by Paul Jacob
Baseball is life. One minute you're up; the next you're down. I know this. You know this. Boy, does Christopher Ratte know it. And we all know that taking your kids to a ballgame is the quintessential American rite of passage . . . to be celebrated, cherished, protected. Just be careful buying the kids lemonade at the game. Your loved ones' very well being may depend on it. Give 'em a soda loaded with caffeine and high-fructose corn syrup instead. It's safer than lemonade, but only because some lemonade is hard — spiked with five percent alcohol. There are commercials for this stuff on TV. I know this. You know this. But Chris Ratte didn't know.
Ratte, a professor of classical archaeology, doesn't watch television. And yet he dared to take his son Leo, seven, to the Detroit Tigers April 5 game against the Chicago White Sox. As a Tiger fan, I can tell you nothing went right. The Tigers lost 5-3.
But here's the other thing that was problematic. On the way to Section 114, down the right field line, just as the seats jut out closer to the field in Detroit's beautiful new ballpark, Chris stopped to get refreshments, including lemonade for his son.
Mike's Hard Lemonade, to be exact.
Luckily no one thought Ratte was purposely getting his son sauced or anything like that.
Folks might be more skeptical if we weren't talking lemonade. For instance, were the 7-year old smoking a Marlboro and the father said he thought it a candy cigarette, no one would buy that excuse.
The Comerica Park security guard certainly understood it was all a mistake. He saw the kid and "the bottle" in the ninth inning and asked the father about it.
The nurses and doctors at Children's Hospital, where father and son were rushed via ambulance, were not concerned about mistreatment. They drew blood and found nary a trace of alcohol in the little boy's system. The resident who examined Leo wrote on his chart, "Completely normal appearing. . . . He is cleared to go home."
A policewoman interviewed Ratte and his son at the hospital and was sympathetic as well. But her supervisor insisted the case be turned over to Child Protective Services.
So CPS came to the hospital to take Leo from his father. And mother, too.
It was three days before a judge ordered the 7-year-old returned to his home, with his mother, over CPS's request to hold him until their investigation was complete. But as part of that order, Leo's father, Chris, was forced to leave the home. To stay at a hotel. It was five more days before the family could legally reunite.
Now, ask yourself what might have happened had Ratte been a ditch-digger rather than an academic. Or a widower?
Leo might still be in foster care. Far from home.
Maybe baseball isn't life. Baseball makes more sense.
Paul Jacob is Senior Adviser of the Sam Adams Alliance, which also sponsors his daily Common Sense spots heard on radio stations throughout the United States.
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