Windsor Life Magazine Autumn 2021

Page 56

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME New Book About One Couple’s Love of the Game STORY BY MICHAEL SEGUIN COVER ART COURTESY BIBLIOASIS PRESS WHAT DO YOU THINK OF when you think of baseball? Walking into the stadium and seeing the telltale diamond stretch out before you? Sitting in the dugout with sunflower seeds on blistering summer mornings? The deafening crack as the cork and rubber ball connects with the aluminum bat? The roaring of the crowds? For husband-wife Dale Jacobs and Heidi L.M. Jacobs, baseball has been a decades-long fixture of their shared lives. “Heidi and I had season tickets for over 11 years,” Dale explains. “We were across the river every Sunday that the Detroit Tigers played.” However, by the time the summer of 2016 rolled around, Dale and Heidi’s relationship with baseball had cooled from a passionate love affair to the drone of obligation. “We were a little tired of the game,” Dale admits. “It had become routine. So we gave up our package.” Not long after, Dale and Heidi decided to try and find a way to return to their favourite sport. “Baseball has been so important to us for a variety of reasons,” Dale states. “For me, baseball has always been important because of my Dad. That was what we had together. What we connected with. He passed away in 2008. Losing this connection to baseball was difficult for me, because it felt like I was losing a connection with my Dad.” Ultimately, baseball has always been Dale’s way of connecting with a larger community.

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“Wherever I’ve lived, baseball was a way of connecting with friends,” Dale explains. “Just going to ball games with various people. Whether we were living in Edmonton or Nebraska or here. Baseball has always been a way to connect for me. And baseball was something Heidi and I bonded over. It’s always been an interest we’ve shared and developed together. I brought her to baseball, and she’s brought me to things like ballet.” “I didn’t grow up watching baseball like Dale did,” Heidi states. “But my grandmother played in the prairies of Saskatchewan. But, as Dale said, in one of the first conversations we ever had, he mentioned baseball. And when we moved to Windsor, it meant a lot to us. Especially being so close to Detroit, and having the Tigers right across the river.” After brooding over how to stoke the embers for some time, Dale and Heidi eventually decided on a unique experiment: attend 50 games within 100 miles of their Windsor home. All within the span of one summer. The logistics, the Jacobs admit, required some massaging. “The logistics were interesting,” Dale states. “Partly because you can’t always depend on the weather. That first weekend, we attended three games. This was the last weekend in March. And then, we only made it to one game in all of April, because the weather was just so terrible.” The endeavor necessitated constant flexibility. “We would try to plan for a couple weeks or so,” Dale recalls. “We’d have games targeted. But a lot of it was on the fly. One of the things we discovered, especially in regard to amateur baseball, is that it is not always easy to get their schedule. We often had to rely on word of mouth. One tournament we went to in Adrian, Michigan,


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