Over the last week or so I’ve attempted to get to three baseball games in three different cities. In two of those, Atlanta last week and Chicago yesterday, I saw a total of zero minutes of baseball.

Detroit, both literally and figuratively, has been the ray of sunshine.

A few months ago I started contemplating trying to get a bunch of old friends together to hang out; in some cases for the first time in a couple of decades. These are some of my closest BFFs (not to mention the most incredible teachers and people!) I’ve ever known. We’re all bonded by an organization called the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association (MIPA for short), where we all conected as high school journalism teachers. I started teaching at MIPA’s summer workshop back in the late 90s, and loved spending a sweaty week every summer on the Michigan State campus in East Lansing with all my friends. The last year I taught there was 2015; the family and I moved to Northern California that year.

A lot of us have kept in touch over the years; some have retired, some have also moved to other states to teach, some are still plugging away in their same classrooms; when you are a publications adviser in a high school not only do you get the benefit of working with the best students in the school, you also get to network with incredible advisers from all over. I always tell people that most English and social studies teachers pretty much just get to hang out with the other English and social studies teachers at their school. But most journalism advisers have friends all over the country. The trade-off, of course, is that we are often the only person at our school teaching what we teach; it can get a little lonely. But still; it’s amazing the number of brilliant people I’ve gotten to know over the last 28 years of teaching.

Anyway, back to my Comerica plan: I started out inviting a couple of friends to meet up with me for a Tigers’ game. That seemed fun and easy to plan. And then I invited a couple of more. And then I realized I really wanted to invite every teacher connected to the MIPA workshop that I could think of. That turned out to be about 45 of us from all over the country who descended on the Blue Moon Brewhouse, on the third level of the ballpark. It was…awesome.

I was a little panicked the night before, when we all received an alert from the Tigers telling us that the game start time was going to be delayed from 1:00 until 5:00. I mean…I wasn’t really expecting this after knowing for a few months exactly when we were going to be able to get together. But it mostly worked out (sorry we missed you, Jeremy and Melissa!), and for most people the later game time meant more opportunity to gear up for the party. As my good friend Betsy messaged to our group late the night before: “Pretend it’s deadline and all hell has just broken loose. We’ve got this.”

She was right. We had it.

Leigh and I were staying with my parents in Farmington Hills, and we drove in a bit early to catch a spectacular brunch at Brooklyn Street Local in Corktown (you should go there). Then we parked at the MGM casino, as directed by my parents, and walked over to the stadium. We were able to make it up to the third floor early after chatting with some super friendly Comerica park employees. And then we waited for our friends to show up.

Not much later, they started to arrive, mostly in smiling twos and threes and fours, and the hugs and tears started to roll for real. Once the MIPA legends Cheryl, Betsy, Bobby and Julie arrived, the waterworks were threatening to flood the ballpark. And I couldn’t afford another weather delay. Cheryl in particular, who has always been like my second mom and I’m 100% sure I’m not the only one who says that, was just overjoyed to see everyone. I was a little worried that her head might explode with happiness. Luckily this didn’t happen.

We were all able to enjoy some beverages and a pizza buffet, plus flamingo-themed t-shirts (long story there) that my friend Ike designed for the occasion. We laughed and cried and took a billion photos. Journalism advisers always remember how important it is to document the moment.

Eventually we made it to our seats and thankfully the rain held off. Leigh, not surprisingly, danced enough that she made it up onto the jumbotron. I’m not kidding: three separate people in the ballpark who had no idea we were at the game texted her immediately after her 50-foot-tall dancing machine self was pictured and said “wait. you are at the Tigers’ game?”

The game itself wasn’t great, with the Tigers falling in the series finale with Tampa Bay, 7-3. I was pretty confident this was going to be a tough one after Detroit had taken the first two from the Rays. They fell behind early, then caught up to take a short-lived 4-3 lead before the bullpen imploded. I never WANT them to lose, but the silver-lining is that it made it a lot easier to not have to focus any attention on the game. It was also Jack White’s 50th birthday and he was celebrating at the ballpark; John C. Reilly led the crowd in a round of Happy Birthday before the game (and the White Stripes legend also received his first-ever cell phone for his birthday too, I weirdly discovered just now while googling Jack White).

Most of this we just sort of barely noticed on the in-park monitors while we were chatting, since this MIPA reunion was far more important than Jack White’s birthday, and I feel like I can say that since Jack himself would undoubtedly agree. We missed most of the first couple innings because it was just too important to catch up.

And I guess that’s the take-away here: baseball is important and cool and I love it and it can help bring people together who haven’t seen each other in years. But THAT is the important part: staying connected with the people we love.

I’m ready to go back next summer!