My family’s 40-year tradition of travelling to the U.S. for baseball games pauses in the Trump era

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Lawrence Scanlan is the author of 26 books.

Ten years ago, I crossed the border from Windsor to Detroit, en route to a baseball game. With me in our rented black van were my four brothers (Tom, Wayne, Stephen and David), brother-in-law Donny and Tom’s buddy Al. Our bunch – a dozen strong when West Coast nephews join us – had been travelling south to watch major-league baseball for decades. Last summer we all went to California, and so achieved the milestone: we have now been to all 30 major-league ball parks, some (such as Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston) numerous times. Tom and Wayne launched the tradition of annual baseball pilgrimages precisely 40 years ago.

What distinguished the Detroit border crossing was the American customs official. He had a sense of humour. After scanning our passports and asking the purpose of our visit, he leaned into the vehicle and asked what we all did for a living. Three Scanlan brothers sang from the same song sheet (“writer,” “editor,” “journalist”), the fourth said “human resources consultant” and the fifth, “print broker”; Al said “shop teacher” and Donny said “firefighter.” To which the border guard said, “Aside from the firefighter and the teacher, you guys don’t do shit for a living.” Of course, we all broke up.

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The Scanlan brothers’ tradition of short trips to watch baseball in the United States, according to family lore, actually started with our uncle, Gerard Flynn, who once hitchhiked from the family farm in southeastern Ontario to a World Series game in Detroit – 600 kilometres away. That was October, 1945, four years before I was born. Uncle Gerard had no ticket, but he talked his way in. We honour his memory by buying the cheap seats and “sliding” to better ones.

In the early days of our baseball jaunts, our mother, Clare, used to equip us beforehand with paper bags full of licorice and Cracker Jack. It thrilled her that her five boys, who fought like raccoons as children, were as men happily united in their love of baseball. Her husband, Bern, helped create the parish baseball league in Scarborough and their five sons had all played the sport as kids. When the brothers became fathers, we coached our sons and daughters. Mom and Dad had season tickets to Toronto Blue Jay games and watched winter ball in Dunedin, Fla. Baseball is in our bloodline.

One weekend every summer, the Canadian brothers would be off to “America,” as they call it down there. I bristled at that. Why, I asked, did they think they owned that word? North, Central and South America were all clearly marked on maps. Beyond my imagination was a day when an American President would decree (decree, mind, as kings do) that the Gulf of Mexico was henceforth to be called The Gulf of America. It struck me as madness of a silly and egomaniacal sort, but it’s gotten much more sinister since. And if that Detroit border guard is still on the job, I doubt he’s playing stand-up comic to Canadian visitors any more. The Scanlan brothers’ annual treks to that rogue state are on hold until Donald Trump’s reign of error/terror ends and some sort of normalcy is restored. I doubt I will see it in my lifetime.

Meanwhile, we still have our stories. Every trip had its own narrative arc, its own cast of characters, its own memorable moments. Chicago, for example. I still have the ticket: June 16, 2001, 3:05 p.m., Row GA, Seat 115, a spot in the bleachers that cost me $20. The hope by arriving early is that you’ll get a souvenir ball as the players, the ones who bat left anyway, tee off before the game in batting practice. Stephen, especially, wanted to take home a ball, but none came close. “Ah, forget it,” he said. He went for a beer and a hot dog, and as he was returning to his seat a ball started coming his way – just over my right shoulder and so close I felt compelled to duck. I wasn’t going anywhere near that screamer.

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“I got this,” I heard Stephen say as he walked down the bleacher steps.

He is a talented athlete but no one can catch a ball travelling more than 100 miles an hour – with his elbows while holding a pint of beer and a hot dog lathered in mustard and relish. But that’s what my brother endeavoured to do before raining suds and condiments on the young woman in the seat below him. He was mortified, of course, and he apologized profusely before running back to get paper napkins and a consolation beer. But she just laughed, and we spent the entire game chatting with her, her boyfriend and all their friends. We had a wonderful time.

Perhaps because of our numbers and our quest, we always encountered good cheer from our American neighbours in these stadiums. During the summer of 2018, in Atlanta, where next week’s All-Star Game will coincidentally be held, we engaged in a spirited and often hilarious discussion with the young college grads in front of us. The topic: whether y was a vowel. (The answer is, sometimes.)

On some treks, we flirted with calamity. On a road trip to Boston in the late 1980s, Tom’s aged Dodge Caravan threatened to boil over from the effects of a scorching heat wave and stalled freeway traffic, and the only thing that saved the radiator was Donny’s counsel: put the heater on – full blast. But fun was the common denominator on every trip. Did former Montreal Expos pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee really talk to us in the stands about sprinkling marijuana on his buckwheat pancakes? Did we really see a naked man riding a bicycle one night in San Francisco? Yes, and yes.

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One year we took a train from Kansas City to St. Louis in Missouri. In the boisterous bar car, we connected with a young couple (ball fans, of course) going to their wedding. We were all invited, and gave it serious thought, but regretfully declined. Six years ago, we watched the Reds in Cincinnati before crossing the Ohio River to take in the Kentucky Derby. That may have been the best road trip of all.

In San Francisco, in 2004, when the Giants were playing the Boston Red Sox, we met a bunch of Red Sox fans (my brothers all fervently back that team) in a bar after the game. Again, a joyful and baseball-inspired connection with American strangers. As we were leaving, the Boston boys said, “Wait, we have something for you,” and they formed a line and proceeded to sing (and mildly botch) the Canadian national anthem. The bar went quiet, and so did we.

That feels like a different time. I try to imagine sitting in an American ballpark now, and I can’t. I would wonder if the guy next to me voted for the vulgar Mr. Red Tie, and agreed with him that Canada would make a dandy 51st state. I’m not sure what it would take to restore that feeling my brothers and I had all those years. Innocence has been lost, and a trust has been broken.

Talk among the brothers has turned to a winter-ball trip, somewhere in Latin America. I am reminded of a treed park, Parque Central in old Havana, where men of all ages gather to talk baseball – maybe Havana’s own Industriales or the Elephantes of Cienfuegos. They meet at what’s called The Hot Corner, or La Esquina Caliente, every day without fail. They gesticulate, they shout, they argue, as ball fans do – but never come to blows.