Four times going yard again

Four Detroit Tigers hit home runs in the first inning of yesterday's game (August 8, 2020) against the Pittsburgh Pirates. That hasn't happened since 1974. I remember that game because I listened to it on the radio just as I listened to yesterday's game over the air.

To be sure, the circumstances were different. Yesterday I sat in the garage up in Hessel; in 1974 I was sitting at the dining room table behind me Pops, who sat at his desk doing his nightly paperwork. 325 miles and four and a half decades make a difference, don't they? 

He had this little black and white transistor radio which he used almost exclusively for listening to Tiger games. I bummed it often. If there's one thing I'd like to still have from childhood, that radio is it. There's a lot of memories of the tinny sound of Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey from back then.

Niko Goodrum, Miguel Cabrera, C. J. Cron and Jeimer Candelario hit them yesterday. Al Kaline, Mickey Stanley, Bill Freehan, and the light hitting and woefully unpowerful Ed Brinkman (me Mom called him a 'banny rooster' for the chicken-like way in which she said he ran) did it way back when, July 29, 1974. That's all of 46 years ago folks.

I was 14 then. At 60 now, I'm older by 22 years than me Pops was on that day (to save you the mathematical gymnastics, he was 38 in July 74). He uttered an unbelieving 'whoa' when Brinkman hit his round tripper. Whether at the Detroits hitting four so closely together or merely at Brinkman's part of the accomplishment, I'm not sure. 

Funny thing is, and I remember thinking this quite distinctly on that day in '74, 'that don't happen much'. Forty-six years later I now get to add, 'indeed'.