NEAL RUBIN
Michelle could barely tell you whether a baseball was wound or stuffed, but she didn’t care. She just knew it was fun to go to the ballpark.
Jennifer played softball in high school, and she could talk about changing speeds and hitting behind the runner, but she didn’t need to. She just knew it was fun to be at the ballpark with Michelle.
Get a bunch of college friends together, fire up a grill in an asphalt lot near Comerica Park, have some bratwursts and some laughs. Buy a block of tickets, cheer for the Tigers, raise a Bud Light.
Tigergates, the two best friends called them. They came up with the idea as a way to keep their gang from Michigan State close, and the first one in 2002 attracted 15 familiar faces. The number jumped to 30 and kept climbing and in 2009, the year Michelle Horback Palgut had so much to celebrate, it hit 90.
The Tigers play the Chicago White Sox at 4:10 p.m. Saturday, and the Tigergate rooting section will be 175 strong. But baseballs take funny bounces and life throws you curves, and Michelle won’t be there.
The Michelle Horback Palgut Tigergate will be different this year, a fundraiser for a scholarship in the name of someone who wanted to catch one last ballgame, but lost out to cancer before she could.
“It’s just a way for everyone to get together and remember her and do something positive,” Jennifer Pawlowski says. A way to keep her alive.
Going to bat for each other
Jennifer brought out the fun in Michelle, and Michelle made sure Jennifer didn’t have too much of it.
They met in middle school and by the time they hit Livonia Stevenson High, they were inseparable. They stayed that way through driver training and MSU and the early steps in their careers.
Jennifer, a psychology major, became an account manager for a trucking company and moved to Southgate. Michelle, always focused, majored in accounting, earned a master’s degree and passed her Certified Public Accountant exam.
Friends introduced Michelle to an engineer named Jon Palgut. They married, settled in Royal Oak and, in July 2009, had a daughter, Gabrielle.
At Tigergate two months later, Michelle shared some news that caught many of her friends by surprise: She’d beaten cervical cancer. Doctors caught it during the pregnancy and treated it as aggressively as they could without harming the baby.
The girl they all call Gabs was premature, but perfect. Michelle’s hair came back.
Not long after, so did the stupid cancer. That was Michelle’s line.
She would weep to Jennifer about leaving her husband stranded or not seeing Gabs grow up, and then she’d end the thought with an almost light-hearted jab: “Stupid cancer.”
From sorrow to grand slam
Michelle was 31 when she died last August. Her friends held a melancholy Tigergate a few weeks later and raised some money for Gabs’ education, but Jon said no, use it for something else.
That’s when Michelle’s parents, Gail and Mike Horback of Livonia, had an inspiration.
The Horbacks met when he was an umpire in Allen Park and she was a ballplayer. She says she used to yell at him about his bad calls. He says the yelling hasn’t stopped and he still can’t get anything right. Then they both laugh.
They’re 60, living simultaneously through a nice retirement and a parental nightmare. They wanted to honor their daughter and give the people who loved her a focus, and what they came up with was a scholarship for an accounting major at MSU.
Mike says the paperwork is in motion to incorporate the memorial fund as a nonprofit. They have an email account, michellehpmf@gmail.com, and a reachable goal for the next few years — a $30,000 endowment that could provide an annual $500 check.
The money will be nice for whoever gets it, but really, Jennifer says, it’s about the memory — “a way to show Michelle will always be with us,” as long as there’s a ballgame somewhere.
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