It was spring of 1991 in Lakeland, Florida when a young kid, just six years old at the time, was seated in his family’s oversized 1989 blue Ford Econoline van, patiently waiting for his father, longtime Detroit Tigers clubhouse manager James Schmakel, to get out of work.

The vehicle was parked outside the back batting cages at Joker Marchant Stadium when the child noticed a large, athletically-built man scrambling toward the vehicle and into the back seat, with a large masse of onlookers scampering after him in hot pursuit.

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And though young Jay Schmakel came of age on the heels of some of the most iconic films and TV series of that time — “Three Men and a Baby,” “Magnum PI”  – he did not recognize the gentleman who had abruptly dove into the van, hoping for a swift getaway.

“I was just sitting in the bucket seat with no idea what was going on or (any idea) who the mustachioed man was going in the back of our car,” Jay recalls.

It was Tom Selleck.

Selleck had signed on to play the lead role in a film titled “Mr. Baseball” and had convinced then-manager Sparky Anderson to allow him to attend spring training with the Tigers to ensure he could accurately portray the ornery baseball star, with all the appropriate affects and contours.

Before rising to fame as an actor, Selleck, a Detroit native who moved with his family to California at the age of four, was a stellar athlete; he shelved his prep baseball career to play college hoops at the University of Southern California. And despite his time on the West Coast, he remained loyal to his hometown team and followed the Tigers fervently. 

He idolized Al Kaline as a child and even finagled a way to incorporate his Tigers fandom into his daily wardrobe for the character he played on hit television series “Magnum, P.I.” about a private investigator whose sartorial standbys were a Hawaiian shirt and Tigers baseball cap.

As a Hollywood fixture, Selleck made friends with Tigers players like Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker,  both of whom made a cameo on his show in 1983, and with pitcher Jack Morris as well. So when it came time to hone his skills as a ballplayer for his tour as Jack Elliot, a former Yankees star relegated to Japan in the twilight of his career, he found a way to live out a childhood fantasy while spending time with some of the guys he had gotten to know through the years as one of the club’s most famous fans.

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“It was just one of the memorable experiences of my life, you know? If anybody asked me what I wanted to be when I was a kid, it wasn’t an actor,” Selleck told The Athletic in a recent telephone conversation. “It was to be a professional baseball player.”

The Tigers helped construe multiple escape routes for Selleck from the ballpark each day that spring in ’91, allowing him to dodge the aggressive throngs of autograph seekers that sought to engulf him at the end of each day. Team staffers positioned vehicles by the warning track, batting cages, rear exit and the back fields, employing decoys to confuse the crowds. But there was little else by way of special treatment for Selleck, who players and support staff grew to like for his congenial, decidedly un-diva-like persona.

“He just wanted to get the feel of the clubhouse,” said Schmakel, whose office was a constant hub of activity. “But the clubhouse was so small, he basically sat in my office the whole time.”

Rather than demand his own corner stall or any area cordoned off for privacy; Selleck insisted that no one roll out the red carpet. He wanted to be treated like one of the guys.

And he was.

Selleck, who now stars as the patriarch of a prominent New York City law enforcement family in CBS’s “Blue Bloods,” never quite appreciated that until the first time he was given the newcomer rite of passage — “I was a rookie after all,” he said. It began as rather benign, shaving cream in the hat, skin lubricant in his shoes, but escalated one day when he got a surprise in batting practice. He allowed himself to be distracted one day as he was suiting up and got an unpleasant surprise as he headed out to stretch.

Selleck described what happened next as an “atomic bomb” in his groin. Selleck assumed it was former Tigers outfielder Lloyd Moseby, but he was mistaken. Mike Henneman, the team’s resident prankster, had carefully applied heat rub to Selleck’s jock strap using a tongue depressant he had nicked from the training room. That day, as Selleck headed out to the field, Henneman was lurking around the corner, where he waited patiently until he could finally relish in the actor’s howls.

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As discomfiting as it was, Selleck considered it the ultimate compliment.

“In a weird sort of way, I knew I belonged,” Selleck said.

And in turn, Selleck dished it out, too. When he took Henneman deep in batting practice one day, he gloated appropriately, though not without finding a note in his locker that said, “Next time, you’re getting one right in the ribs.” Selleck opened the note, looked over and saw Henneman pointing at him and shaking his head.

“He was one of the boys,” Henneman said. “I don’t give a shit about (him being an) actor and all that. He was just one of the boys.”

Henneman, who said Selleck’s “Blue Bloods” is now one of his favorite shows (“My girlfriend can vouch for that”), said he still hopes he has the chance to drill Selleck for that indignity. He has not forgotten that he has a score to settle.

In recalling the many hijinks and hilarity that ensued that spring, Henneman made a simple request before he hung up.

“Tell Tom to kiss my ass,” Henneman said, chucking uproariously. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Selleck was careful to keep a low profile and not create a spectacle while he was training with the Tigers (except when the team went on the road and asked him to exit the bus first, thereby creating a decoy who would allow them to abscond toward their hotel rooms unmolested; Selleck obliged).

Former MLB pitcher Tim Belcher, who crossed paths with Selleck in spring training jaunts that followed, said he came across plenty of celebrities that wanted to indulge the novelty of taking BP or hanging with some of the players, particularly when he played in Los Angeles.

But Selleck’s presence was different and decidedly more restrained. As a former athlete himself, Selleck wanted to avoid creating a sideshow or disrespect any of the decorum that inhabits an MLB clubhouse. He was respectful and courteous and meshed with his cohabitants well.

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“To me, he was just a guy grew up a Tigers fan, I guess, who played a part  (in a movie about) baseball who wanted to watch his childhood team,” Belcher said.

Even the team’s general manager Joe McDonald doesn’t remember much fuss created by Selleck’s presence, beyond the surging game crowds and occasional intrigue spawned when he’d come out for a team outing, like the club’s dinner at local Italian hotspot, Mario’s. (The proprietors of Mario’s, Mario and Jane Scarpa, were so charmed by Selleck that Mario hand-delivered a homemade lasagna to him at the airport when he left Lakeland.)

McDonald described him as an affable type, whose arrival at camp didn’t yield much pomp or circumstance. McDonald, who at 89 years old is still working as a scout for the Boston Red Sox, said he meshed well with the players.

“It was neat having him there,” McDonald said. “He was very cool, very regular, not like ‘I’m a big-time actor,’ just a gentle, nice guy.”

Perhaps because Selleck was so unassuming, not to mention dedicated to fine-tuning the craft of adopting the idiosyncrasies of a ballplayer, he earned respect from not just the Tigers players, but manager Sparky Anderson as well.

Which is likely how Selleck found himself, knees knocking, readying himself to step into the batter’s box against the reigning World Series Champion Cincinnati Reds one night that spring.

Selleck was sitting in the dugout on the bench with one of his pals, the late Dave Bergman, when Anderson casually strode the length of the dirt and informed Selleck he’d be pinch-hitting that night in the seventh inning.

“They’re probably going to fine me,” Anderson told Selleck. “But they can’t really do anything (else) to me.”

When it was the Tigers’ turn to bat, Selleck, who had pulled a hamstring the night prior running wind sprints with the team after a game, was not pleased to see who was approaching the mound.

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“It’s getting to the seventh inning and I’m getting more and more nervous and antsy and hoping my hamstring holds up … and who starts warming up but Rob Dibble. Who’s the Cincinnati Closer!” Selleck recalled. “And who grunts when he warms up and throws about 100 miles an hour.”

Anderson was similarly concerned. Almost as much to himself as Selleck, Andersen strode past and muttered: “I’m going to wait an inning.”

Prior to the game, Anderson had broached the idea with Reds manager Lou Piniella and Piniella’s only request was to not use Selleck against his closer. And so Selleck waited until the eighth inning.

In came Tim Layana, who was no slouch, either. And he didn’t want some actor getting lucky and getting a hit off him.

“I’m pretending I’m cool and relaxed,” Selleck said. “But I’m just sweating bullets, you know?”

Hitting at the major league level takes an incredible acumen, even for the professionals. Add in Selleck’s nerves and relative inexperience and it was tough to get the timing down. But Selleck fought through the at-bat, impressing teammates, including Rob Deer, for whom he pinch-hit, and Trammell.

Reds catcher Jeff Reed started him with a few fastballs, allowing Layana to get ahead in the count. Selleck then fouled off a couple of changeups (one struck a young Reds fan, nine-year-old Molly Fogarty, of Youngstown, OH; he signed a ball for her after the game with the inscription: “To Molly, with love and aloha- Tom Selleck“) before ended up striking out on Layana’s knuckle-curve, the nastiest pitch he had in his repertoire.

“There are a lot of major relievers that couldn’t put that ball in play,” Reed said.

Reed’s lasting memory of the at-bat was how the 6-4 Selleck appeared as he strode to the plate — “wiry, strong, like he could swing the bat pretty good” — and how he was received when he returned home to his wife that night. Suffice it to say she was much less enthused about the punch out than Reed was.

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“If there was anyone she’d leave me for, it was Tom Selleck,” said Reed, who is now a hitting coach with the Elizabethton (Tenn.) Twins. “When we were first dating, she had a poster of him in her bedroom.”

Selleck was just relieved to get through it with his pride intact. He’s still tickled he managed to find his way into an official box score:

“The guys were really rooting for me, which was neat,” said Selleck. “That’s the ultimate compliment from those guys. They’re the real deal. It’s the closest I’m gonna get.”

In the movie “Mr. Baseball,” filmed primarily in Nagoya, the capital of Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, Selleck took on the role of an aging former World Series MVP banished to the Chunichi Dragons who faces a steep learning curve about the cultural differences of the game overseas.

Selleck looks the part of an imposing foreigner delivering a load of wry one-liners about his new locale (“Looks like Cleveland, except I can’t read the street signs,”) and the team’s grooming policies (“If my mustache gets in the way of my swing, I’ll shave it.”) and inevitably falls into a star-crossed love affair with the daughter of his stern, disapproving manager and becomes a home run-hitting sensation while resurrecting his career.

His turn as a stubborn, entitled star on the decline was made believable by the fact he had taken pains to incorporate some of the more subtle nuances of the game and the jargon into his character simply by spending so much time with the Tigers and carefully observing the ecosystem of a baseball clubhouse.

“It was enormously helpful,” Selleck said of the spring training stint. “I think there’s a kind of osmosis. You don’t want to be consciously copying something or mimicking anything.”

Douglas Claybourne, who co-produced the film, said there were many difficulties the crew faced in production of the movie — navigating language barriers, logistical constraints and time lags — but remembers Selleck’s commitment into getting all of the baseball elements of “Mr. Baseball” right.

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Selleck used to spend his lunch hour taking batting practice while other cast members noshed on the food spread. And he would agonize over getting the perfect action shot on a fly ball to right field.

“He was very, very precise in his his preparation,” said the Golden Globe-nominated Claybourne, who has produced a number of box office hits. “He really wanted to get it right. He spent a lot of time on the baseball. He wanted to make sure his character was right and everything was by the numbers.”

Leon Lee, who played almost a decade in Japanese professional baseball leagues, served as both a consultant for the film and played a small speaking role. The character of Dennis Haysbert, the fellow American teammate of Selleck’s who shows him the ropes (and who is perhaps best known for his role as Pedro Cerrano in the baseball flick “Major League” and as a fixture of the ubiquitous Allstate Insurance commercials) is based on the career of Lee and his experiences as a black player in Japan.

Lee said the script was nipped and tucked at several points to more accurately reflect what it was like in Japanese baseball, and he lauded Selleck’s efforts in making sure he got the small nuances of the part right.

Lee, who now runs a baseball academy in California, recalled a time they were shooting a scene in the rain and mud during which he was throwing grounders to Selleck. One caught Selleck on the eye, and to Lee’s relief, the actor hollered to keep shooting so they could get the shot before it began to swell.

“He was a gamer,” Lee recalled.

Sports Illustrated, in an October 1992 review of the film, credits the realism it evokes as well as Selleck’s commitment to the role.

“Over the years the engaging Selleck appeared in so many major league batting cages that he became known as Magnum, B.P. But practice made perfect because in Mr. Baseball he not only swings like the real deal but also carries himself like a big leaguer. He deserves some sort of baseball Oscar—call it the Oscar Gamble.

It was back in September 2017, in an interview less than two months before Trammell’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame was announced, that one of the team’s most iconic players and outstanding shortstops of his generation, was reminiscing on the arc of an illustrious career and rattling off the number of highlights.

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Of course, there was the chemistry formed between himself and Whitaker, who combined to make up one of the most prodigious and prolific double-play tandems in the history of modern baseball. There was also the 1984 Tigers team that went on to win a World Series title. And yes, there was the time Tom Selleck came to training camp.

“I really appreciated the fact that he wanted to really look as good as he could. And he was a good athlete. A left-handed hitter and 6-4, a good-looking athlete — we all know he had the looks — and he was cool,” Trammell says. “He spent three weeks with us and it was just a joy for him. He did everything — he got ribbed, he was just one of the guys. I haven’t seen Tom for years, but obviously, those time we spent, he’s still a Tigers fan. What an enjoyable guy. Just a good person; fun to be around.”

Hearing that now, Selleck is finding himself nostalgic, too. Not just for the days when he used to warm up each day by playing long-toss with Kaline, or going yard against Henneman, or wearing his Tigers uniform (“I have it. I hope it still fits.”), but also just being around a player of Trammell’s caliber, whose demeanor he found to be refreshingly devoid of any ego or pretense.

Selleck is heartened to see his old friend get the Hall of Fame nod this weekend, and he’ll be rooting for him as he is honored with a bevy of other baseball legends.

“(He) really extended himself to me a lot and that was really neat. He’s who you see too. There was no aloofness. He was a great teammate. You notice all that stuff — no prima donna stuff. Nothing.”

“Tram’s a textbook ballplayer. Any kid that wants to play shortstop should just watch him play. He’s just a great guy,” Selleck said. “It’s well earned. should have happened a lot sooner.”

(lead photo by Universal/Getty Images)

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