After the 2005 baseball season, I decided I wanted to try to meet Ernie Harwell in order to get a picture and a couple of autographs. At the time, he was writing a weekly column for the Detroit Free Press, so I mailed a letter there. I asked him if there was any way I could have 5 minutes of his time, and I would be willing to drive anywhere in Michigan in order to meet him. I left my home and e-mail address as well as my cell phone number. A few weeks later, I awoke in the morning to find that I had a voicemail message waiting on my cell phone. I listened to it and literally screamed when I heard the voice. "Hello, Mr. Wilhelm, this is Ernie Harwell. I got your letter. I would love the chance to meet you. Why don't you come down and have lunch at my home?" He left me his HOME phone number to contact him. After I stopped hyperventilating, I called him up, and we made a lunch date for a week later.
So, on November 1st, I took my son Jonathan (8 years old at the time) out of school and brought him and my friend Becky with me down to Novi to meet Ernie. He was living in a retirement community there. We arrived about 10 minutes early, and Ernie was already sitting in a chair in the lobby. I nervously approached him and said "Hello Mr. Harwell." He got up and shook my hand and said "I prefer Ernie. Mr. Harwell makes me sound important." I laughed and then introduced him to my friend and my son. He took us up to the cafeteria for lunch. We went through the line, ordered our food, and at the cash register I tried to pay. He refused. I said "Ernie, you're being so gracious, please let me pay for this." He said quite sternly to me "You are a guest in MY home. I will not have it." So I had to let Ernie cover the check.
We sat down and ate our lunch and afterwards, we talked a little bit. He said, "So you have some things you would like me to sign?" I said yes. I had him sign a baseball card, a ball, my Tigers hat, and my uncle's 1968 scrapbook that he had given me. Ernie thumbed through the scrapbook and told me little stories about a couple of the articles. (like ohhh, that was a cold day...much too cold to play baseball). I had actually brought about 8 of his books to have him autograph, and I'm sure he would have signed everything that I asked for, but I felt like I was asking too much of him and never took them out of my bag.
Then he said "well, let's get some pictures." We walked over to the wall and took about a half dozen shots of him with me and my son. Then he thanked us for coming to visit him and we went on our way. The whole meeting lasted about an hour.
On the way home, we stopped off at a mall in Troy to have my pictures developed (I couldn't wait). When the lady at the photo shop handed me my pictures, I took them out to examine them. She noticed me smiling as I looked at the one of me with Ernie and said "Is that your grandfather?" I smiled back at her and said "Yeah, he might as well be."
