New Tigers season helps a son celebrate a mom who loved the team like she loved Detroit

Yahoo

04-04-2025

For true baseball fans, there is no greater excitement than when the home team is in serious contention for a championship throughout the entire marathon-like Major League Baseball season stretching from April through October.
During these instances, sometimes the excitement experienced by a superfan extends beyond geographic borders. The seemingly never-ending fun also has been known to spill over and touch the lives of the fan's family members in unexpected ways, creating cherished memories and an osmosis of fandom that can last a lifetime, reignited and re-lived each year: This is the magic of Opening Day.
And such was the case during June of 1984 when Detroiter Mike Neal, then a 15-year-old student attending Mumford High School, found himself in downtown Toronto with a group of adults — that included his mother Claire Louise Neal, a passionate Detroit Tigers fan — as the Tigers were engaged in a three-game series with the Toronto Blue Jays.
In a season that saw the Tigers rush out of the gates to a historic 35-5 start — including a nationally televised no-hitter thrown by Jack Morris against the Chicago White Sox on April 7, 1984 — Mike Neal says his 'most valuable person' that year without a doubt was his mother, Claire, who had a knack for keeping the good times going even after the action on the field ended.
'My mom was in a women's club at GM and somehow I got pulled in — I'll never forget it. And with her club members, we rode up from Detroit and arrived in Toronto in time to get to the Tigers game,' Mike Neal, who recalls making the trip via a chartered Trailways bus, said. 'When we got back to the hotel after an exciting game, I remember mom's friends being wiped out. But mom was still alive! Since we were in the downtown area, mom and I went exploring and we came to a place with a lot of glass, an escalator and restaurants, and at the top was a revolving club. With me being a tall kid, I looked a little older, so I was able to hang out with mom and enjoy the nightlife.'
Now, there is no guarantee that the 2025 edition of the Tigers will create the type of enjoyment for fans produced by the 1984 team, which captured baseball's biggest prize — the World Series crown. And matching the thrills generated during the Tigers' 2024 playoff season will be no easy task either. However, no matter how this season plays out on the field for the Tigers, the now 56-year-old Mike Neal looks forward to smiling often because the games will provide a small, but precious reminder of his mother, a proud product of Detroit's historic Conant Gardens neighborhood who died last year on Feb. 19 at the age of 87.
'It brings me comfort to think about events that my mom really enjoyed. And at the ballgames, she loved being with the people, and she loved the Detroit spirit,' said Neal, who earlier described in vivid detail a Tigers Opening Day he once spent with his mother in the grandstand section of the old Tiger Stadium on a 'frigid' April afternoon. 'The memories are a counterpoint to the deep grief I'm still experiencing, because they can turn my tears into happy reminiscences.'
On the evening of April 2, less than 48 hours before this season's Tigers home opener against the Chicago White Sox at Comerica Park, Neal insisted that his mother was the real baseball fan in the family. Nonetheless, without much hesitation, he had no problem rattling off the names of some of her favorite players from past Tigers teams.
'Back in the day, during the '84 season, I knew mom loved Willie Hernandez (the 1984 American League Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award winner). She also loved Lou (Whitaker) and Tram (Alan Trammell); and Larry Herndon; and Chet Lemon,' said Neal, who once received a care package of sorts from his mother filled with Tigers memorabilia during a time in his adult life when he was living in Atlanta. 'Then those teams in later years that made it to the playoffs and played in the World Series with pitchers like (Justin) Verlander and Max Scherzer, I know mom enjoyed those players.
"But what was more important to her during those years (2006 and 2011-14) was that the team was relevant again and it created excitement in the city.'
Neal explained that there also is a connection between the Tigers and something else that his mother cared deeply about — music. When the Tigers began an annual practice of celebrating the Negro Leagues, it provided Claire Neal on a couple of occasions the opportunity to see members of the nationally recognized Brazeal Dennard Chorale — a group she belonged to for many years — sing the national anthem on the Comerica Park playing field. Claire Neal's musical journey also included singing with the renowned Plymouth United Church of Christ Choirs and the Bob Harris Singers, and earning a full music scholarship to Wayne State University in 1954 after her graduation with honors from Cass Technical High School. But Claire Neal, the second of six sisters born to Sylvia Applewhite — an actress and homemaker — and James Wilkins — a postal-train worker — put her college education on hold for a period of time to help support her family. And Mike Neal said his mother's devotion to her family provided the foundation for every happy time he shared with his mother, including at the ballpark and other spots across the city and metro Detroit.
'It kind of breaks me down, even today, when I think about my mom not being able to use that music scholarship. But during those times I don't think she even considered it because helping to support her family was something she knew had to be done,' Mike Neal said about his mother, who later earned a bachelor's degree from what was then Wayne State's College of Lifelong Learning before retiring as an accountant from General Motors' Supplier Division as a lead field auditor. 'She was the same way about providing as a mother, and there was never a limit to the adventures we had. And it wasn't just going to a Lions game, or a Pistons game or a Tigers game. If it was a restless, hot night in the summer, she wouldn't think twice about deviling some eggs and frying chicken and we, along with my brother Chris, would be down to Belle Isle with the people in a hot 20 minutes from our house on Princeton and Grove, right near the Lodge.
'My mom just liked to be where things were going on. It was the same thing with the first electronic music festival in Detroit, and that time she was tagging along with me. But once we got there, all she needed was a little encouragement from the crowd and she was dancing up a storm.'
And as for this coming Tigers season, Mike Neal says his mom would hope for a season that produces plenty of dancing and excitement from April through October.
'My mom always rooted for the Tigers, but more than anything she pulled for Detroit,' said Mike Neal, who spoke late Wednesday night about having "an absolute ball" with his mother when they rode downtown in her red ragtop Pontiac Sunbird after the Tigers defeated the San Diego Padres in the fifth game of the 1984 World Series at Tiger Stadium to win the world championship. 'Mom was amazing with the spirit that she would bring to any space, and she wanted everyone in the city to experience that same kind of joy.'
Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city's neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at [e-mail] or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott's stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Please help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: New Tigers season floods this Detroiter with fond memories of his mom