In 1965, when Michael signed with the Reds (and in ’69, when he moved to the Lions), the major league minimum was twelve thousand bucks. Not exactly the lush life. Only a few dozen All-Stars and a couple of managers who could spin straw into gold went for top dollar. The rest of them, the assistant coaches and third-string outfielders, the career minor leaguers—they were just trying to get by. His minor league contracts were, well, humbling, and while Michael finally got a major league contract in 1974 (that year he’d had a streak in Triple-A that would’ve made Joltin’ Joe proud, batting nearly .500 in August), his bat cooled off, as bats inevitably do, and he was sent back down. He ran through his option years, and when he was released on waivers, he was like the homely girl at the middle school dance: no takers. He switched to coaching then; for a decade he strung together three seasons a year—Triple-A, the Arizona Fall League, and then winter ball in the DR. He missed just about every milestone in his kids’ lives, and after he couldn’t get home for Katie’s state championship (in oboe, not softball), Audrey started on him to quit. We’ll find another way, she’d said. The amateur clinics had him on the road plenty, but that was still less than three seasons a year. And the pay was better, even if the work was worse.

Michael always assumed he’d send the kids to college. But then the expenses mounted, in unexpected ways. Melissa was uninsured in her twenties, which no one thought twice about until a bad bike crash cost the family six figures. Katie’s husband couldn’t hold down a job, even as they had one kid after another, four in six years. There’s such a thing as too many, Michael told Audrey when they heard another was on its way. He helped all the kids with houses because there were grandkids in the picture and he wanted them to be comfortable. And, if he was being honest, part of him still felt guilty for never being around. He knew money wouldn’t solve that feeling, but it wouldn’t make things worse.

When the cab pulls up to the Walshes’, Stuart and Helen are waving at the curb, smiles too big to be true. The Walshes have also been with the Lions organization for decades, Stu as a left-handed pitcher and then the team’s pitching coach. (Michael and Stu overlapped in Los Angeles only a few months, but these Arizona springs cemented a lifelong friendship.) The Walshes recently upgraded to a new construction on the north side of Scottsdale—three bedrooms plus a pool house, a small in-ground pool and fancy fixtures everywhere—buying at a point that many later identified as the exact bottom of the market. It was a lucky break that would’ve made Michael mad if it’d happened to anyone but Stu.