LANSING — David Howell was there when the Lansing Lugnuts played their first game of their inaugural season in April of 1996.
Thirty years later, he’s still holding a souvenir and a small bit of Lansing history from that game: The baseball hit for the final out of the first minor league game played at Oldsmobile Park, now known as Jackson Field.
“They might want to do something with the baseball because it’s historic,” said Howell, a retired Michigan Army National Guard officer who lives in Grand Ledge “It’s sitting on my desk at home.”
That’s a big affirmative, said Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, who directs broadcasting and media relations for the team and has spoken with Howell about the ball.
“This is a really, really special ball,” he said. “We need to do something really special to display the baseball.”
It’s not hard to imagine that little historical artifact finding its way into a stadium display that already holds a scorecard and tickets from the inaugural season, a team photo and a team-autographed ball from 1996, as well as a ball signed by Detroit Tigers legend Mickey Lolich, a member of the TV broadcast team for the first Lugnuts game.
Howell recalled that he and his family were standing up and asking for the ball when an outfielder tossed it to them after the final out of the game against the Rockford Cubbies on April 5, 1996. The Lugnuts lost 9-5 in 10 innings.
The local television broadcast showed the final out was a grounder to first base in which the Rockford first baseman flipped the ball to the pitcher covering first. The recording did not show what happened to the ball after the out was made.
“I kept it all these years just as a memento,” Howell said.
The local TV broadcasters were Dave Akerly and Lolich. Big Lug, the team mascot, made a grand entrance onto the field via helicopter. The stadium was filled with more than 9,300 fans, Goldberg-Strassler said.
Baseball fans might be interested to know that at least four Lugnuts players in that game played in the Major Leagues, including Carlos Beltrán, who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, on Sunday, July 26.
The others big-leaguers were Carlos Febles, who is now third-base coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, Mark Quinn and Matt Treanor. Beltrán played center field and made the final out of that inaugural game. Febles played second base and Quinn, primarily an outfielder and designated hitter in the majors, was at first base. Treanor was a catcher.
Goldberg-Strassler noted that the April 5 season opener was not the first game played at the new ballpark near downtown. The University of Michigan and Michigan State University had faced off in the first game there two days earlier, he said.
Howell, now 72, was a physician’s assistant who served 16 years with the U.S. Coast Guard and 15 years with the Army National Guard. With the Guard, he achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel, and his last assignment was state surgeon for the Guard at the Joint Forces headquarters in Lansing.
The souvenir ball he’s holding is indirectly connected to a larger story involving an Iraqi boy he met in 2008 during a deployment with a National Guard infantry unit in Iraq and later brought to the U.S.
The boy, Mohammed Alani, was the son of a man who was killed after working as an interpreter with the U.S. military. Mohammed received life-changing surgery in Lansing before going back to Iraq and is now a U.S. citizen. Howell received the Patriot Award from the American Legion for his actions.
The Howells brought young Mohammed to Lugnuts games and various MSU sports events, and Mohammed became a big baseball fan who worked hard at collecting souvenirs.
“He really, really liked baseball, and the closest professional team was the Lansing Lugnuts,” Howell said. “He had a T-shirt and a Lugnuts hat, and we bought him a baseball mitt. A foul ball was like a gold nugget to him. He would go over there and chase foul balls the whole game.”
There was a lot of excitement over Lansing getting a minor league team, he recalled.
“The stadium was a great place,” he said. “We didn’t always get to watch the entire game because our kids wanted to go over toward left field and play out there.”
Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on X @KBPalm_lsj
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Grand Ledge man has souvenir from first Lugnuts game in Lansing
Reporting by Ken Palmer, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Ken Palmer, Lansing State Journal | USA TODAY Network
