Legendary Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson passed away yesterday at the age of 76. There are fantastic obituaries all over the internet (a selection here, here, here), but I wanted to write about my one personal interaction with him.

In the early- to mid-1980s, I loved baseball and I loved the Tigers. I collected baseball cards by the thousands; I read biographies of baseball players from the library and I bought Sparky’s book about the 1984 season; I went to games with my dad at Tiger Stadium; I watched games on television and kept score on a notepad; and, when there weren’t any games to watch, I played a baseball game that involved rolling dice to determine strikes, balls, base hits, home runs, and the like.

On the last day of school in the Spring of 1985 — the year after the Tigers won the World Series — the parents of one of the girls in my carpool decided to stop for donuts on the way home. We all clambered out of the station wagon and into the donut shop … and there was Sparky Anderson, drinking a cup of coffee. While everyone else looked at all of the donuts behind the glass, deciding which one to get, I marched over to Sparky and asked him to sign my yearbook.

When we all got back into the car, I was so excited: I showed everyone my yearbook and I couldn’t stop talking about my good luck. But no one else had recognized him or maybe they didn’t know who he was; for some reason, at least one of the girls thought he was my grandfather. I thought they were all completely ridiculous and I sank back into my seat, as pleased as I possibly could be with myself and the world around me.

I still have the yearbook and I’ll never forget that meeting.