Tuesday, May 31st, 2016

It’s the day after Memorial Day, and it’s time to go back to work. Michigan summer is upon us, and it brings with it rosy burnt cheeks, long sweaty runs, and the unbridled release of joy that can only come in a place where the winters are as frigid as the summers are sweltering.

The offices of the headquarters of DTE Energy bring a reliable calm to what could possibly be a hectic shortened work week. Time to grind…8 hours later…Time to play.

I drive to Mumford High School for Detroit Public School League baseball state qualifier playoff games. Detroit Collegiate Prep – aka Northwestern High School – is scheduled to play against Mumford. As a volunteer assistant baseball coach for Northwestern, I’m eager to hop on Grand River and see what the boys can do. It’s a beautiful setting, really: the campus of a Detroit public high school with a long and storied tradition, surrounded by standard Detroit scenery – rows and rows of single-family bungalows with the familiar tune of the ice cream truck rolling around and around and around the block.

On this day, throwing strikes is a challenge for both teams, but the passion for the game does not wane, and eventually good baseball does shine through a shaky beginning.

It’s one of the great pleasures I get to enjoy as a young man in Detroit – sharing my love of baseball, sharing my personality, and learning from the kids. I’m having a good time in the sun on a Tuesday afternoon, but there is just one small problem, and it is one that comes up every single day in the lives of these Detroit youth. The quality of the product and the resources available in Public School League baseball is embarrassingly mediocre and so clearly substandard to its suburban counterparts. For a sport with such a rich history in this city and in this country as a whole, it’s sad that kids are only left with a distorted reality where mediocre baseball players can emerge as the best on the field.

Like so many other sectors of the human experience in The City, kids grow up not knowing that they’ve been shafted. That their resources are a fraction of everyone around them. That their experiences are bounded by budget their feats stifled by fear. In my eye, it’s the reason we work hard to make it better – to even the playing field. And having a personal investment in this community is why the Detroit Public Schools legislation in Lansing is so infuriating. Imbeciles like Kevin Cotter, who want to blame Detroiters and protect the misguided freedom of charter schools, work as hard as they can to prevent public education in Detroit from establishing its rightful place as an equal provider of true, lasting, and unalienable opportunity.

A serene evening sky emerges as the evening game concludes. The head coach is happy and proud, and why wouldn’t he be. A win is a win is a win. It’s time to Cruze some of the kids home for the night. J Cole, Big Sean, Salt-N-Pepa, and LL Cool J fill the soundtrack for the drive back. My free 2-month subscription to Sirius XM Radio is really paying dividends.

Now it’s 10pm, probably best to just go home and go to sleep, but obviously I’m gonna stop and get some food because like any other night, tonight I’m going to be a fat kid with a bad idea. I go to City Market for the very first time and I’m blown away by the incredible selection on a tiny scale. Densely packed, towering high shelves of every food imaginable with aisles only wide enough so that a single-file row of people can cycle through. A quick glance at my credit card from the cashier/owner at checkout reveals my Chaldean identity and begins an impassioned conversation on who I am and where I came from. Not only do I get to buy my food, but I get to share in my heritage with one of my many Detroit Chaldean ‘cousins’.

On the ride home I get to listen to Comedy Central radio – another perk of this 2-month glory sample. Unexpected bonfire talk of anal sex with Russian tennis players at Oklahoma State University only adds to the mystique of another good day. And as I ascend to the twentieth floor studio of my humble apartment building, I begin to wonder what I’m going to write my Challenge blog about.