This “how do I love thee / let me count the ways” phenomenon was brought into particular focus today (May 11) as I headed downtown in the wet, ruefully anticipating spending several hours battling the cold rain and wind that invades even the concourse of Comerica Park.

I was thinking fondly of Tiger Stadium and the ease with which box seat holders migrated upward into the shelter of the upper deck, and even more fondly of the luxury of thawing out under the blast of hot air from the ladies room heater, when I suddenly had a vivid recollection of aday much like this one when I found myself in a hotdog line behind Edsel Ford. Edsel’s kid (about waist high and totally muffled in a black, hooded jacket) took a lunge past me – something that was obviously not part of the day’s program. Instinctively, I snagged him and handed him back, hood first, to his appreciative father. I remember that Edsel was wearing a bright blue windbreaker that was almost exactly the same color as the painted walls around us. He turned toward me, the rain still dripping off the end of his nose. He was hunched up, shivering a bit, and absolutely grinning from ear to ear. “Isn’t this great?” he asked? And it was. It was baseball; it was Tiger Stadium, and, even if the game didn’t go on, we were all of us exactly where we wanted to be.