• Greg's Blog
• College Classes Blog

• Biography
• Appearances
• Next Novel
• Football Columns
• Music Reviews
• Links
• Good Old Stuff

Good Old Stuff

• Bob Segar
• Deb Fisher’s Indians Opener Story
• Opening Days at the Old Stadium

I wrote the following piece five years ago about Bob Seger for fun, and sent it around to a few friends on the internet. I got a terrific response, and every so often someone asks me for a copy of it. I reviewed Seger on his last tour in 2006, and he is still doing great stuff.

Bob Seger

The day before St. Patrick's Day I had a Snow Day at school. I bought a bunch of newspapers and spent most of the morning having a leisurely breakfast at the Red Chimney. One of the stories in most of the papers was about the Rock Hall Inductions the night before. I jotted down the following on some scraps of paper, forgot about it, then found it again yesterday.

He first came into our lives across Lake Erie on AM Giant CKLW out of Windsor, Canada. In between Byron MacGregor and Scott Hunter telling us about the traffic on Eight Mile Road on 20/20 News, and commercials for Farmer Jack Grocery Stores we first heard Bob Seger.

Here where the Midwest meets the east, before there ever was Michael Stanley or John Mellencamp, before Bruce Springsteen rose out of the east, there was Bob Seger. Bob Seger and the Herd. The Bob Seger System. And then finally Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

He played Northern Ohio literally hundreds of times, first opening for acts at the old Agora, then headlining clubs, playing Music Hall and Music Carnival and the World Series of Rock at the old Stadium, headlining the Coliseum and the Gund. Some of us even remember the old days when he would take the stage wearing tails.

And every single time, every single show, Seger and his band left everything on the stage. Night after night, city after city, show after show, he gave it his all. As Kid Rock said at the Rock Hall Induction Ceremony, "Bob Seger has paid more dues than the current Billboard Top 40 put together."

Last night they inducted the 19th class into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and many of us out here in the Midwest think it was 18 years too later for Bob Seger. What took so fu--ing long?

He gave us the most popular juke box tune of all time, "Old Time Rock and Roll." He took us to "Katmandu" and "Fire Lake." He introduced us to the "Beautiful Loser," the "Rambling Gambling Man," and to "Jody Girl." He took us "Against the Wind," showed us how to do the "Horizontal Bop," and took us hundreds of times across a thousand Midwest sunsets, with autumn closing in.

He wrote the definite road anthem, "Turn the Page." He wrote the best country hit of the Eighties, "We Got Tonight." And his songs were featured in a generation of movies, including Top Gun, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Urban Cowboy, and Beverly Hills Cop.

He made albums where any of the songs could've gone Top Ten, and ballads that made your heart stop. He made the first great double live album, one that set the bar for others like "Frampton Comes Alive," "Stagepass," and "Certified Live." Every single song on "Live Bullitt" got airplay, and the segue from "Rambling Man" to "Beautiful Loser" is the best one ever. You still have to listen to it on vinyl to hear it right.

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You know those corporate suits in New York pull all the strings as far as the Rock Hall goes, because if it were up to the people here in Ohio it would've happened a long time ago...

These are two different pieces I wrote about Opening Day of the baseball season, an unofficial official holiday here in Northern Ohio. "Deb Fisher's Indians Opener Story" is from 2003, and the other piece is from over twenty years ago and has appeared in several different forms in several different publications.

Deb Fisher’s Indians Opener Story

I've been asked again to write another story about Opening Day here in Cleveland. First I thought about just sending along the essay I wrote years ago about going to Openers with my brother Larry, my dad, and grandfather. But a lot of people have read that over the years, and I didn’t want to go send along old material (if you wish, you can check that one out at www.gregcielec.com under good old stuff).

And then I was going to write about the time when we were still in high school when Johnny Wilson took the ACT test for Jack Cornhoff so Jack could go to the Opener. It’s a really very entertaining story, especially if you know Jack and John, but then I heard Deb Fisher’s Opener story and I knew immediately that was the one I wanted to write about. Johnny and Jack’s story will have to wait until next year.

We here in Northern Ohio have some pretty stupid rituals, none more contradictory than our two spring holidays, St. Patrick’s Day and the Indians Home Opener. Both days are when thousands of us, from the time we are in our teens until we are walking with canes, stand outside for hours in ungodly cold, wet, windy weather, drink as much beer as possible, and do two things we have dozens of opportunities to do during the summer when the weather is a bit more cooperative, watch a parade and a ballgame.

We have Memorial Day Parades, Fourth of July Parades, and Labor Day Parades. Plus all of the parades that deal with all of the street festivals that happen every weekend all summer long. If you want to stand outside in sunshine and eighty degree weather, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and drinking cold ones and watch a parade, the opportunities are endless.

And, as far as the Indians go, they play eighty other home games a year, and believe me when I tell you this, there will be no problem getting tickets during June, July, and August this year. But no, we have to stand outside with that Canadian wind whipping in from the north, just to make sure it’s cold enough it’s last 120 miles goes over a semi-frozen lake, with our drinking gloves on, and trips to bathroom are real adventures with all of the layers of clothing.

But these rituals have gone on for generations and will continue for generations to follow. It’s just something that you do, that’s all.

We had first met Deb Fisher and her crowd four or five years ago in Baltimore. Our football team at John Carroll had played Catholic University in Washington, and the coaches had a free day the next day because we did not have a game the following Saturday. So me and several of my coaching colleagues headed to Baltimore the next morning where, as luck would have it, the Tribe was playing the Orioles. What a day it became! The game got rained out, we met up expectedly and unexpectedly with several groups of old friends, and somewhere along the way Deb and her friends blended into the party. We were in Phillip’s Piano Bar, it was pouring outside, and there were all these Cleveland people singing along to the Dixieland Jazz Band that was playing. What an afternoon! (Someday ask Jim Yarnell, Jim Thompson, or Dave Hostetler about the ride back to the airport in our rental car. Unbelievable. Things somehow always seem to happen in Baltimore, someday I’m going to write My Baltimore Story.)

Since then I have crossed paths with Deb and her crowd once or twice a year. This past winter I met her for cocktails at one of the establishments in the Warehouse District. I knew Deb had had a rough past year, which included having surgery to replace a hip and the death of her best friend, Glynda Harrison.

Deb is always fun to go out with, she knows lots of people and she can take over a room when the situation arises. One of the reasons I was meeting up with her was to see what her plans are for Opening Day. Last year she didn’t make it to the game, on account of what had happened to Glynda. What I didn’t expect to happen, was that I was going to hear about Deb’s Indian Opener adventures with her recently departed friend.

Deb and Glynda first met back in the Seventies when they both ended up on the same softball team in Lakewood. Deb was one of the team’s stars, Glynda was a role player. "She use to complain that she didn’t have enough hands," Deb said. "If she had to wear a glove on one hand, how was she suppose to hold a beer and smoke a cigarette at the same time?"

They started going to the Opener together in 1975. It was back in the days of John Lowenstein and Gomer Hodge and Frank Duffy. Just as Roger Kahn said in his great baseball book about the Brooklyn Dodgers of his youth, The Boys of Summer, you admire a team in victory, but you fall in love in defeat. And Glynda and Deb fell in love with those mediocre Tribe teams, just like a lot of us did, and the start of the baseball season became a holiday.

Glynda was a real sports encyclopedia, especially about Cleveland teams. Her roots went all the way back to when she went to games with her grandfather when she was a little girl. "I would match her Tribe knowledge against anyone," Deb stated impressively.

Deb and Glynda, along with a revolving group of friends, made the Opener a tradition for years. Even when they both moved away for awhile in the early Eighties, when they both moved back they started it back up again like they were never away.

According to Deb they had a simple game day routine, always reliable for a good time. "We’d go to a bar. Go to the game. Go back to the bar."

Years passed, Glynda went from being a mom to a grandmother, yet she never missed an Opener with her friends. Eventually even the Indians had a great run. Then, as it often happens to too many of the good ones, tragedy struck. "She had been complaining about really bad headaches for about ten months," according to Deb. "And she had been seeing a doctor for seven months. He diagnosed it as a sinus infection, over and over. But it wasn’t a sinus infection, but a brain aneurysm. It finally burst, they performed surgery, she lasted for two weeks in a drug-induced coma. Every time they tried to bring her out of the coma she would start stroking out. A massive stroke finally killed her."

Glynda’s funeral was just days before last year’s Indians Opener. Even without Glynda’s sudden death, the Opener looked in doubt for last year for Deb anyway, because she had just gotten her hip replaced. Between Glynda’s death, and her hip surgery, last spring was not good for Deb. But for as uncomfortable as her hip surgery left her, nothing compared to the void left inside of Deb because of the death of her close friend. She knew she had to do something on Opening Day to honor Glynda’s spirit.

Deb picks up the story there. "I had just had my hip replaced, so I knew I couldn’t go to the game and uphold our ritual, so we did the next best thing," Deb said with a smile coming to her face. "We tailgated at her grave site. We put Chief Wahoo flags around her grave, set up lawn chairs, and had peanuts and beer. We even put a couple of upside down bottles of beers on her grave and we listened to the game on the radio. It was four of us, our baseball friend Nancy and two of her sisters, Dana and Debbie."

What was her family’s reaction, I asked. "Her kids were pissed because they weren’t invited. They’ll be there this year. Her daughter was mad because we left peanut shells all around the grave."

Deb and her friends have big plans for this year. "We’re going to do pretty much the same thing this year, but with a lot more people. Some guestimates are as high as forty people. Mostly her family and tons of friends that understand what Glynda was always about. In fact, I think she’s mad at me because she didn’t think of all of this first. Actually, I think it would make her very proud that she is still making people smile and have fun, just in a very unorthodox manner."

The Indians Home Opener this year is on Monday, April 7 against the White Sox. If you don’t have a good ticket to the game, but still want to get caught up in the spirit of the day, think about heading out to the Catholic Cemetery out in Avon. First pitch is at one.

So that’s Deb Fisher’s Opener Story, the one she told me in the bar at the Metropolitan Grill looking out on a frigid winter night, with snow in the streets and frost on the windows. A perfect winter’s day to talk baseball. I hope she doesn’t mind me writing about it. Because it’s a good story, and like all good stories, it needs to be told at least once again.

Opening Days at the Old Stadium

For some summer begins with the end of the school year, for others it's Memorial Day, and for others it starts as early as St. Patrick's Day.  For me winter ends and summer begins with the start of the baseball season and Opening Day for the Cleveland Indians.

Since I have played or coached football for almost my whole life most people assume that I come from a family with a strong football background.  That isn't true.  The most popular sport in my family has always been baseball.   My maternal grandfather was a major league and amateur catcher of note during the 1920's and '30's, and often reminisced about playing against the likes of Satchel Paige.  When my father came back from World War II and got his first real job working the steel mills, his passion was following the great Indians teams of the late 40's and 50's.  He would often tell stories about catching the street car for the ride downtown to see the Indians play the Yankees with the pennant on the line.  And even though he was a die hard Indians fan and, consequently, hated the Yankees, Joe DiMaggio was his favorite player.  He would tell me that Joe was the most fluent athlete he had ever seen.  Baseball hasn't only been the passion of the men in my family.  My mother and my sisters all know their way around the ball field, as did my recently deceased ninety-three year old grandmother.

Here in Northern Ohio the generation of my parents, those people now in their early 60's to late 70's, grew up in the Golden Era of Cleveland sports.  Harrison Dillard, Jesse Owens, and Stella Walsh were all Olympic heroes.  The Browns were founded and dominated pro football for almost two decades.  The Stadium was built and considered one of the finest facilities in the country.  The Barons were considered the ninth best hockey team in the world, behind only the then eight NHL teams. 

But the Cleveland of the 30’s, 40's, and 50's was, above all, a baseball town.  The Indians roster was filled with the names Boudreau, Feller, Doby, Rosen, and Paige and the Indians were the second best team in baseball behind the mighty but hated Yankees.  Whether it was April or July or September the Indians drew strong and supportive crowds.  Photographers from the 1954 World Series show fans standing five deep behind the out field fence to watch games.

If you weren't at the game, or if the team was on the road, you listened to the game on the radio.  You could follow the game going in and out of stories on a Saturday afternoon because the game would be on everywhere.  Have you ever noticed there are some people who still prefer to listen to baseball on the radio instead of watching it on TV?  My grandfather was like that.  He'd sit at the picnic table on the patio in his backyard smoking a cigar and reading the newspaper or the Sporting News, listening to the ball game on the radio.  When Bob Neal or Jimmy Dudley's voice would raise in excitement, (they were the Tribe announcers of my youth), he'd look up and gaze off into space, envisioning the play in his mind.  He'd see the exact the spot where the ball bounced, or the seat where the home run landed, or how the second baseman missed the tag.  He'd see it all and then explain it to me.  I saw my first opener with my grandfather who always treated the day as a major holiday.  Jimmy Buffett sings about sailing with his grandfather and Hemingway wrote about hunting and fishing with  his.  I went to Cleveland Indians Openers with mine. 

There's a great time in every young man's life, before he discovers girls and learns how to drink beer with his buddies, when his passion in life is sports.  During that time in my life, my father spent the week out of town hustling business.  He'd promise my brother and I that when he returned he'd take us to the Indians game on Friday if we behaved ourselves.  I looked forward to going to those Friday games with great anticipation, but as I've gotten older and have thought about a father who's no longer with us, I realize that he probably look forward to them more.  Monday through Friday in a strange town, living out of a suitcase in a hotel room, eating dinner alone each night and missing his sons' little league games.  He'd turn the ball game on the radio and it'd be the Cubs, or the White Sox or the Cardinals, but not the Indians. 

Years later I realized too late what those Fridays meant to him.  He'd have dinner with his family, and then we'd all pile into the station wagon and drive to my grandparents’ house.  My mom and sisters would stay with my grandmother as ‘the men’ would go down to the stadium.  We'd stop in a few places down in Dad's old neighborhood, shot and beer joints near West 25 and Denison Avenue.  My dad and my grandfather would have a few short ones with their buddies at the bar, while my brother and I would drink Cokes, eat bags of cheese corn, and play the bowling machine.

When we got to the game we'd sit in left field near my favorite Indian, Leon “Daddy Wags” Wagner.  My grandfather would buy my brother and me anything we wanted, and my Dad would very meticulously keep score.  The night would end at the old Baron's Cafe, burned down years now, with my brother and I delegated to a booth to feast on Baron Burgers and thick, greasy onion rings, while my Dad and grandfather sat at the bar for night caps and talked baseball.  Years later I realized how much my dad probably hated his job, and how he must have looked forward to those Friday night games.

When I was younger a lot of the attraction and anticipation of the Opener, or any Indians game, was that it happened at the Stadium.  The same stadium that my grandparents and parents when they were young and went and saw the Indians play in, we went and saw the Indians play in.  And although it constantly got ripped by politicians and sports writers (many of whom grew up someplace else), most real fans found it to be a good place to watch baseball.  Real grass, cheap seating, a great location, and lots of history and tradition.  Too bad management couldn’t occasionally put a fresh coat of paint on the place or, God forbid, fix the plumbing.  I appreciate it more now that the Stadium has gone the way of Cleveland’s Millionaire's Row, League Park, and inner city neighborhoods.  Let's ignore something until it's too late then rip it down.