Summer Activity

Without a doubt my favorite summer activity is and always has been the game of baseball. My love for that game for most of my life would be as a fan since my playing days were over in my mid teenage years. I do have a couple of baseball stories to share. The first one being very early in my lifetime and the second was rather recent.
When my brother Wayne and I lived in Mt Clemens in the 1940's we discovered a love for that game. We taught each other how to play the game. I can remember cutting out box scores from newspapers and pasting tghem in scrapbooks. After moving to Moross at the end of the baseball season we'd put a baseball in the pocket of our gloves and tie it tight so it would be ready for the next spring.
In the year of 1952 that spring seemed to come early. Now when I use the term "Playing on Moross," that means playing on the island that separates the east and the west sides of Moross Road. Itr is large enough to play catch on. It is even large enough to play football on which we did several times. So this February spring day in 1952 we played catch on Moross. A couple of other kids soon joined us. I was thirteen and Wayne was twelve. One of those kids seemed to be huge for his age of twelve. He towered over all of us and really threw that baseball hard. This was the year that I noticed what you might call my growth spurt.
Wayne showed us an ad in the Superman comic book where it showed a 97 pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face at the beach, when he decided he had taken enugh he turned himself into Charles Atlas and got his revenge. We all started doing sit-ups and push-ups and running. Wayne and I were in better physical shape than we ever had been.
We went to the gymnasium with our new friend, where we learned to play basketball. This kid already knew the game and seemed to be better at it than anyone else and he was only twelve years old. Believe me, I am not making this up. He then told us of an American Legion Baseball League he would be playing in. He was going to be in the 13-14 year old league.
We rounded up enough kids and put a team into that league and it just so happened that we played our first game against this same kid, who was still only twelve years old. No one could hit him. He seemed to strike out just about everyone he faced.
When I look back on it even today, I think of how proud I was just to be able to stand up to the plate and take my three swings. Yes, it was an honor to have known, befriended and played baseball and basketball with Dave DeBusschere.
Dave became an All State baseball and basketball player at Austin High School. He was also an All-American at the University of Detroit and went on to a Hall of Fame career with the New York Knickerbockers. He eventually became the Commissioner of the American Basketball Association. He was truly one of the greatest athletes of our time. It was an honor to have known him.
Now let's go forward to the year of 2006. Actually it was more like 2001 when I began playing fantasy sports. In fantasy sports it takes about 75 per cent luck and 25 per cent skill and knowledge to really compete for the big prize. This I not only competed for in 2006 but I won first place over several thousand teams. This was the playoffs of 2w006 when the Tigers were in the World Series against St Louis. I was placed in their Hall of Fame for winning and also received the $5000.00 first place prize.
Now for a little footnote to this story. Can you imagine three young boys, ages 12-13 playing catch on Moross in the early '50s. All three of them would one day wind up n the Hall of Fame in three completely different categories. Dave DeBusschere for Basketball, Wayne Dyer for International Speaking and David Dyer? Well why not? For Fantasy Sports.