The Corner

Todd DeStigter

You can always talk about baseball, even to an eight year old girl

You can talk about how Tiger Stadium opened in 1912—two years before Wrigley Field—at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull

About its 440 foot center field wall—the farthest (by far, ever) in the major leagues

And that only four players in history (Harmon Killebrew in ‘62, Frank Howard in ‘68, Cecil Fielder in ‘90 and Mark McGwire in ‘97) have homered over the left field roof

You can talk about Norm Cash’s glove and Al Kaline’s bat and Denny McLain’s 30 wins in ’68 or Gibson’s homer to right in game six of the ’84 series


You can’t really talk about why you and her mom split up and left her home alone after school (That’s a corner you can’t talk your way out of) You can’t talk much about adult things that even now you don’t much understand


But she can talk about how she was the only one in her class who knew that Ty Cobb had a .367 lifetime average and about having her picture taken standing on the base of a street lamp with the stadium walls, looming and massive like the hull of a battleship, in the background

She can talk about hot chocolate at cold May night games

She can talk about how good it felt in terrace reserved with the upper deck leaning over us like a blanket

You can’t talk about lots of things

But you can always talk about baseball.