Up North And Personal

​Up North And Personal
Breckin’s Big Day
​By Ken DeLaat

My great great nephew Breckin Anderson attended his first Tiger game Sunday, carrying on a long family tradition of appearances at the ballpark in the first few years of life, a ritual that, while not altogether 

mandatory for clan members, is nevertheless highly recommended as part of a rather twisted set of familial guidelines. Guidelines I might add that are never written nor spoken just simply, uh, understood I guess.

First off I know what you’re thinking… “How can a guy who looks so young possibly have, not only great nephews and nieces, but great-great ones as well?

Well, it is indeed true but only due to my placement as the far and away youngest sibling among the quartet of kids my folks endured.
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But I digress.
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Breckin is but 2 1/2years old and... ​​

...has not only already been to see the beloved Bengals play but set foot on the field as well, something his Great Great Uncle didn’t do until he was 33 years old and dodging security with a hunk of sod from the infield after the ’84 world title clincher.

How did this come about? Well according to reports his mother and my Great-Niece Julie, a truly wonderful person and one of the bevy of nurses our family is fortunate to count among its members, entered him in a drawing to win a Chevy Silverado Power Wheels truck they were giving away at the stadium.

And he won.

He won and was carried onto the field by his Dad and my Great Nephew Justin to see the vehicle that every child in attendance at the park that day was wishing to take home as their own.

So not only is Master Breckin (soon to be an older brother) gifted with quality parents, the kind who recognize the importance of initiating him into the lifelong membership into Tiger fandom (a commitment requiring an excessive amount of affection for a team with a history of near misses and “Wow we’re 20 games out in August” with a title sprinkled in every couple of decades) it seems he also possesses an abundance of good fortune. 

I say this because while being an aficionado of the Detroit Baseball Club  is not unusual for any member of our rather  extended family, being lucky is rather rare when it comes to winning contests, drawings, lottery prizes, or even a game of rock, paper, scissors for some of us.

Personally my record for winning things like 50/50 drawings and such currently stands at 1. I once won 2 days on a Mackinac Island hotel (not The Grand) but we couldn’t use it until late October and had to pay to get up there and over there and for meals and everything else but it was a moral victory in a lifetime of watching others walk away with the winnings.

Breckin on the other hand has already cashed in with a new ride and may be looking at breaking the family mold with possibilities of becoming a good luck magnet with a lifetime of hearing his name or numbers announced as (once again) the winner of one thing or another.

He is after all the eldest child of the eldest child of the eldest child of the eldest child of our family.

And perhaps his winning ways will spread among his relatives and my personal drought (the hotel win was in 1987) will come to an end.

Why, just after hearing the news of his fortuity I checked the mail from yesterday and there emblazoned on the envelope read “Ken DeLaat, You May Already Be A Winner”.
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I think things are beginning to look a little rosier in the luck department.
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