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Spring Commencement 2008 >
When Detroit Tigers legendary radio voice Ernie Harwell joined honorary degree recipients at Spring Commencement April 26, few in attendance may have known it all started with a letter penned by one of his biggest fans.
U-M senior Colt Rosensweig of Menlo Park, Calif., fell in love with tigers after getting a stuffed one at age 6. “When my dad saw me getting so into tigers, he had the awesome idea to tell me there was a baseball team called the Tigers. I immediately decided that was the team for me and, according to my mom, a monster was created.”
Rosensweig, a history and creative writing major in the Residential College, got deeper into the team as the years progressed.
As a middle-school graduation present, in 2000 her father took her to Detroit to see them play against the Oakland A’s. “To my everlasting regret I missed seeing Tiger Stadium,” she says of the experience. But for the first time she was able to sit in the stands of Comerica Park listening to Ernie Harwell on radio. Before that, she had only heard him through Gameday Audio on a computer.
While still in high school she initiated an annual Tigers Pride Day and got 25 friends — decked in Tigers Pride Day T-shirts — to join her at a game in Oakland, Calif. She has met current Tiger Todd Jones and former Tiger Steve Sparks.
“I’m a baseball history buff in general, and the Tigers have one of the richest histories of any team,” she says. “I love the stories of 1934-35 and 1967-68 and I feel like they’re somehow part of my history, too, in a weird way.”
The Tigers also are what brought her to Michigan — to see the team and attend U-M. “That turned out to be the best decision ever,” she says.
Rosensweig has taken one of Harwell’s trademark phrases, “Tigs on top,” and turned it into her screen name and license plate identification, and admits, “It basically has become my life motto.”
It was last year when she sought to nominate Harwell for an honorary degree, which involved writing a letter that was forwarded to a special committee that recommends candidates for approval by the Board of Regents.
“Dad is always telling me to send e-mails, leave messages, etc. for people and I always say, ‘Oh, they’ll never read it, nothing will happen,'” she says. “But I was definitely wrong this time!”
Rosensweig, who covers men’s gymnastics for The Michigan Daily and wants to pursue a career in sports writing, says of Harwell, “He’s everything that famous people should be, but usually aren’t.” She and friend Dan Rais met Harwell the day before commencement at a dinner for honorary degree recipients.
“It was pretty funny — Bob Woodruff (commencement speaker) had to follow Ernie, and when he got up there he said, ‘How can you follow that voice?’ That just tickled me.”
“Ernie is the kind of person — I speak from experience — who’ll receive an interview request from a junior in high school and reply with a handwritten note and his home phone number. He knows all these incredible people and has seen so many unbelievable things, and yet he makes whoever he’s talking to feel just as important as Al Kaline.”
