Me, my dad, my grandpa and a ball game

"What in the hell are you swinging at?"

My grandpa's voice can be heard from his bedroom upstairs as another Tiger swings at a ball in the dirt.

"Watch, Leyland is going to leave him in too long and let this game get away. He cares too much about their feelings."

This, from my father who is perched atop his man-throne next to me in the basement.

"Why would Leyland bat Raburn 3rd just because he is filling in for Mags? He's hitting .180 and that's cost us three runs tonight."

This educated analysis comes from me on the couch next to my old man on his throne. The highlight of my trip back to Detroit is always watching a Tigers game with three generations in the same house. My grandpa and father, like me, live for Tiger games. Like me, they over-react to success and failure though both are faster on the trigger than I am after a bad loss. Grandpa doesn't like to make the trip downstairs to watch the game on the big screen, so he watches games from his room.

This was a great weekend to go home, being that the Pirates were in town who were aptly swept but not without some stressful moments. We questioned every move by Leyland. Grandpa bitched about Negro League uniforms and that "he can't tell who the hell anyone is out there with those clown outfits on". We gnashed our teeth at every bad at-bat and the seemingly endless number of runners we left on base. Even the announcers get pummeled for clearly not understanding the game as well as we do. My grandpa is 92 years old and knows his baseball. He's not afraid to cuss up a storm by himself when he doesn't approve, a habit my father and I find irresistibly funny. My old man and I were suffering through a miserable offensive night yesterday until we decided to play the "mute game". Every strikeout, error or poor at-bat evolved into an opportunity to mute the sound and listen hard for grandpa's harangues upstairs.

"Jesus Christ, this ain't no baseball! Aww hell, you ain't worth a damn. Get the damned bat off your shoulder! Stupid son of a bitch . . ."

Each profanity-laced tirade made us laugh harder and just like the good, fair-weather fans that we are, grandpa was all smiles when I ran up to high-five him after Carlos Guillen hit a walk-off shot in the 10th that capped a stirring Tigers comeback on Saturday night (though Carlos was a rat fink to him just two innings earlier when he left two on base).

"Yeah, that Carlos is my boy! He's hell with a baseball bat!"

Today, after an uninspired offensive showing, we had to listen to the last two innings in the car on the way to the airport. Just before the 8th, Dad is lamenting about our lame offense and declares that "we're nothing but a .500 ball club". Four batters later after cranking the volume loud enough to drown out the women in the backseat who are fruitlessly trying to engage us in their conversation, we're fist pounding and I'm hollering out the window when Cabrera delivers a three-run, come-from-behind shot with two outs.

This is what makes baseball special. Your team plays every day and the changes in pitchers makes each game unique. A bad outing today can be erased tomorrow by your ace. The emotional swings during a game are ever present and strategy plays enough of a role that everyone can second guess each managerial move. Most of all, the games are frequent and give guys ample topics of conversation, both during the game and for all the hours leading up to the next one. Baseball makes communicating easy for men and is a bonding ritual without peer in America. The three of us can go two or three innings without saying much at all, aside from the regular spattering of grunts with their own unique tones and pitches, decipherable only to Neanderthal men who have spent altogether way too many hours studying a child's game.

What made this weekend special was a chance to watch three games with two guys who have shaped my view of the world and have lived through far more rotten Tigers seasons to be just a tad more cynical than myself. If they are faster to jump ship on a season, I can't blame them - they have thirty and fifty more seasons of disappointing moments to fall back on. Father's Day is still a week away but I'm thankful to have spent so much time with both of mine on a topic so dear to our hearts.

I look forward to calling the house and smiling after Tuesday's game to hear grandpa reverting to form with something like, "What in hell is wrong with Carlos? He can't hit worth a shit these days!"