LAKELAND, Fla. — I made it to Detroit Tigers fantasy camp.

The experience begins on a wooden barstool at the local Ramada Inn, sitting next to a woman named Lisa Knoll. She can really swing it, campers say. There are campers and former Tigers getting reacquainted with one another. Dave Rozema is talking.

I’m sitting next to Ramon Santiago, who is sitting across from Placido Polanco.

We are inside the Tiger Town cafeteria, where the Sunday night orientation barbecue is winding down. Earlier, teams and coaches were announced for the 62nd edition of this “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity, which gives fans a chance to relive their ball-playing dreams on the back fields in Lakeland, Fla., while being coached by former Tigers.

For a week, we will dress like big leaguers, play on the same fields and pull similar muscles.We will swing and miss, make errors and face-plant while chasing fly balls in the outfield, and have fun doing it. We will be heckled by our childhood heroes and outed on social media for being “not very good.” We will drink beer.

This week, I am one of them. I know nobody except Santiago and a short, curly-haired man named Jerry Lewis, who invited me to camp to chronicle my experience.

The last time we talked, Lewis offered me the choice of two teams: the two-time defending champs or a not-so-good team. I choose the latter.

Game 1

My locker is No. 31. Inside, there are two Tigers uniforms: a home white with my name on it and a road gray with nothing. I put on the home whites and follow the other late arrivers to the batting cages, which are otherwise strictly forbidden to people like us.

Before I make it there, I receive a tip from the first teammate I meet: Scott Padden, a skinny bassist from San Francisco with a big beard, who says our team is wearing the road grays.

I head back out to the field, this time nameless. Inside the cages, campers are listening to Alan Trammell talk about fielding and Frank Tanana talk about pitching. Rozema, who is wearing my number, doesn’t stop talking. I play catch with Scott, who is also a rookie. My arm feels great.

We are playing on Team No. 2, coached by Nate Robertson and Joel Zumaya. We meet in front of the first base dugout, inspired by these words from Robertson: “No matter how many we lose — or win — we’re going to be good teammates.”

I'm hitting second, behind Jim Buttrey. They call him Butters. Butters reaches base. Willie Horton is sitting on the bench, watching.

In my first at-bat in 13 years, I swing and miss wildly at two pitches, then stand there like a house by the side of the road for another. Strikeout.

“Son, come here,” Horton says. “See ball, hit ball. It’s as simple as that, son.”

The inning ends quickly and we slowly scatter onto the field: Taylor Barton, the youngest kid in camp at the ripe age of 24, to shortstop; Rob Tuls, a 41-year-old rookie, to third base; Butters goes to second.

I'm on the mound, simply because no one went there and I said I could. Soon, I’ve walked two batters and I’m in a 3-1 count to Jamal Spencer, the sports director at the ABC television affiliate in Grand Rapids. I groove a fastball and he rips a single up the middle. I bend, walking another, but do not break: the inning ends when Lisa Knoll breaks her bat clean in half on a spin-rate cutter.

Calling balls and strikes behind the pitcher’s mound, Tom Brookens says, “I ain’t ever seen it like that.”

I throw into the fourth inning, way more balls than strikes — many in the dirt and off catcher John Morin, some behind the batters, a couple to the backstop — and Robertson comes out for the hook. I’ve thrown probably 70 pitches, but I say I feel good. “You’re done,” Robertson says. “You’re going to be pitching a lot for us this week.”

We lose. Badly.

In the beginning

Dinner is a tribute to the 1984 World Series champion Tigers, who are sharing a 35th anniversary with the fantasy camp this year.

The idea for the camp was hatched by Jim Price and brought to life by Lewis, who has been the Tigers’ director of fantasy camp since it began in 1984. That first camp attracted great fanfare, including both Detroit newspapers and a young television station called ESPN. Admission was $4 and Joker Marchant Stadium was filled when a man named Jeff Sword became the Babe Ruth of Tigers fantasy camp baseball, hitting a grand slam off Mickey Lolich to beat the 1968 Tigers alumni.

Back then, the campers had their uniforms laid out on their hotel room beds, before hiking along Memorial Ave. to the complex. That didn’t last long, with former general manager Jim Campbell not keen on fans asking fantasy campers for autographs.

“We were the talk of the town,” Tom Acklin says.

Three men remain from that debut year: Acklin, Chuck Helppie and Al Martens. Acklin has played all but one year. Helppie has played every year. Martens has attended four.

“It’s an overused phrase, ‘They’re like family,’ but for a lot of us, we’ve become like family," camper Gary Kushner says. "For me, some of my best friends are people that I’ve met at camp, both campers and players.”

The most unique part of the event is seeing the friendships that have developed between campers and coaches. A couple who sat next to Polanco on opening night, Mark and Sherry Abbott, befriended Santiago when he played with the Mariners. They flew from Seattle to California to Arizona to Mississippi to eventually end up in Florida..

The coaches stay out late, smoking cigars and sharing stories. They have made plenty of money in their careers. So why do they keep coming back?

“This is a blast,” Polanco says, in between puffs. “Why wouldn’t I?”

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Games 2-6

I return to the mound the next day, my right arm still intact.

I am pitching against Rozema’s team and again, I cannot throw strikes. I hit two batters. In the opponents’ dugout, they know I have nothing. Soon, I am throwing from five feet in front of home plate.

“You want to throw from the grass?” Rozema shouts.

Walking off the field, I am alerted to a tweet posted by Tigers right-hander Jordan Zimmermann, who offered these thoughts on my performance: “Not very good.” Joe Jimenez likes my looping, 63 mph change-up — or was it a fastball?

It’s just outside noise, I tell reporters after the game. Yes, we’re winless, but we just have to wash this off and come back and get after it tomorrow. We have to dig deep.

The losses continue to mount for Team No. 2, averaging just over one error per inning. On Tuesday night, I walk past Santiago during my sixth trip to the ice machine — I am taking an ice bath in Room No. 221, hoping it will soothe the soreness in my quads. We need to snap this losing streak.

It doesn’t help: We play better, but lose two more games on Wednesday. In the first game, I turned a double play in front of Polanco at second base. He didn’t seem impressed, but the next inning, when he returned to coach first base he said, “I loved your double play.” In the second game, playing at night in 45-degree weather at historic Henley Field, I pitched again: arm still attached, though sore. It was a rough first inning but Robertson keyed a mechanical adjustment — throwing from a hybrid stretch — which helped me throw strikes.

Multiple times during the week, I walked back to the mound and wondered what it must be like to do this at the highest level, with 30,000 people in the stands and hundreds of thousands more watching on television. I wondered how these guys do it for 200 innings and 162 games.

On Thursday, Zumaya hops on the hill late in our final regular-season game. Standing in, he spins a nasty slider into the dirt and says he had to take it hard on the reporter. Zumaya, who works at the San Diego airport, can still throw. He can hit, too. On the second pitch, I ground to third base. Two throwing errors later, I am painfully trotting home on what will be scored as an inside-the-park home run.

By this point, we have almost learned each other’s names. There’s Mike Harrison, a retired auto worker, who plays right; Joe Fama, an engineer, is hitting the ball harder than he ever has, says Kushner, who everyone calls “Kush.” He is rehabilitating from a knee injury and can’t play this year. But the straw that stirs the drink is Padden, who was nicknamed “The Caveman” for his beard a long time ago. He is playing with his dad, Jeff, who is known for holding runners to a triple on a single to left field.

The Caveman wears No. 27 for Craig Monroe. He is everywhere, doing everything, the epitome of a first-time camper soaking it all in.

“He’s showing that baseball is so easy, even a caveman can do it.” said Jon Warden, who coached the No. 4 team. He offered the words at the morning’s Kangaroo Court, which fines players for things like missing a belt loop, or not storing their stool in the locker, or not having a name on the back of the jersey.

Our team is by far the worst. We can’t hit, we can’t pitch and we can’t field. It hasn’t always been this way, Kush says. Butters used to have a real good arm. Harrison could play a mean second base. Acklin used to be one of the best players.

We head into the playoffs at 0-6 — everybody qualifies — and arrive at Field No. 2 ready to shock the world on Friday. It’s happened before, Butters says. But after I allow five runs on two hits and three walks in the first inning, the end appears.

Camp HQ

The camp quarters at a Ramada Inn just off Interstate 4. There is a Waffle House next door. It is ranked as a three-star hotel by 391 Google reviews, none of which mention its bar.

The bar is only open for two weeks a year, during the fantasy camps. Here, over Budweisers for a buck and whatever bottom-shelf liquors are in stock, the fabric of the camp — and the challenges it faces — are in focus.

At one end of the bar, the veterans look at a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and photographs from the first camp. Nearby, people join The Caveman in singing Tom Petty on Monroe’s guitar. His band once opened for Weezer. Somewhere around here, Rozema is still talking.

It’s about the friendships more than the baseball, they say; the camaraderie more than the competition.

But the future of the fantasy camp is not so clear. The veterans aren’t in their 30s anymore. For many, not even their 50s. Rumors fly about this guy or that guy not coming back next year. If he’s gone, then what?

Last year, there were 220 campers. This year, 150. Next year, there is only one camp tentatively on the schedule, Lewis says. And the price — $3,550 this year — is going up by $200.

At a time when its most loyal players and coaches are in the twilight of their fantasy camp careers, Lewis has been tasked with trying to keep the price affordable while improving its attraction, which has resulted in a tug of war between the traditional and business sides.

The Tigers’ fantasy camp is still the lowest-priced in baseball, Lewis says, coming in under some other organizations significantly so. The cost to attend similar camps: $6,950 for the Cardinals, $5,200 for the Yankees and Red Sox, $4,995 for the Dodgers and $4,785 for the Twins.

As with any tradition, some campers are resistant to change. But others, like 50-year old Todd Palmer, believe the future of the camp will depend on it.

Palmer speaks transparently about his experiences, content in his belief that his 15th Tigers fantasy camp could be his last. His chief reasons: the competition has eroded with age, and after participating in other fantasy camps, his money goes further elsewhere.

“I don’t want Little Caesars,” Palmer says. “I want Papa John’s.”

However flawed his analogy may be — there are many other options for good pizza — his ideas are echoed throughout the week by campers who are restless for change. In Martens’ scrapbook, there is a copy of the itinerary from the first camp in 1984, which reads almost identically to this week’s.

Lewis says he is open to change, but needs to be convinced a new way is better than the way that’s gotten them here. Earlier in the day, Team No. 3 won their third consecutive championship. The bulk of the six teams have played together for years; they like playing with one another. In other camps, players are drafted onto teams by coaches, to even the playing field.

There was plenty of talk about adding a skills event to the schedule — a home run derby with portable fences moved in, competitions for pitching and fielding, maybe even a slowest pitch challenge. And if the camp is going to attract the next generation, a shift from commemorative gifts like trophies, canvas pennants and autographed pictures to bats, batting gloves and performance shirts could pay dividends.

Selling the camps to players in 2019 is much different than in 1984, when the biggest draw was to come and play the 1968 Tigers.

Lewis is trying to change with the times — he knows the camp needs younger, more able-bodied coaches. But he also knows the thrill that fans get when rubbing shoulders with Horton and Trammell and oftentimes Al Kaline. He knows what the camp was founded on.

“Back then, we used to be out here until three in the morning,” Johnny Adams says.

Now, it is 12:38 a.m., and most of the camp is sound asleep.

That's the ballgame

The camp closes with a dinner on Saturday night, where teams present their coaches with gifts. We bought Robertson a gift card to Lowe’s and Zumaya a gift card to Dick’s. Team No. 3 bought Bill Scherrer two cartons of Marlboro Reds.

Lewis honors all of the alumni campers, noting those who are in line for a free camp every 10th year and handing out embroidered winter jackets to those who hit the five-year mark.

With only a couple teams to go, I escape back to the Ramada Inn with Monroe and Lisa. I am caught though: When Warden takes the microphone, he looks for me. What he said next, according to multiple persons who were in attendance, cannot be repeated.

Back at the bar, we reminisce on the week that was. As a whole, the fantasy camp was an all-time great experience. Not much has changed in 12 years: I still can’t throw strikes, hit for power or make contact with curveballs. Neither has my love for playing baseball.

But the Tigers’ fantasy camp — the longest-standing camp in the major leagues — is about more than baseball. It’s more than living out the glory days one more time, even if you can’t bend over to field that ground ball. It’s about the people; normal, everyday folks arriving in Lakeland for a week and leaving friends.

On the final night, we crowd into the bar for one last hurrah. Warden is cracking jokes. Scherrer is talking baseball in between cigarettes. Rozema is still talking. The Caveman has the guitar again, channeling his inner John Denver, and Monroe is singing along. There are tears — one camper’s husband died recently, another camper has prostate cancer — and hugs and kisses as people exit.

A townie has appeared, told there were famous baseball players ripe for autographs. She asks if I’m one of them. I’m not, but soon, Monroe taps me on the shoulder and says, “Come on, Frenchy, sign this for her.”

I get the cue. Yes, he was my teammate. I just don’t like being bothered when I’m out. I play shortstop. “To Kim,” I write, on a blank sheet of paper. “Best wishes.” I sign my name and number, but she is not satisfied, looking at another person, saying, “You look like someone important, too.”

She continues to speak in circles, her southern drawl of questions finally drawing the ire of Lisa, who blows the cover on the final joke of fantasy camp.

“We’re just regular people, lady,” Knoll says. “We’re nobody. We’re regular people down here on vacation trying to play baseball.”

“What about him?” she asks and points to me. “He said he’s nobody and he’s somebody.”

“He just writes for a newspaper, that’s all he does,” Lisa says. “He’s one of us. We’re just normal people that like to play baseball. Come back next year. We’ll be here.”

Contact Anthony Fenech: afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech.