- Hi and welcome to this edition of "Destination Michigan."

Here's a look at what we have coming up for you.

The future inspired by the past.

We head to the Michigan Folk School near Ann Arbor where they're turning hobbies into careers.

It's a sport played by millions across the country.

We explore the roots of T-ball and you might be surprised how this sport got its start.

Sault Ste.

Marie, Michigan founded in 1668, you don't just read about history here, you walk right into it.

We'll take you inside three of the city's must-see sites.

Then it's off to the UP's Keweenaw Peninsula, better known as Copper Country, for a deep dive into the area's rich mining history and so much more.

- [Narrator] Support for "Destination Michigan" is provided by the CMU Bookstore.

(lively music) T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, maroon and gold memories, and an official outfitter of Adidas apparel at the Central Michigan University, owned and operated CMU Bookstore.

Online shopping seven days a week at cmubookstore.com on campus at the University Center and game day locations at Kelly/Shorts Stadium and the John G. Kulhavi Events Center.

(lively music ending) (upbeat music) - Hi, and welcome back to "Destination Michigan."

It is a beautiful morning here at Pickens Field in Mount Pleasant.

More on that in a minute.

First up, chances are someone has gifted you a loaf of sour bread recently.

Well, classic arts and hobbies like bread making, blacksmithing, they're making a comeback and they're just a few of the many classes offered at the Michigan Folk School near Ann Arbor.

We visited the school to see how they're crafting future careers by looking to the past.

(hammer banging) - The Michigan Folk School is a craft educational resource, which we teach vocational skills.

The classes are educational, they're fun, they're unique.

- [Stefanie] Starting a new hobby or craft can be kind of intimidating, but not here at the Michigan Folk School.

With a passionate staff of instructors, a beautiful workspace and gorgeous landscape at Staebler Farm County Park, inspiration is everywhere.

- A lot of people just find this as home and I think that energy has helped fuel our expansion and growth.

I think we have 68 instructors.

We teach over 600 classes right now on the book, ranging from cooking, leather work, blacksmithing, wilderness survival, you name it.

- [Stefanie] Michigan Folk school founders Jason, along with his wife Julia Gold, began their journey teaching others at their home, starting with chickens, raising animals and gardening.

But it didn't take long before things really began to take off.

- Within early in their relationship, they toured a lot of different folk schools and realized that this is something they want in not only the educational resource, but the community that it supports, it fosters, it creates.

Jason and Julia are both very energetic and determined individuals.

I've learned a great deal from them and they're incredible.

When they have a dream or an idea in their head, they search through every possible avenue and figure out ways to get it done.

- [Stefanie] We caught up with Jason teaching basket weaving to a full class of focused students.

Wade is also an instructor here sharing his passion for blacksmithing with others.

- I am a blacksmith jeweler and a metal worker.

I got my undergraduate degree at Northern Michigan University and then my master's at Eastern.

I do a lot of architectural blacksmithing.

I find that to work with hot metal is not only a technique, but an understanding of how it wants to move.

(hammer banging) Hot iron, it moves much like clay.

You can compress it, extrude it, expand upon it.

It's not just cutting up and welding.

So there's this whole type of relationship that you need to form with that material.

And that's where I have kind of found my passion is understanding how this metal wants to move and working with it.

- All of our instructors are top of the tier like craftsmen and they really put a lot of effort into their classes and they want to not only teach things just to, you know, make a buck or something, but they also believe in the mission here, which is passing on folk craft and folk art from generation to generation.

- [Stefanie] Those who come for a class here come from all walks of life.

In this room, a diverse group of students learn how to make sourdough bread.

Next door, some learn how to sew.

Another class that Wade says has become very popular is wilderness survival.

Now, while everyone may have their own reasons for taking a class, the experience creates a sense of community, uniting everyone who enters.

- I think what brings people in here to learn could be a variety of different things, but I would say it starts with their own interest.

Someone might have seen a TV show or a documentary and wanna try blacksmithing and they go to their computer and wonder, "Where can I find a forge or someone to do this?"

And fortunately we pop up and they research us and they come in and they're just amazed with the type of educational resource and experience that they can gather here.

And some people might just take a few classes, and I've met other people that have taken every one of our classes and go home to set up their own shop and go from there.

- [Stefanie] Anyone can sign up for a class online.

What they choose to do with the knowledge they gained, well, the possibilities are pretty endless.

- And that energized me.

And I think that's what brings a lot of people in, these hobbies that then can even become careers, life passions and eventually friendships and communities and resources.

And it's a gathering place.

We have a saying here, meet as strangers, leave us friends.

And it's really true.

- And you can check out a complete list of their classes online at mifolkschool.

You can also learn how to join their team of instructors 'cause they're always looking.

Now, before turning pro, many baseball and softball players likely started off their career on a field like this one, playing T-ball.

The uniform, your first mitt, and of course the anticipation of a post-game snack, kids around the state share this experience as T-ball approaches.

But did you know a recreation director in Albion is widely considered to be the first to put the ball on a tee for a game?

Chris Ogozaly bats second for us with a tail of T-ball.

(lively music) - It was small town America that invented T-ball.

As a retired history teacher and historian, it's always cool to go to the place where it happened and this is where it happened.

This is where it started.

It wasn't in a boardroom, it wasn't in some academic lab.

And you just kind of walk around and say the first T-ball players walked these streets, played on that field.

I think it gives kind of a visceral feeling that you can kind of immerse yourself into, "Okay, I get it.

It was just a little town in Michigan and they came up with this idea and everybody's copied it."

- [Chris] It may not be the room where it happened, but Albion, Michigan is most definitely the place that it happened.

But how did it happen?

- Jerry Sacharski, a city rec director who decided we need to do something with these kids that like baseball and give them an outlet.

During the timeframe of the development of T-ball, that was in the mid-1950s, and he worked for a guy named Arnold Spaan and Jerry Sacharski was the baseball commissioner or he ran the baseball program.

And so that's how he ends up deciding to create this T-ball for little kids.

- [Chris] T-ball is as American as apple pie and rock and roll.

And in the late 1950s, Jerry Sacharski put the ball on the tee and developed a game for aspiring kids with Big League dreams.

In July of 1960, Jerry explained the purpose of T-ball as he viewed it to Michigan State's Gus Ganakas.

- Most of you baseball fans probably know what a regulation baseball diamond looks like, but today's diamond might be less recognizable to you.

In fact, here with me is Jerry Sacharski, the director of the Albion Baseball Program.

And Jerry, I walked on the field and the only thing I recognized were the bases.

Could you tell us a little bit about what the layout looks like here and the rules by which these boys from Albion will be playing today?

- All right, I sure will, Gus.

First of all, let me state that peewee baseball is a playground game.

It's a playground activity.

We wanna make it clear that peewee baseball is primarily for participation and drill in the fundamentals of the game, the simple fundamentals, throwing, catching, running the bases and swinging a bat.

- [Mitch] The other thing was, it wasn't just the T-ball and the tee he created, but he had chalk circles around the bases and that was to eliminate collisions.

You can imagine a little six-year-old running into a big giant eight-year-old, you know, trying to beat the ball to the bag.

We'd stamp in the circle and then the person was out.

And then there was also a line, it was an arc on the infield from the third base foul line to first base.

And if the ball didn't go past there on your swing, that was a strike.

That eliminated any people getting on base because of two-foot little nubbers and nobody could field it.

So I thought there was a lot of action.

- [Gus] Well, we're about ready to get the ball game under way, the peewee baseball game between the two all-star teams from the Recreation Baseball Program in Albion, Michigan.

- Everybody played it and everybody was all excited.

And you'd go up to, I don't know if it was the junior high or Austin School, and you'd go and you'd rent your wool uniform, I think it was 50 cents and they gave it to you and it was hotter than blazes.

And of course it didn't really fit and it scratched, but that was just like a whole deal.

And then you got stirrups with it.

So, you know, we were dressing like the Big Leaguers.

Then they would put the roster in the Albion Evening Recorder.

That's how you found out what team you were on.

- [Gus] There's the hit off the tee.

It might fall and there it is, a base hit.

- Later on when I was in eighth grade, Mr.

Sacharski was my civics teacher at the junior high in Albion.

And we just knew he was an old guy who was gonna retire in a couple of years and he was an old coach and we knew he liked baseball, but he never said, "Oh by the way, I created T-ball that everybody in the town played."

So I didn't know that till many years later.

And he was a very nice person.

He was very patient in class.

- [Gus] Okay, here's Ricky Driver now to try his chance at hitting that ball off the tee safely.

Beautiful play by the second baseman.

- [Chris] While the T-ball highlights are in color now instead of black and white, the game still helps with a wide range of skill development and serves as a community cornerstone.

- T-ball is unique in that it focuses on catching, throwing and striking.

And it's in a structured kind of organizational way where what I would call a moderate level of decision making has to occur for a six or seven-year-old.

If you feel the ball at shortstop, once you catch it, you have some decisions to make.

And so those kind of experiences are great for the development of the brain.

When you watch T-ball players, spatial awareness is something that's developed.

They'll be at second base looking at the tee, but they have to be aware of their area, of their space.

And so those are this idea of, in sports psychology, we call it a broad external focus, knowing what's going on around you.

So those are developed in T-ball different than they would be, for example, in some other sports.

I teach a youth sport course.

It emphasizes diversity because another thing it does is it brings communities, parents who otherwise would never interact with each other.

They're all in lawn chairs along one side and some of them are base coaches and some of those kinds of things.

So it's a connecting kind of thing as well.

I think every child would benefit by participating, even if they don't like sports and activities.

- [Chris] Back in Albion, folks were eager to showcase Jerry's massive contribution to youth sports and they found a fitting way to honor his legacy.

- Well, we're across the street from the public library and the city museum on Superior Street, which is M99 for people not in Albion, probably about a mile from the T-ball fields.

It's just in a city lot here because it would be a place that people would have visualization driving by.

It's on the main drag so to speak.

So you know about it and around, you know, kind of the educational triangle I dubbed it with the library here, the Historical Society here and the T-ball is kinda like here's your triangle of knowledge here on the history of Albion.

The statue was done and then the plaque tells more about T-ball.

Mr.

Sacharski's got a real cool photo of the all-star guys that played in that game up at Michigan State University.

- Now, that black and white video from the T-ball game at Michigan State University was accepted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

That is pretty cool.

Well, in Sault Ste.

Marie, history isn't just something you read, it's something that surrounds you.

The Sault is Michigan's oldest city, settled along the St.

Marys River by Father Jacques Marquette in 1668.

More than 350 years later, much has changed, but the stories are still very much alive.

And as Jamie Mankiewicz shows us, they live in three unforgettable places.

(screen whooshing) (tranquil music) - This is the Museum Ship Valley Camp docked in the Sault since July 4th, 1968, the city's tricentennial.

Once a working freighter, now she houses hundreds of maritime artifacts.

Paul Sabourin is part historian, part curator, and all heart when it comes to preserving this Great Lakes legacy.

- This year, one would have to remember November 10th, 1975 and on Lake Superior, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald went to the bottom.

(lively music) - [Jamie] Below the deck, a documentary plays in a converted cargo hold, a somber tribute to 29 men lost aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on a stormy night, November 10th, 1975.

- After the investigation by the US Coast Guard, then the two lifeboat, and I refer to it as two because there were two on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

But in this case here we have one and a half lifeboat.

So lifeboat number two was spotted and recovered on the shore of Ontario, Lake Superior.

Lifeboat number one was spotted the next morning by the Arthur M. Anderson at about 8 o'clock on November the 11th, floating upside down.

Thanks to Jimmy Hobaugh, who was our executive director and retired US Coast Guard, we ended up with the two lifeboats.

And with that then we know that Gordon Lightfoot with "The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.

- [Jamie] Elsewhere, tributes to the Carl D. Bradley, which sank in November of 1958.

Of the 35 crew members, 33 died in the sinking.

The valley Camp also contains this carved eagle rescued from the wreckage of the Vienna, another ship that went down in Whitefish Bay, along with paintings, ship models and memorials.

- This is also the Captain John P. Wellington Great Lakes Marine Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame, as you can see around here , are all Hall of Famers inductees.

So every second year, we have an alternate Canadian American that's inducted to the Hall of Fame.

And it is very much a dedication and especially one that would commemorate the maritime involvement of that particular person.

- [Jamie] Above deck, you get an up close look at where the crew worked, ate, and slept, places where you can easily imagine them in the galley, playing cards and eating meals together.

Just a few blocks away from the Valley Camp, the Tower of History.

Built in 1968, it rises 210 feet up, offering views of Sault Ste.

Marie, the International Bridge that connects the community to Canada and the ever-changing Soo Locks.

- One can go in, again six months of the year, and either go up 292 steps if they're fit and willing.

But the other option is to push on the button and the elevator will whisk you up 45 seconds.

And from there, you'll be able to see the view of the city of Sault Ste.

Marie in all directions.

- [Jamie] And to round out the trio of Sault historic sites, the River of History Museum.

Exhibits inside follow the story of the region from ice glaciers to Native American life, fur traders, missionaries, and modern-day Michigan.

It's a full arc of the region's history told across centuries.

- I would say welcome to Sault Ste.

Marie.

Take I-75 if you're coming from south, take M-28 if you're coming from the west.

And if you're coming from the east and it's points of Canada, cross the bridge.

Come over to Sault Ste.

Marie, Michigan and make it a point of visiting the Museum Ship Valley Camp, the Tower of History, and also all of the other sites that are here, a day, two days, three days.

There's camping, there's facilities, and we always say welcome to the Sault.

(screen whooshing) - For more information on touring these three spots and how to plan your visit, head to saulthistoricsites.com.

A few seasons back, Adam was part of the "Destination Michigan" team that ventured to the Keweenaw in the depths of winter.

Brr.

(Stefanie Chuckling) He finally returned without the snow to explore Michigan's Copper Country.

(screen whooshing) (lively music) - The Keweenaw Peninsula is a landmass that juts into the heart of Lake Superior.

We like to refer to ourselves as the Upper Peninsula's Upper Peninsula.

- [Adam] A journey to the Keweenaw begins fittingly with a bridge crossing over the Portage Lake Lift Bridge, known as the Gateway to the Keweenaw.

Once across, it doesn't take long to notice the signs that you've arrived in Copper Country.

- It was the epicenter of a massive copper boom in the 1850s, 1860s and into the early 1900s.

So at that time when copper was discovered in an economical fashion, you know, we had tens of thousands of people locate here.

At one point in time, Houghton County was the second most populous county in the state of Michigan, second only to Wayne County, Michigan.

So you have, you know, communities that popped up along where all these either shipping opportunities or mining camps were located.

And many of those communities, even after the population collapsed in the, you know, early 1900s 'cause mining became uneconomical in the region, those communities still exist, right?

And so they're small, they're quaint, they're Midwestern nice.

You know, a lot of times, right, these are small communities that have really grown up around, again, the nature, the lake shore.

It's a really cool experience for people to come in.

And every little community has its own personality, which I think is really fascinating for people to come up here.

You know, Copper Harbor is straight out of the West Coast, right?

Like if you're in the Pacific Northwest, you feel like you're out there in Oregon or Washington State because of all the access to water and nature and all that kind of fun stuff, outdoor recreation trails.

Eagle Harbor's a sleepy little community, got a beautiful lighthouse, great places to eat, again right there on the water.

Calumet is pretty much the epicenter of the historical copper room here in the Keweenaw.

So the Keweenaw National Historical Park's headquarters and visitor center is located right in Calumet.

And then right across the street is the beautiful community of Laurium, which also has a lot of the old historical homes that were built during the mining heyday.

Many of the mansions that were built because of the mining bosses that were making a lot of money, they decided to live in Laurium.

So you can go up and down the street and see these beautiful homes that are still maintained, many of which you can actually stay in.

Of course, the metro, you know, the big city if you will, is Houghton and Hancock.

That's where a lot of your lodging, your dining amenities and of course the home to Michigan Technological University is located in Houghton.

And that brings in a lot of cool experiences for, you know, visitors and locals alike.

- [Adam] In 1992, Congress established the Keweenaw National Historical Park to preserve and interpret the region's copper mining history.

The park includes the Calumet Visitor Center in downtown Calumet.

- Most people, when they expect a national park, you enter the gate and you see this expansive view.

But here you get that, but in different aspects.

You know, we still have our entrance sign and right behind it, the statue of Agassiz.

And you change your mind is what I like to think is turn on that time capsule and think back to the early 1900s, and how diverse and changed, but also still standing these historic buildings are that we are here to preserve and protect.

- [Adam] The visitor center spans three floors filled with photos, exhibits, and artifacts that bring the story of copper mining to life.

Guests can join guided tours or receive a personalized itinerary to explore more than 20 unique heritage sites spread across the peninsula, each telling part of the history and legacy of the copper mining boom.

- Calumet is actually a very small geographically village.

It's only like 100 acres now, and it started out even smaller than that as what the mining companies were willing to set aside to allow for private development.

At one point in time, that 90 or so acres hosted about 5,000 people, which is comparable to the population density in Brooklyn today.

So there were a lot of people crammed into a very small amount of space.

And as often happens, particularly in areas where you heat seven or eight months out of the year, things were vulnerable to fire.

And so you see a lot of brick and sandstone and just substantial construction.

- [Adam] The National Historical Park partners with sites managed by state and local governments, private businesses and nonprofit organizations, one of the most notable being the historic Calumet Theater.

- Well, the Calumet Theater was built as a nation's first municipal theater.

It was owned by the people and it was for the people.

And from the very beginning through to today, it's been a place where graduations were held and community groups, such as the Masons and Odd Fellows would have gatherings and events.

It's also been very important to draw the connections between Calumet and the broader world because some of the biggest names in showbiz were performing on the stage here.

It shows you that economic, a part of the story again, that this was a place for Sarah Bernhardt, Madame Modjeska, John Philip Sousa, and others to visit.

- [Adam] Spending time in the theater, exploring Calumet and immersing yourself in the Keweenaw makes it easy to imagine what life was like here during the mining heyday.

- All that wealth that was generated from the copper boom, there was a lot of impressive activity, a lot of folks relocated to this region.

And then with that came towards.

So back in the 1850s, we have evidence of people coming and taking laker ships from Chicago up here to breathe in the clean air and experience the wellness values of nature.

That really kind of kicked off this idea of the UP and the Keweenaw being a place for people who had time and money to come up here and recreate natural beauty and the outdoors.

The Keweenaw digs into people's soul.

Like that's what I hear people say when they come up here.

Some people have this spiritual connection when they come up here.

Whether it's the Lake Superior, it's the great outdoors, it's the friendly people, there's just something about the Keweenaw that just kind of claws into you and you say, "That place is unique and special."

And there's no other way to put it into words.

It's just a feeling that people get when they get up here.

And I think it's because it's a chance for people to take that deep breath and just kind of let some of those worries and those cares just slip away 'cause things move a little bit slower up here.

That lack of cell phone service, you know, it's something that allows you to disconnect and really appreciate it.

So that history, it's the people, it's the connection with nature.

You put those three things together, it's a pretty cool experience.

(screen whooshing) - Now here's a few simple travel tips to share for visiting the Keweenaw peninsula.

Give yourself plenty of time to get there and ample time to adventure around.

But make sure you plan ahead and know your routes.

Self-service does become scarce the farther north you go.

Well, that's wraps up this edition of "Destination Michigan."

We hope you learned something new and added some new spots to visit on your next trip around the Mitten.

Thanks for watching, we'll see you again soon for another edition of "Destination Michigan."

(lively music)