During this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star break, many, shall we euphemistically say, “more mature fans” were reminded of the All-Star Game that celebrated its 50th anniversary this summer. As for the location of the game, it was just 140 miles north of here in a stadium that sadly exists now only in the memory of those who loved it, Tiger Stadium, which happened to be the site of the first Major League game I ever attended as well as a park I visited many times after my inaugural visit.
To date, I’ve seen Major League games in 22 parks, and I will tell you that Tiger Stadium remains my favorite. A seat in the first row of the upper deck overlooking either the first or third base bag was almost as if I were watching the action from the gondola of a hot-air balloon that was tethered directly above the action.
That All-Star Game was played the summer after my sophomore year at Miami University, and I was working at a resort hotel on the Jersey Shore some 647 miles from Tiger Stadium, so I certainly couldn’t go, but I recently caught up to three area baseball fans who were in Tiger Stadium that night to see the 6-4 American League win.
The reason so many feel it was the best All-Star Game ever played is because of the number of future Hall of Fame players who participated. In unprecedented fashion, there were 21 future Cooperstown player inductees as well as Pete Rose, who many will argue should have been the 22nd.
Additionally, both managers, Earl Weaver of the American League and Sparky Anderson of the National League, were later inducted, as was a coach, Walter Alston, and Joe Torre, who was selected as a player that night and was later enshrined as a four-time World Series-winning manager of the Yankees.
Throw in umpire Doug Harvey, who was elected as well, and that makes 26. Never was there a game with more. Torre later described the evening aptly as a time when your best baseball cards came alive.
With a game-time temperature of 85 degrees and wind gusts of 30-35 mph blowing out to right, hitters from both leagues couldn’t wait to swing for the fences in a stadium known as a hitters’ park. No less than six future hall of famers reached those seats — Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Roberto Clemente and Reggie Jackson, whose homer off Dock Ellis cleared the right-field roof and would have gone out of the stadium had it not banged off a light standard. It is in the conversation when it comes to fan discussions of the hardest-hit balls ever.
Among the 53,559 there that night, there were three Lima Senior High seniors-to-be, Scott Campbell, Bob Foley, both still Lima residents, and Tim Miller, who now lives in Atlanta, and Foley’s late father, Jack, all seated in the right-field upper deck in seats they surely earned.
In another part of the park was Gomer’s Jim Martz, then in his second year as a Major League scout for the Baltimore Orioles. Martz was with his wife Jackie, his son Mick and three special guests he’d been able to get tickets so they could see the event.
As for the hard-earned tickets for who we’ll call the Foley party, well, it was Jack Foley, who’d heard there would be a thousand tickets that would go on sale on the Friday morning before the Tuesday night game. In Black Friday fashion, Jack and his three 17-year-old Spartans made the drive to the Motor City on Thursday evening with lawn chairs in the trunk to get in line and wait overnight to secure their tickets.
Recalls Campbell, “The night was so bizarre. We had everything from motorcycle gangs and swarming police to an unruly mob of line crashers that showed up at dawn trampling people in sleeping bags.”
Adds Foley, “There were even some who I think were ladies of the evening meandering around. Bless his heart, my dad, a huge Tiger fan, hung in there amidst the chaos, and we got tickets. I have to say, even all these years later, it was one of my most memorable experiences. To share it with my dad and two dear friends, well, it doesn’t get much better than that.”
Recalls Martz, “I was so excited to have been given tickets for my family and also to be given the opportunity to purchase three more for very special people. Dwaine Holt, who grew up in Gomer and went on to a distinguished teaching and coaching career at Bath; his wife, Leslie; and Ed Sandy, my high school baseball coach and the best mentor I could have ever hoped for. It was the company I kept as much as the excitement of the game that made it special.”
Despite the five decades that have since passed and, perhaps, some waning interest in the game as it exists today, Campbell, Foley and Martz indeed — from Mays to Aaron to Clemente to Bench and so many others — indeed saw their best baseball cards come alive in a stadium now sadly gone on a sultry and gusty July night that will never be forgotten.
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