Stevie Wonder at Summerfest and get a head start to our hotel, which was across the street from the infamous Rosemont Hyatt just outside of O’Hare Airport, where we got our traditional early start on a Sunday morning.
Every morning began with a wake up call varying from 3:30 to 5:30 a.m. But every flight was designed to get me to the next city as early as possible. I could always sleep later in the afternoon before the game if we weren’t swabbing.
This particular morning was an anomaly – a day where one missed flight would’ve really screwed up my chances of seeing a baseball game to keep the streak alive. It was also another getaway day for Jenn. She would be leaving the tour after the game in Detroit and flying back to Baltimore while I would be driving to Toronto alone.
My wife has a real job. She’s an engineer at Verizon. Her company was extraordinary in their support of her illness at every level. They threw encouragement parties for her. They visited her. They gave her gifts and sent her food. They love her. And my wife’s work ethic is even stronger than mine. (And that’s a pretty high bar!)
Halfway through the tour and it was another flawless morning. Perfect weather. Perfect coffee. No lines at infamously dreadful O’Hare.
We settled into our cushy seats for a quick 40-minute flight over to Detroit. It was Day 16 of the tour and, literally, I couldn’t think of one thing that wasn’t perfect. After nine months of planning, adjusting and making it through the first two weeks I really couldn’t have asked for a better journey – even if we didn’t see Stevie Wonder in Milwaukee. I wound up getting about seven hours of sleep instead of three and some sacrifices were to be expected at this point on the trip.
As the plane was taxiing the runway and I realized we were in line to get to Detroit with plenty of time for the game, I confided that this was the one leg that most concerned me and that I was feeling great about everything. “Nothing has gone wrong,” I said. “Everything is smooth. But you watch, something crazy is bound to happen.”
Within seconds – before the flight even got airborne – my heart skipped as I realized I had committed an awful mistake in my preparation for this leg of the journey.
While realizing that I would be driving Jenn to the airport after our day at Comerica Park in Detroit, I also realized that I’d then be crossing the Canadian border at Windsor. At that moment, it came to my attention that I didn’t pack my passport.
It was one of those moments in life when you can only laugh at yourself and instantly smile at your own “gotcha” stupidity. I’ve been around the world. I’ve traveled internationally all of my life. In nine months of planning, I took pages of notes, reminders and warnings to myself. Hotels. Cars. Teams. Celebrities. Media. Flights. I did it all. I organized it all. I planned it all.
Nowhere in my notes did I ever remind myself to pack my passport knowing I would need it on Day 16 and 17 to get into Canada at the Windsor Bridge and back into the United States at the Niagara Falls Bridge.
I knew I’d forget something.
I just didn’t think it’d be something as essential as my passport.
The next 60 minutes in the air were chaotic as Jenn and I went through every possible scenario that could either get the passport to me or me to the passport in next 24 hours. We considered having me fly with her to Baltimore and then back to Buffalo and onto Toronto on Monday morning. It was costly and awful, but doable, plus we had some airline points we could use. We tried to courier the passport to me at the Detroit airport. No way to do that on a Sunday.
In the end, my partner Peter DiLutis saved me by getting the passport from my place and taking pictures of every page. The Detroit Tigers allowed me to print it out in their offices later at the game. I called both border stops and asked the Canadian and American officers what the protocol would be to get into Ontario for 24 hours and back.
The Canadian Mountie was great. He said: “We’re going to let you into Canada, sir. The real problem you’ll have is trying to get back into your own country, eh.”
The American officer was more pragmatic. “Look, if you’re a legitimate citizen of the United States of America, you’re going to get back home. You might get detained for a little while for questioning, but we’re going to let you back into your country.”
This quelled my concerns but certainly didn’t make it any less sweaty once I was staring at a beautiful female border guard at the Windsor Bridge about eight hours later. She saw my giant cotton swab in the backseat and I told her I was going on Breakfast Television in Toronto in the morning and she sensed my urgency. She asked me a bunch of stern questions but eventually let me into Ontario.
She was polite compared to the American guard I had the following night at Niagara Falls.
“Pop the trunk!” he barked at me as he snapped on rubber gloves when I told him that I didn’t have my passport – only a photocopy of it.
“Sir, what would possibly possess you to leave the United States of America without your passport?” he angrily asked me.
After a brief pause – I was sort of amused by the directness of the line of questioning – I looked at him and after telling him that I’d been on the road for 16 straight days, I simply looked him in the eye and said, “Sir, clearly I just screwed up!”
He handed the folded over 8X11 sheets of paper with my vital statistics back to me, smiled and said: “Welcome home. Drive safely.”
By the next morning, I was worn out, dragging two giant, heavy bags plus a travel pillow and tube with Mike Ricigliano’s brilliant giant cotton swab on a stick attention grabber.
On three hours of sleep and slogging through the Buffalo Airport with a six-hour, one-connection flight to San Diego through Midway in Chicago, I dropped off my rental car that I originally picked up in Detroit and made my way through the empty garage at 4:40 a.m.
As I saw the Buffalo airport gift shop, which more resembled a shrine set up to honor Rex Ryan and the Bills, and blearily passed a coffee shop with no desire to caffeinate my aching soul, I said to myself: “Ain’t no way I’m ever doing this again…”
Of course Apollo Creed, too, once said there would never be a rematch.
* * *
“I GOT A NOTE FROM MARIA this morning,” my wife said to me over
