'Series'-ous Cases of baseball fever
Sports reporter
With the closest professional baseball team 150 miles distant, and 21 years removed from a championship, it's not surprising most Marionites view the World Series as little more than an annoying interruption to regular television programming.
Not so for Nikki Case, a Birmingham, Mich., native who grew up being a Detroit Tiger baseball fan.
"My brother and I went to Tiger games at the old Tiger Stadium all the time," said Case.
"We loved watching Mark 'The Bird' Fidrych," she recalled.
When Detroit faced off against San Diego in the 1984 fall classic, Case wasn't about to miss the festivities, even though she didn't have a ticket.
"We went down and hung around outside the stadium," she said. "We got in on all the hoopla, we just didn't get into the stadium."
Case's life soon led her away from Detroit to Aspen, Colo., where she met husband Alex, and eventually to Marion, where the couple has raised two sons. Wil is a freshman at Marion High School, while Grif is a fifth-grader at Marion Elementary School.
Case said she tried to raise the boys as Detroit fans, but the Tigers, who have been mediocre or worse ever since the 1984 series, provided little incentive.
While Case was struggling to make a Tiger fan out of Grif, a capricious bird swooped in to steal his baseball loyalties.
"We used to have this crazy cardinal," Grif explained. "He'd go to the back room and peck on our windows and try to get in, and he'd follow us around the house."
Grif liked the bird, and when he discovered the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, he became an instant fan.
"I always liked the bird, and I liked their (the Cardinals') logo," said Grif, referring to the two redbirds perched on either end of a baseball bat.
When the Tigers clinched this year's American League pennant, Case's brother, Jeff Newman, immediately sprang into action.
He tapped a friend with connections to the team to secure tickets, then made all the travel arrangements.
"Jeff was great," said Case. "There's no way we could've done this without him."
When the Cardinals defeated the New York Mets to claim the National League title, the Cases' dream matchup was set.
The Cases arrived at Detroit's Comerica Park early Oct. 21 for the first game of the World Series
The sight of a youngster decked out in Cardinal gear walking around with a mother in her Detroit jersey proved to be an instant media magnet.
"In the first half hour we were interviewed three times," Case said. "Grif was interviewed three times by the St. Louis FOX TV affiliate, and they came and found us again right before the first pitch."
The statues in front of Comerica Park were the first thing that caught Grif's attention.
"They had these huge cement tigers with baseballs in their mouths, and their eyes lighted up green at night," he gushed. "It was kind of creepy."
Inside the stadium, the pair made their way down toward the field, where Cardinal pitchers were warming up.
Grif tried reaching for errant throws, but "I couldn't reach over the rail, because I have really short arms," he said.
St. Louis pitcher Jeff Suppan noticed the little Cardinal fan among the throng of Detroiters, and tried to toss him a ball. Someone else reached in front of him and grabbed it.
"Everybody else was saying come on, give it to the kid," Case said. He finally relented, and Grif latched onto the ball.
From their seats in the upper deck on the first base side, the Cases experienced an unusual sensation at the start of the game, courtesy of the raucous home crowd.
"It was cool — before (Albert) Pujols gave the Cardinals the lead, you could feel the stadium moving," Grif said.
In one of Grif's favorite moments, Pujols' home run stopped the motion and silenced the crowd.
"It was dead quiet — you could almost hear his footsteps around the bases," he said. "I was screaming!"
Aside from all of the festivities, there wasn't much about the game itself that distinguished itself for Grif.
"It kind of seemed like a regular game," he said.
What wasn't regular was what happened at the end of the game, after the Cardinals had won.
"My mom made me put on her Tiger jacket to hide that I was a Cardinal fan," said Grif.
"You have all these Tiger fans that are mad that they lost in their home park," explained Case. "It's late at night, it's dark. I knew in my heart that they (Tiger fans) would never hurt a child, but still, you never know."
After returning home, the pair continued following the series closely, and when St. Louis clinched the series Friday night, Grif's screaming reached an entirely new level.
"If you could have only seen his reaction," Case laughed.
"He took off running and screaming, ran upstairs, ran back down, then ran in and banged on his drums for two minutes," she said.
Case confessed that in the end, the Tigers' demise was more than offset by sharing the experience with her son.
"We had such a great time together," she said.
