 FEBRUARY 20 • 2020 | 5

H

orace Dodge didn’
t 
build the house on 
West Forest Avenue, 
but he ushered it into the new 
century with an expanded foot-
print and cutting-edge technol-
ogy. The home’
s 
indoor plumbing 
would have long 
since lost its 
novelty but for 
the curious case 
of bathroom tile 
inlay in the shape 
of a Jewish star.
Was Horace’
s handiwork 
an elaborate practical joke on 
Henry Ford? A secret message 
to Albert Kahn? Instead, it 
was made to match (or maybe 
inspired?) the logo for a pet 
project he and his brother 
were tinkering with in the 
carriage house out back. That 
first Dodge followed their ball 
bearings, bicycles, Olds trans-
missions and Ford engines 
— a constant state of change 
meriting the logo of two deltas, 
inverted and interwoven into a 
six-sided star.
Dodge Brothers vehicles 
would lead Horace to part 
ways with Ford, commission 

Kahn to build Rose Terrace in 
Grosse Pointe and amass a per-
sonal fortune that amounted to 
approximately .1% of the coun-
try’
s GDP, all before succumb-
ing to Spanish flu in 1920.
One hundred years later, 
Louis Levin and Maggie 
O’
Hara moved into Horace’
s 
house and, as one does, went 
to the bathroom. The deltas 
underfoot suit them. Each is in 
Detroit navigating change for 
institutions looking to remain 
cohesive, competitive and com-
pelling a century on, give or 
take a couple decades.
But first, the Meet Cute.
A lot of people grow up 
playing ball in the spring and 
going to camp in the summer, 
until they actually grow up. 
Maggie never let go of her 
bat and glove, nor Louis his 
canoe and paddle. Both hail 
from Chicago suburbs and 
both found their way to the 
Economics Department at the 
University of Chicago before 
a mutual friend — a real-life 
human person who happens to 
be named Alexa — introduced 
them in their junior year.
As though drawn together 

by an invisible hand, these 
budding economists were 
Keynes on each other (forgive 
the Laffer) 2.5 hours into their 
first cup of coffee together.
Within hours of graduating 
the following spring, Louis 
was on a familiar drive to the 
Northwoods of Wisconsin, 
home to Camp Nebagamon for 
Boys. Maggie took a detour to 
Australia for a swan song with 
the school softball team en 
route to Detroit, where she has 
worked in the Tigers’
 Analytics 
Department since 2017.
Louis has long loved the 
traditions and renditions of 
Camp Nebagamon, founded in 
1929 on the lakeside logging 
grounds of the Weyerhaeuser 
Paper Company. (I am an 
alumnus of Camp Nebagamon; 
it has been 20 years since my 
last CN summer, so I can now 
say with dispassionate objectiv-
ity that the camp is the bestest 
camp.)
For Louis, long since 
removed from his days as a 
camper, it’
s the work between 
seasons no one sees — the 
attention to detail, incremental 
enhancements, tweaking the 

line-up, identifying prospects, 
retaining veterans — that make 
possible, say, the spontaneous 
midsummer introduction of a 
DIY dunk tank.
Same with the Tigers, 
except the dunk tank is called 
“rebuilding.” Maggie joined 
the team just as the club’
s 
free-spending days were com-
ing to an end. They traded 
J.D. Martinez, Alex Avila and 
Justin Verlander within weeks 
of her arrival. (Her fellow 
Maggs, Magglio Ordóñez, had 
already been mayor of Sotillo, 
Venezuela, for three years by 
then.) 
In an era when a veritable 
shoe-shine boy like me is 
asking about moneyballs, the 
work of Major League analytics 
is no longer exploiting mar-
ket inefficiencies, but instead 
focused on efficient player 
development. Maggie, now a 
senior analyst, works closely 
with coaches to help tailor 
training for the 300 non-Tigers 
playing on seven affiliated 
teams, from the Dominican 
Republic to the newly minted 
Norwich Sea Unicorns. (Not 
Narwhals, Norwich? Come on, 
Connecticut!)
To complement big data cap-
tured by swing trackers in the 
bat handles and (legal) video, 
Maggie draws on her playing 
days as a tactical “baserunning 
machine” to spot secondary 
indicators from the scouts’
 
seats 20 rows behind home 
plate.
Same with Louis at 
Nebagamon. September 

continued on page 6

Ben Falik

Jewfro
Detroit
In
Tandem

Views

Louis
Levin and 
Maggie 
O’
Hara

ADRIENNE LEVIN

