In case you are getting tired of hearing from only Eric Z, here are some thoughts I have on the passing of Dean Chance:

If you have not heard of Dean Chance, he was a major league pitcher in the 60s and won the Cy Young Award in 1964.  He was from Wooster and would come to Cleveland to play cards.  This is how my father met him.  At some point my father must have mentioned that I was a huge baseball fan arranged a dinner.  Despite the thirty-year age difference, Dean and I hit it off and became better friends than he was with my father.   Dean was involved with high school athletics in Wayne County and started an organization to award scholarships to student athletes in the county.  He would host a fund raiser banquet every year with celebrities from the sports world as keynote speakers and I was always invited.  He usually sat me at a table next to the then-current  Miss Wayne County, with the hopes that a relationship would bloom.  None did.  At one point, for a short time when I was in college, Dean and I were in business together promoting sports memorabilia shows.

I can't tell you how many odd adventures started with an early morning phone call from Dean.  An example:

6:00 a.m. phone call.  Dean:  "Is this The Lawyer?"  [You must read all of Dean's quotations as if they were spoken by Foghorn Leghorn, both in terms of volume and accent.  When I became a magistrate, the salutation would be "Is this the JUDGE?"]

Me:  "Yes it is.  Dean, do you know its 6:00?"

Dean:  "Don't worry about that Stevie.  Now let me tell you . . . I'm here in Auburn Hills, Michigan [I think for a boxing match.  Dean created the International Boxing Association in the 1990s].  There's someone here that wants to see you and I have something for you to do, when can you be here?" 

Me:  "You mean today?"

Dean:  "Shit YES I mean TODAY.  When can you be here?"

Me:  "Well . . . I guess around 10:00 or 11:00".

Dean:  "Great. Here is the address. . .  And bring the Accountant with you.  See you soon".  Click.

The "Accountant" was my friend from Case Western Reserve, Ken W., who Dean had met while we were involved with the sports memorabilia shows and who had a degree in accounting.   I called up Ken and he agreed to go, so were we off to Michigan.   When we arrived at the address I was given, a hotel in suburban Detroit, Dean answered the door.

Dean:  "The Lawyer and the Accountant!  I'm glad you're here!   Uncle Bo wants to see you and he wants some meat!"

"Uncle Bo" was Bo Belinsky, a teammate of Dean's from the California Angels.  Dean and Bo formed an off-field  dynamic duo during their playing days and were famous for their carousing. They were an odd couple - Bo was a street kid from New Jersey and Dean was the classic hayseed, or at least played that part well.    Bo liked starlets and had relationships with Ann Margaret, Tina Louise (Ginger on Gilligan's Island) and Mamie Van Dorn, to whom he was engaged on three or four occasions.   He ending up marring an heiress to the Weyerhaeuser Lumber fortune.  If one believes the rumors, Dean had to settle for Marylyn Monroe.  Uncle Bo was famous for saying "If music be the food of love, by all means let the band play on".  (Despite all of his high profile lovers, I always felt Bo was a bit gay.  Sorry for thinking that Uncle Bo).

By the time of our unexpected trip to Michigan, Uncle Bo was in a bad way.  The heiress had divorced him and, as the result of a sold pre-nup, left him penniless.  He also was dying of bladder cancer, which was not helped by the "Old English Ovals" he smoked in quick succession all of his waking hours.  He was sprawled on a couch in a bath robe propped up by pillows.  He seem to come alive for a moment when he saw me, but was clearly in pain.  Dean was buzzing around him like a worried mother.  There were some other people there, to whom I was not introduced and who I did not know.

Dean:  "Now that you have said your hellos, can you get Bo some meat".

Me:  "What kind of meat?"

Dean:  "You know, meat!"

Me:  "No I don't know, what kind?"

Dean:  "You know, the kind for sandwiches".

Me:  "OK, but what type of sandwich meat . . . salami, baloney, ham . . ."

Dean:  "All those . . . and some cheese and bread and maybe potato salad".

So Ken and I were off to the grocery store where we bought pounds of meat . . . and cheese . . and bread . . . and potato salad.   We went back to the hotel with our bounty and everyone ate. 

Me:  "Dean, did you have me come up here to go to the store for you?"

Dean:  "NO . . . I almost forgot.  I want you to go to Tiger Stadium  . . . there's a guy you may have heard of pitching there today named NOLAN RYAN . . . and see Frank Cashman (I think it was Frank Cashman.  Whomever it was was the GM of the Tigers).  He'll have tickets for you.   Just tell him I sent  you".

We did as instructed.  Mr. Cashman gave us the royal treatment and set us up with tickets behind home plate.   We were there before BP and, I think, before the gates opened to the public.  An old guy in a Texas Rangers uniform was throwing in the bullpen.  The pop of the ball hitting the glove echoed throughout empty Tiger Stadium.  WOW, we thought, Nolan Ryan was really popping those 100 mph heaters in there.  When we got closer, we saw that the pitcher was not Nolan Ryan but the other old guy on the team . . . Charlie Huff!!  The 100 mph heaters were really 60 mph knuckle balls!!  

One last story from this day.  We got to the ballpark early and parked in the second row of cars.  Unbeknownst to us, the parking attendants did not leave space empty between rows but, rather, parked all of the cars in solid mass.  We left the game when Ryan was taken out in the 8th (I think), thinking we would get a head start for our long trip home.  We were dismayed to find our car blocked in.  As luck would have it, a car in the front row just to the left of our car had departed.  There was a VW bug in front of our car next to this now vacant space.  If we could slide the bug over a bit we could squeeze out, drive over the side walk, and be on our way.  We recruited some local gentlemen who were walking by, lifted the bug enough to slide it over and made our way home! 

So this is how I managed to sit behind home plate to witness Nolan Ryan's 297th victory.  I'll miss those crazy calls!