By Jason Upton // Bells Beat Writer

 

“Everybody on your feet!”

The Bells have just made their final out in the top of the seventh, and the crowd at Joe Martin Field is ready to extend their tired limbs, courtesy of seventh-inning stretch conductor, Michael Jay.

Jay, 61, has been attending games in Bellingham for 27 years with his wife, Mary LeDonne. He grew up in San Diego, where the two held Oakland A’s season tickets in left field, before moving to Bellingham in the mid-nineties.

“The first thing we did when we came to town was look for baseball and we’ve been coming to the Bells for 27 years, through various different affiliations,” Jay said. 

Their first game was in 1996, the last year that the San Francisco Giant’s affiliate team played in Joe Martin Field. These were pre-stretch days for Jay, though he remained an active member of the crowd.

“Originally, we started out next to the dugout and I used to piss off the visiting teams, because I was pretty verbal when I was younger,” Jay recalled with a grin.

It wasn’t until Tony Larson bought the team in 2001 that Jay was brought into the spotlight. Sometime in that 2001-2007 period that Larson owned the team (Jay and his wife can’t recall the exact year), one of the organization’s interns would sing the seventh-inning stretch.

“Honestly he was horrible, like tears horrible,” Jay said. “I can usually handle stuff, but it was just totally off key, so I felt really bad for him.”

One day, early on in the season, that particular intern wasn’t available to sing, and Jay volunteered himself to lead the stretch. Apparently, it resonated with the fans, because the next time the intern showed up to sing it, the crowd asked where “the other guy” was.

Jay remembers he was a little nervous, but had experience speaking in front of large groups, and his background as a teacher made him used to getting in front of a hard audience, his wife said. The fans instantly connected with the vigor that Jay delivered the stretch with, and from then on he became a staple at Bells games.

“From the very beginning, I remember that first time he said ‘Go Bells!’ and after that, everyone started saying ‘Go Bells!’” LeDonne said.

Jay refined his technique over the first few years, but quickly solidified his routine.

“I like to incorporate the audience by pointing at them and then also pointing at the Bells, and exaggerating the three strikeouts,” Jay said.

Bill and Teresa Helm, regulars in the crowd at Joe Martin Field, are two of the many admirers of Jay’s performance. They attended a recent game with friends that were out getting ice cream, and Bill recorded the seventh-inning stretch and sent it to them, so they could see what they were missing out on.

“He’s not strict with the words,” Helm noted. “He doesn’t just sing it, he kind of talks it a little bit too.”

Stephanie Morrell, the Bells’ general manager, says before each season, Jay asks her if she wants him to keep doing it, and each year she gives him a reaffirming “yes.” When Jay goes on vacation, fans ask her “where the seventh-inning stretch guy is.”

“It’s just one of those things, it’s who we are,” Morrell said. “Teams and ballparks have these quirky little fun things and that’s one of them.”

Jay and LeDonne play several other roles as key members of the crowd, including the K cards they post on the fence each time the Bells notch a strikeout, and the laminated hamburger sign they wave whenever the opposing team’s “Burger Batter” is up. 

Jay also brings a metal bell to each game, and rings it every time the Bells score a run. He frequently gets kids approaching him who ask to ring it, to which he directs them to smack it when a Bell crosses home plate.

Both Jay and LeDonne deeply value the relationships they make with Bells players over the years, through their role as a host family (housing Cody Delvecchio this season) and their continued contact with them even after their time with the team. 

Tyler Palm was one such former player that the two kept in touch with over the years, who now plays for the Minnesota Twins affiliate team the Cedar Rapids Kernels. Jay and LeDonne made the trip up to Michigan to see him play, but encountered a problem when they arrived.

“We got there and it was snowing so they had moved the game to Chicago, so we then had to drive in the snow to Chicago to see the game,” LeDonne said. “But that’s just part of what makes this league so wonderful.”

The Bells community around Bellingham will frequently approach Michael, and yell “Take me out to the ball game!” 

“He’s so recognizable, like if we’re walking on the boardwalk, because of his suspenders and he’s always got a Bells hat on,” LeDonne said of Jay’s iconic look.

And still, despite their constant exposure to baseball over the past 27 years, none of the love for the game has been lost by the couple. 

“Part of the baseball that we love about this league is all these young people, their lives are ahead of them and they’re happy,” LeDonne said. “Both of us, as retired teachers, you really miss it when you can’t see young people.”

“This is all great, nothing’s bad about baseball.”