt a nudge from the Freep colleague sitting next to me, asking if everything was OK.

I nodded, wiping my leaky eyes with the back of my hand.

“That’s great, Dad,” I said. I reminded him I needed to get back to work, and we said our good-byes.

I wasn’t sure if life could get much better at that moment, not withstanding a miracle that would dismiss the disease ravaging my father’s body. Baseball is a game made for fathers and sons, and nobody seemed to understand that more than Ernie Harwell.

My father and I managed to get to several games at The Corner that summer, but I was right. That was his last Opening Day. We lost him on Labor Day weekend.

Fast forward about three years, to the summer of 1988. I’d moved from the City Desk to the Sports Desk at the Freep to cover the Red Wings. But I was pressed into duty to cover the Tigers for 10 days or so while our baseball beat guy, Hall of Famer John Lowe, needed some time off.

We were in Milwaukee, and this was the first time I’d been to County Stadium. To say I felt a bit lost and overwhelmed would be a monumental understatement. I was in the tiny media lounge a few hours before the game with a tray of food in my hands looking at a cramped room full of tables, every one of them occupied.

I was getting embarrassed, just standing there, when I saw an arm rise and noticed it was intended to get my attention. I looked over and saw two familiar faces and smiled as I walked over and sat down, thanking Ernie Harwell for the invitation.

And after he shook my hand, Ernie smiled and said, “Keith Gave, say hello to Al Kaline. . .”

I remember nothing else from that long road trip.

Keith Gave Author