I met Sparky Anderson once back in August of the 1989 season. During the years of 1987 to 1991, I was an autograph hound and looked for every opportunity to get the signatures of all the team's players that came to town. Back during the old Arlington Stadium days, the visiting players and coaches stayed in the hotel right across the way, walking distance from a side entrance into the ballpark. Some of the bigger names of that era (staring hard in your direction, Mr. Canseco), would do everything in their power to avoid dealing with a kid looking for a signature, even going so far as to get a ride from the front entrance of the hotel to the previously mentioned stadium side entrance, no more than 100 feet away. Sparky Anderson, though a legendary manager of three World Championship teams, was anything but unapproachable.
By 1989, Detroit had fallen on hard times, no longer the powerhouse it had been for a lengthy stretch of the mid-eighties. While many All-star caliber players such as Alan Trammell, Matt Nokes and Jack Morris were stuck in the middle of awful seasons, Sparky Anderson remained a constant steadying force for the lowly Tigers. Despite his rather gruff exterior, Anderson was in actuality a kindhearted baseball lifer, a man with great respect for the game. As I was getting the autograph of Gary Ward, a former Ranger and one of my favorite players as a kid, I noticed Sparky and a few of his coaches walking towards me. After thanking Ward for his autograph, I walked up next to Sparky and asked if I could trouble him for his autograph. He stopped, handed some papers he had in his hands to one of his coaches, and signed a baseball card I had pulled from a folder I kept. After handing the card back to me, I thanked him and prepared to walk away but before I could do so, he stopped me, asking what other autographs I had in the folder. Milwaukee had been in town as part of the previous home stand so I opened the pages and showed him the signatures of such Brewer greats as B.J. Surhoff, Paul Molitor and Dan Plesac. He looked at the Molitor card and said, "He can really hit the ball, can't he?" I agreed, saying he was my second favorite Brewers player. Sparky then asked who my favorite was, answering his own question with, "Yount?" "No," I answered, "Teddy Higuera." He laughed, saying Teddy had made his teams look bad several times over the previous seasons. I told him he'd done the same against my Rangers. He laughed and said, "Well then, I guess we just need to get together and figure out a way to hit that guy." With that, he told me to enjoy the game and set off for the stadium.
That night, I watched Nolan Ryan dominate the Tigers, striking out 13 while notching his 13th win of the season. And though I was thrilled to see the great Ryan Express pitch a gem, I couldn't help but think about Sparky Anderson and the kindness he'd shown me earlier in the day. While I have never been a fan of the Detroit Tigers and undoubtedly never will be, meeting George Lee "Sparky" Anderson will forever remain as one of my most cherished baseball moments.
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