Can you help me solve a baseball dad mystery?
My dad was a baseball dad, and Link family lore says he pitched in Tiger Stadium.
By “baseball dad,” I mean he watched baseball on TV, listened to baseball on the radio, went to my softball games and hit ground balls to me in our backyard.
His life advice often came from baseball vocabulary: Keep your eye on the ball. Get your head in the game.
Here’s my first clear memory of the mystery.
It’s summer vacation, a weekend afternoon, my brother and I are in the kitchen of our family’s Bay City split-level ranch, and my mom is making us lunch.
I’m 13, my brother is 10, my dad is out in the garage working on something, and we can hear the Tiger’s game is on the radio.
This is when my mom leans in, smiling conspiratorially, and says to my brother and me: “Your dad once pitched in Tiger Stadium.”
I say “conspiratorially” because my dad wasn’t one to talk much about his past. He wasn’t secretive, he just hardly ever indulged in glory days reminiscing. At least not to me.
It wasn’t until after he died in 2018 that I learned he’d played on the Western Michigan Broncos team that lost to Wake Forest in the 1955 College World Series.
I never knew “Charley Link” helped Arthur Hill High School win a championship in 1951 in the Saginaw Valley League, or that he pitched a no-hitter in 1957 in a Battle Creek recreational league game.
By then, my dad was married to my mom, working as a teacher and a baseball coach at Springfield High School, and was still playing great baseball.
“The big show last night was Link’s performance,” Wendy Foltz, a sports reporter for the Battle Creek Enquirer wrote. “The Western Michigan University graduate was in complete control all the way. He struck out 16 batters and walked only two. He now has hurled 13 and 1/3 innings without having allowed a run.”
I know all that now, and I wish I could talk with him about it, and convince him to re-live the excitement of those moments.
I watched and listened to a lot of Tigers’ games with my dad when I was a kid, not because I was a dedicated fan of the game, but because I was a fan of my dad.
But I’ve buried the lead.
On Mother’s Day this year, I visited my mom at her house in Whitehall, where she moved with my brother a year after my dad died.
There was a stack of old scrapbooks on her kitchen table stored, unopened for decades, in my grandmother’s attic.
My mom fixed our lunch, I turned the pages and there, next to his faded report cards and high school homework, was a letter from the Detroit Tigers Minor League System.
“Dear Charles,” it began, “We hope your presence here indicates that you are interested in becoming a Tiger and will work hard toward that end.”
“Schoolboy Rowe was impressed by your performance and is anxious to see more of you before the season ends.”
Schoolboy Rowe was a Detroit Tiger, a right-handed pitcher, an All Star who played for the team when they won the World Series in 1934 and 1935 and later worked as a pitching coach.
My dad got the letter in August of 1952, when he was 18 years old. It wasn’t from Schoolboy; it was from someone named “Ralph E. Snyder.”
Who was he? And, did my dad really pitch in Tiger Stadium?
I’m curious about both these questions and maybe you can help me find the answers, but the real mystery is my own.
Why I didn’t ask him more about his life when I had the chance?
The Detroit Tigers, so far this season, have the best record in baseball and I’ve been glued to the TV, or to my car’s radio, so I don’t miss a single minute.
As a dad, Chuck Link hit it out of the park. But I don’t tell him that.
“Dad,” I say instead, “Did you see that play? Carpenter just threw out a guy at home, from right field!”
Or, “Dad, can you believe Skubal? A 103 mile-per-hour fastball, in the ninth inning!”
If you get a chance, let me know what you find out. In the meantime, touch base this Sunday with your dad.