by Jeanine Matlow
Legal News
Ask Stewart Weiner anything about baseball and he can rattle off the most impressive stats. By day, the 58-year-old shareholder at Southfield’s Maddin Hauser Wartell Roth and Heller makes a living as a business lawyer. In his spare time, he has been known to hit the road for the love of baseball.
Weiner lives in Franklin with his wife, Cheryl, and they have two grown sons. He has two graduate degrees: one in public administration from University of Michigan’s School of Social Work and a law degree from University of Detroit Mercy. Weiner says he has a bit of a hybrid practice that includes anything from transactional and litigation relating to family businesses to shareholder disputes.
Since his sons were young, Weiner has been coaching baseball and taking road trips around the country to see the different baseball stadiums.
“This was a disguised way of really seeing the United States,” he says.
Weiner, who was born and raised in New York, is a big Yankees fan, but has adopted the Tigers since he has been in Detroit. He has been to several World Series and All-Star games and has visited more than 20 stadiums.
His family has found this to be a great way to spend time together. Weiner made a deal with his wife, who knits at the games. On every trip, they had to do something cultural in the city they were visiting. She wants her tombstone to read: “Good Sport.”
Weiner appreciates his wife’s willingness to go along for the ride.
“There is a lot of testosterone in our family between myself, our sons and our two male dogs,” he says. “She’s a trouper. When she met me and married me, I’m sure she
wasn’t expecting this.”
There have been plenty of highlights along the way, like meeting actor/producer Rob Reiner, who was doing the same thing for his kids.
“We have a lot of fun,” Weiner says.
Part of the reason he has a passion for baseball is that it is a slow game.
“You can go with a client and talk or go with your family and talk,” he says.
In 2003, while visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., the big blackout hit, so they quickly began to head back home. Somehow they managed to stay one step ahead of the outage the entire time, just missing it in each city. They stopped and visited family with generators and arrived home around the time the power returned.
“That was a great, great adventure,” Weiner says. “It was like The Fugitive. We were one step ahead of the law.”
His office is filled with memorabilia, with one wall devoted to family photos, another to baseball, and a third to the Green Bay Packers. Collectibles include tickets for the last Tiger Playoff/World Series venture and a photo of Babe Ruth hitting a home run at the old Briggs Stadium.
Weiner is also a big fan of the Green Bay Packers and a shareholder of the team. He has only missed one Packer/Lion game in Detroit since 1984.
“It is the only team owned by the community,” he says of this year’s Super Bowl champs.
At home, his den contains old autographs, autographed baseballs, and rare photographs of baseball legends Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio. Many of his autographed baseballs come from his son, who would often charm the ballplayers into signing balls.
Dan Smith, who met Weiner while coaching baseball at the Franklin Baseball League where the two became friends, has traveled with him to a few games.
“He just has a real passion for baseball and his family and he ties the two together by going to visit other stadiums,” Smith says. “He’s just a great family man and a great guy.”
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