Lisa Meuwissen (Transcript)

Robby Incmikoski: All right, here we are. Lisa Meuwissen, and Lisa, by the way, you're the 98th interview for my book. Congratulations.

Lisa Meuwissen: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you doing this.

Robby Incmikoski: Hey, so I want to get your story. We're talking to all kinds of people for this book. Your story is one of the more interesting ones that we'll see. Can you just tell us how you learned about and fell in love with the game of baseball and why you love going to as many ballparks as you possibly can go to?

Lisa Meuwissen: Absolutely. Yeah, I am from Detroit. My parents were both from the city of Detroit, and my mom, on her side of the family, owned a bar called the Express Bar, and the Express Bar was directly across the street from the old Tiger Stadium on Michigan Avenue.

Robby Incmikoski: Michigan and Trumbull, right?

Lisa Meuwissen: Exactly, yep, exactly. That's where they were. And so we spent my childhood going to games because it was right across the street, and our family became Tiger fans from day one. However, my dad moved me—my parents got divorced, and he moved me to Minnesota when I was eight years old. So I would spend my summers, every summer in Detroit. So I'd come back in the summer, and my family was working at the Express, and they were parking cars and going to the game.

And I just got a chance—my uncle, his name, he went by Juice. Uncle Juice owned the bar at first, and he took bets. He was a bookie, and he was big into baseball, and had a lot of people coming in, people who loved the game of baseball and betting and having fun.

We'd come into town and we'd go down to the bar, and my uncle would say, "Come on, kids, you want to go over to the game?" And we'd say, "Yeah, let's go, Uncle Juice." And he would walk us over to the stadium. And he knew everybody. Everybody knew Juice because he was the bar owner. And he would walk us to the back door of the stadium, and the ushers would take us and go, "Oh, Juice. Your kids, the kids are here. Your niece and nephews are here. Come on in, kids, let's go." And we would follow him in the back door of Tiger Stadium, and he would walk us down and seat us right behind the dugout. And we would have seats every time we wanted to go. Many times we'd sit behind the dugout and watch the games.

So when we were done, we would literally just—us three kids—would walk back over to the Express Bar. So it just kind of became obviously exciting for us and fun, and we just got to know the team that way.

And then as I got older and I was going to college, I parked cars at the bar for the games, because that's what they did down there. All the cars were parked in the lots for like 20 bucks a car. And my uncle would say, "Come on in here." And I'd flag the people in my little Tiger t-shirt and bring in all the cars. And my uncle would say, "Come park here for my kids. My niece, she's going to college. She needs college money." So I would wave all the cars in, and he'd give me all the money for my college. So every time I would earn money—thank you Tigers, thank you Tiger games. And I was very grateful that I earned money for college at the Express Bar parking. So that was the charm of that.

Robby Incmikoski: So is that where you kind of got to know baseball a little bit, started to follow the team?

Lisa Meuwissen: Oh yeah, I followed the team. And then even though I was in Minnesota, the Tigers were always in my heart. They were always my team. But I started when I was 20 years old. I got hired with Republic Airlines in 1985 and I started flying. And I started laying over in different cities. And I started thinking, "This is my goal. I want to see every stadium I can see across the nation for baseball." So I spent a lot of time doing that.

My very first time I did it, I was in Boston. I was on a layover in Boston, and I was sitting in the lobby with my crew. I mean, I had a passion for baseball, and I had a passion for just getting to any game I could get to in every stadium. And the crew didn't want to go with me, so I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, and I was kind of pouting.

And this little old man—I think he was probably at that time in his 60s—he said to me, "What's wrong with you?" And I said, "Well, my crew doesn't want to go to the game. The Tigers are in town. They're my favorite team." And the guy said, "Well, I want to introduce myself. I'm Joe Green. Mean Joe Green." And I shook his hand. I go, "I know you're not Mean Joe Green," because I'll show you a picture of him. I found this in my basement. This is Joe Green on the left. Can you see it?

Robby Incmikoski: Oh, Mean Joe Green. Oh, not the football player.

Lisa Meuwissen: No, but he said, "I'm Mean Joe Green," but he was just an older man from New Hampshire, believe it or not, and he was friends with Sparky.

Robby Incmikoski: Sparky Anderson?

Lisa Meuwissen: So he was a very big fan of his and friends with him, because he went to all the games he could go to. So he said, "Join me and my friend." And I was on a layover, and I was by myself, and I was 20, 21 years old, and I said, "Okay, I'll go with you." I'd never been to Fenway Park, so I followed them to Fenway Park, and we walked into the stadium, and he brought me down to the field, and he calls Sparky over. And he says, "Sparky, this is Lisa. She's in from Detroit. She's a big Tiger fan."

So Sparky yelled over to Cecil Fielder and said, "Cecil, come on over. Meet Lisa. She's a flight attendant. She's a big Tiger fan." So Cecil Fielder came over and he had been warming up, and he gave me his ball, and he goes, "Here, Lisa, thanks for coming to my game." And I said, "Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You're awesome."

Well, I sat down in my seat, and his first at-bat was a home run. And so all these people kept coming down to me and like, "Hey, can I buy that ball from you?" One person offered me $500 for the ball. And I said—and this was back in 1986—and I said, "Oh, hell no. This is my ball. I am keeping this ball." So that was kind of fun.

And so after we took a picture—and I can't find that picture, but I wish I could find it—but it's with Cecil Fielder and me and the ball. My friend Joe Green sent it to Sparky, and he had him sign it and send it back to me, and then we hung it up in the Express Bar. So it used to hang up in the Express Bar—me and Cecil Fielder and my ball.

Robby Incmikoski: If you find that picture, I want to use that in the book.

Lisa Meuwissen: Oh yeah, I gotta find it. I have it somewhere. I'll keep digging.

[Recording Break]

Robby Incmikoski: So you have this picture of you, Cecil Fielder, and the ball that he gave you when you were with Joe Green, the gentleman who just came up and saw you sad in the lobby and said you didn't get to go to the game.

Lisa Meuwissen: But I'm like, "I'm going to the game. I'm going to Fenway Park." And oh, it was amazing. I love Fenway Park, so I have a couple of really cool Fenway Park stories, but that's my best one.

And my relationship with Joe Green continued. It was a pen pal relationship. He and the other old man that was there, Julian Hebert, was his name. They both have since passed away, but super sweet men that I met up with a couple times on layovers just to talk baseball. And once met him at the stadium in Detroit for a game and just—it just started this really cool pen pal relationship with baseball fans like myself. So it was special. It was just a special bond.

Robby Incmikoski: You mentioned a special bond, and that is kind of what drives this book, Lisa. It's my relationships and the bonds that I've had with people I still stay in touch with over the years. All these people I've been able to create relationships with and have friendships with, and have a good time and see them and either get drinks or get dinner, get breakfast and lunch, and they come to the game and you say hello and whatever.

How do you describe—and I'm purposely asking you this. I don't want a player's or coach's opinion. I want yours, the fan and flight attendant. How would you just describe the bond that baseball provides for people, whether it's families going to games and creating memories, from going to opening day, or people you work with, or people you know from your career as a flight attendant that you've gotten to know over the ages? How do you describe what baseball does for the bonds that connect people?

Lisa Meuwissen: Well, I just think it brings people together, closer together, just having those special stories and special memories that we share with each other. I just think that everybody has a reason why they're a fan of a certain team and family memories—all those things combined: stories, memories with family, the ties to cities. I just think all of those come combined to create camaraderie that's just on the same level, no matter who you are, no matter what level you are, what kind of job you have. Baseball just brings everybody together. It doesn't matter who you are, what kind of job you have.

Robby Incmikoski: That's exactly where I was going with this, because it's been pretty cool to have fans and bar owners and ticket sales reps and equipment managers, all the people around the game of baseball that don't play and don't coach and don't broadcast it.

So your earliest games, your earliest memories of going to games are at Tiger Stadium, right?

Lisa Meuwissen: Yep, yep.

Robby Incmikoski: Let me ask you this, have you been to Comerica Park yet?

Lisa Meuwissen: Oh, yeah, I've been to many, many games there.

Robby Incmikoski: I figured that was your answer. When you walk into Comerica Park, and I'm talking about when you approach it from the outside, how much of Tiger Stadium do you feel in that park? It's not a trick question.

Lisa Meuwissen: There's not much there. You know what? I love Comerica Park. I really do like that park. It's just really well planned out. It's got a lot of really charm and character to it. I mean looking back, obviously my best memories are from original Tiger Stadium, but I don't mind that it's at Comerica Park. I love the transition there, and I love to bring people to those games, because I think it's a sweet park. I like it.

Robby Incmikoski: As far as the history—you walk around, they have all the pillars with all the decades, right?

Lisa Meuwissen: Oh yeah, preserved around Detroit. I think they did a really good job with that stadium. I think they planned it out well, and I think they did the best they can to keep the charm of the old stadium and bring some of that history with it. I do. I think it's just really well planned out, and it's comfortable—it's a comfortable stadium. And then you walk down right field, they got the merry-go-round and the whole walkway and everything that's there. And it's like, "This is kind of cool." The elements in there are pretty cool.

Robby Incmikoski: What would you say to a fan that wanted to go there to watch—you know, a Tigers fan that lives elsewhere? Or say, somebody who's rooting for the opposing team, they want to see their opposing team, they're trying to visit?

Lisa Meuwissen: I tell everybody always, that's one of the stadiums I would always take people to. I love to expose Comerica Park to people because I think it's worth seeing. It's just got a nice charm to it. It's right in the city of Detroit. I like the location. I just think it's—I brought my kids there many times as they were growing up, other friends. So yeah, I'm always positive and encouraging people to see it.

Robby Incmikoski: Tell me about flight attendants and their desire, first of all, their desire to see all 30 stadiums, but just how much they become fans of the game just by simply being around the game.

Lisa Meuwissen: Okay, so I laugh because people always think I'm a bit crazy. I'll get into a layover with the crew, and they're like—I'm telling them, "You guys, we gotta go. There's a game. The Twins are in town. We have to go." Like, in Kansas City, my whole crew, they were kind of baseball fans, but not really. And my energy level was just over the top. And like, "We have to go. It works out perfectly. It's not hard. The Royals stadium is awesome. We need to get there." So I take care of everything. I'll rent the car, and we can all pile in.

So I brought the whole crew to the Royals stadium once on a layover. And it was so amazing to watch their smiles and how excited they were about the game and about being at a different stadium. And I thought that was an awesome stadium, too, the Royals stadium. So that was on a layover, but it was fun to share that joy of baseball with others and see them talk about it back on the airplane in the morning. And then we had fans coming on the airplane that were coming back from the game, and they were like, "Yes, wasn't that game amazing?" Or, "Can you believe it, the Twins, I'm so glad we won." And so it was fun to see—even the captain was chatting with people as they got on. And like, "Yeah, we were there. We were at the game. Yeah, we rented the car. We went to the game." It was cute to see how people had—I don't know, I feel like it kind of electrified the flight crew a little bit just by going to the game and encouraging them.

Robby Incmikoski: I was going to say, how much does that even help bring a flight crew together just booking an outing to a baseball stadium?

Lisa Meuwissen: Yeah, let me tell you one more story. I want to hear them all. This layover was in 2021, okay, so it wasn't that long ago, but we were back in Boston, and we had a short layover. So we're sitting in the restaurant. We're just trying to get something to eat. We're looking up at the screen. I had no idea the Twins were in town, but I'm looking up at the screen. I'm like, "Oh my god, you guys, the Twins are in town," and there were two other flight attendants, actually three, sitting there. And I said, "We have to go. It's starting in 30 minutes." And they're like, "What do you mean we have to go?" I said, "We are here. We can Uber down there. We can find tickets at the game. Let's just get in an Uber and go." And they thought I was nuts. And I said, "No, you guys will not regret this."

So I grabbed two of the other—two went with me. One went to her room, and it was the biggest regret for her, because the three of us got an Uber. We went down to Fenway, and we started asking and talking about getting tickets and trying to scalp tickets, and we kept getting the runaround from people, and we didn't want to pay a lot because we were there, we had to leave early. We had to get up early in the morning, so we weren't going to stay the whole game, but we wanted to be there.

And so we asked this vendor, and he was selling t-shirts and stuff, and we went up to this vendor, and I told him, "Hey, I'm a huge Tiger fan, but the Twins are in town. The Twins are my second favorite team. But I've been here to see a Tiger game back in the day," and I started sharing my story, and he was so sweet. And he was like, "Well, I think if you sit down at that restaurant down at the end of the street"—I can't remember the name of the restaurant—but he said, "I see a lot of people sell tickets down there. So give it a try. If you don't have any luck, come back and check with me."

So we go down the street, and we sit down there, and we're not getting any cheap tickets. No one cares that we're just a bunch of three flight attendants that want to go to a game. They don't care. So we kind of thought, "All right, we're not going to get to the game." So we went back to that vendor, and I said, "Yeah, I just—I'm just not going to pay over $100 a ticket. We only get to stay for a few innings." And he goes, "All right, girls, that's it. Follow me."

And with this great Boston accent, and so we follow this man. He's a vendor, but he knows everybody. Kind of like my Uncle Juice at the bar. He knows everybody. These are my favorite people in the world, by the way. They're so great, aren't they? And they just emanate the excitement of baseball.

So we're following this guy. And I have a little video I could share with you of it. It's so cute. He says, "All right, come with me." So we follow him. We're like, "We are trusting this man." And I'm like, "I don't know, I just trust him. I just have a good feeling." So we trust him. We're going down this dark alley, we're going in this big green door. We're going up these steps, we're going through a parking lot. All of a sudden he knocks on the door—a certain amount of knocks—the door opens, and he lets us in this room, and we're in this gift shop. And we're like, "I don't get it. Where are we? What are you doing?" And then all of a sudden, he goes, "Come on, girls, stay with me. Stay with me." So we go up to this next door, he opens the next door, and then all of a sudden, we're out there, and then he goes, "All right, girls, have a great time." And we're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Where are we?"

At that point, we had no idea where we were, and we're standing out there and he goes, "You're in the game, girls, you're at the game." And we're like, "We're in the stadium." I had no idea he got us into the stadium.

Robby Incmikoski: And we're in the stadium, so through that gift shop down by—so it's like right field, basically?

Lisa Meuwissen: I think you're right. I know where you're talking about, the team store across the street. The official team store is across the street. And they had a little outpost, which is right on Yawkey Way. I think that's what you're referring to. But that's unbelievable.

Lisa Meuwissen: So then I told the girls, because I'm so used to—I'm just used to making things happen. I've always had—my dad always laughed at me, because "You just have magic, Lisa, you just make magic." And I'm like, "No, I don't make magic. I just make things happen because I want them to happen, and I just make it happen."

So I said to the girls, "Follow me. We're going to go down," because we didn't have a seat in the stadium. We're just in. And I said, "Just follow me, guys. Just follow my lead, but don't be too close. Follow me, and then we're going to find a few seats together." So we walked past the ushers—all three of us—and I see a few seats down by the dugout and they're empty. So I go down, I sit down, and they sit down with me. And these people are all like—these are regulars. And they're looking at us like, "What? I don't get it." And they're like, "How'd you get these tickets?" I said, "We know some people." And then they were like, accepting. And we sat there. We stayed the whole game. We sat in those seats and had a blast. No one ever kicked us out.

Robby Incmikoski: There's nothing like it. There's nothing like it at all.

Lisa Meuwissen: No, there's not. It was amazing.

Robby Incmikoski: Let's turn this a little bit back around to Detroit, because I'm going to include you in that chapter, because of your family's history there. What are some of the great Tiger memories do you have? Do you have favorite players you remember? Obviously, Cecil Fielder has got to be one of your favorites just based off that story alone. But you remember Sparky? What names stand out to you and why?

Lisa Meuwissen: Well, Sparky, we were always big fans of Sparky, and we always loved Sparky. But Alan Trammell—he's in the Hall of Fame—that was one of our favorite players growing up. Oh my gosh, Lou Whitaker, probably you remember him. Oh, yeah, Lou Whitaker. Kirk Gibson was a huge—and that was fun, because Kirk Gibson came around and was with the Twins, right? He was a broadcaster. I can't remember, but I think he came over. Maybe he was a broadcaster for the Twins. But that was fun, because when I was a flight attendant, I got to share my memories with him about that. I'm like, "Yeah, we were fans of yours. We used to follow you as a Tiger."

Robby Incmikoski: If you find that Cecil Fielder picture, I want that for the book.

Lisa Meuwissen: Oh, it's an awesome picture.

Robby Incmikoski: Tell me about Joe Green again. Was he a Tiger fan, you said? Or he was just a friend of Sparky?

Lisa Meuwissen: Mean Joe Green was a Tiger fan and he was a friend of Sparky Anderson's. He used to—this is why he was a friend—I think he used to bring him syrup from New Hampshire. And so every time he'd go to the game, he would bring Sparky his famous syrup, and he would bring that down to Sparky. So they were just buddies and friends at the game. Probably, I don't know if they had a relationship outside the stadium or the game, but super nice guy, and he lived in New Hampshire and was always a Tiger fan, and followed the Tigers all across wherever he could. So he was a big fan of them. He passed away.

Robby Incmikoski: That's a great story. Comerica Park, if a fan wants to go there, what would you say to them?

Lisa Meuwissen: Oh my gosh. I would just say, "Don't miss out. Go see it." Because it's special. It's a special stadium. It's charming. It's got—it does have a lot of history there. I just think it's cozy. I don't know why I keep calling it cozy, but to me, it's a cozy stadium. I just like it. I like where it's at.

Robby Incmikoski: What makes you say that? What makes you say it's charming? You're smiling as you say it. I could tell how much you enjoy being there.

Lisa Meuwissen: I think I just love all the statues, and I like all the charm of it, and the gate of it. I just like the entrance. I like the merry-go-round. I just like the way the seating is. I just like the way it's—I don't know how to explain it. It just has a good feel to it. It's a good feel stadium.

Robby Incmikoski: I forgot. That’s a great point. Ron Gardenhire.

Lisa Meuwissen: He was with the Tigers, remember? He finished his career with the Tigers, which I’m pumped about because I flew on their charters for five years with Gardy on board, and of course my love is for the Tigers first. He went back and worked for the Tigers at the end.

Robby Incmikoski: How interesting is it with Gardy, that’s the opposite, the manager sitting in the back of the plane instead of the front?

Lisa Meuwissen: I have flown, I don’t even know, probably fifty-some teams around, and I’ve never seen the coaches sit in the very back. They just didn’t do that. I always had so much respect for Gardy because he would sit in the back row of the airplane. He wanted his players up front. He wanted to oversee things. I had a good laugh with him when I saw him and his wife on a commercial flight the other day. I said, “Gardy, one of my fondest memories of you is when you were sitting in the back and you saw a player stand up as we were taxiing to the gate. And you yelled.” I was sitting behind him, and it scared me to death. I jumped out of my seat going, “Oh my gosh, what’s going on?” And he yelled, “Sit doooooown!” I’ve never seen a player sit down so fast in my whole life. Gardy didn’t mess around. Those players were to follow the rules and be respectful. When I saw him on the plane, he laughed. He remembers doing that.