Interview with Q - Q & A with Q

Touch ‘em all! Is a tribute to your love of the baseball, ballparks and photography. What…background, story, 

What’s the story behind those loves?

 Growing up my two older brothers were into baseball so they had gloves, bats, balls and a lot of baseball cards. My oldest brother, the one the book is dedicated to, got me going on how to  throw, catch, and swing at a ball.  We lived in New Jersey and he was a Mickey Mantle fan and that rubbed off on me. I have a good memory of him showing me an aerial view of Yankee Stadium and explaining to  me that’s where the Yankees play their games. It blew me away and made a big impression on me that I’ve never forgotten.  It looked so grandiose. Looking at my vintage postcard aerial photos of it today I can see how it would make such an impression on me at four years old.

(… and it was, even to adults let alone to a four-year-old kid) 

A couple years later we moved out to San Diego.  I ended up following Mickey and the Yankees through box scores, baseball cards, and magazines. I played Little League baseball there. 

We moved to Michigan when I was entering junior high. The summer of 1967 I bought a camera called the Polaroid Swinger. It took black and white instant pictures. I took it to my first major league game which was a doubleheader between the Tigers and Yankees at Tiger Stadium.  I took seven or eight pics with the crown jewel being one of Mickey Mantle kneeling in the on-deck circle. Unfortunately, I must not have put enough of the goop on it that helps to keep Polaroids from fading because his jersey number “7” disappeared a number of years later. That was a big screwup that I’ll never regret, but I had to put it in the book anyway.

Oh, btw that was the same day the infamous Detroit riot started.  July 23. We could see smoke coming up over the left field roof and when drove home off the freeway. I was with a buddy and his father. The car did not have a radio in it so we didn’t know what was going on until we got back to his house. His mother….

I’ve got to mention a funny story… in July, maybe June of the year of my 50th high school reunion I was standing at my workstation going over some pages for the Cincinnati Reds ballpark. It dawned on me that it was 50 years ago around that time that I got invited to and went for a tryout at the Reds’ Riverfront Stadium. That’s a whole other story but I was recalling that I was in summer school at the time because I remember the principal seeing me in the hallway and saying , “Congratulations, I guess we’ll let you off for playing hooky on Friday.”  That’s when the irony of it all hit me. I was in summer school because I flunked the last semester of English and needed one more credit to graduate. Mrs. Kaufman, I’ll never forget it, flunked me because I turned in my term paper late. I don’t remember exactly how late it was but I remember being really teed off. I probably deserved it, though. And the paper probably sucked. I wasn’t exactly a stellar student and was probably too busy playing ball and goofing off after school to get it in on time. 

Anyway, there I was realizing that 50 years later after flunking English and taking a photography class to make up for it to graduate, I was standing there writing a book about major league ballparks full of my photography. The irony of it all is rather crazy.

Wow, that really is pretty crazy stuff. Do you think she’s still around? 

No idea but it funny you mention that. I was also fantasizing my walking into her classroom and dropping a copy of it down in front of her and saying, “Here, that’s my real term paper. Sorry it’s a half-century late, lady.”