Detroit: Comerica Park
April showers may bring free baseball.
If there’s one performance enhancing drug that’s going to get me through this season-long trek to all 30 MLB ballparks, it’s nostalgia.
During my adolescence in Toledo, it was hard to ignore the strong cultural influence of our neighbor to the north, Detroit. Tigers and Pistons games were a fixture in our household, and soon the walls of my room were adorned with all-or-nothing, free-swinging sluggers like Cecil Fielder and Mickey Tettleton, alongside the swaggering, take no shit, two-time champion Bad Boys: Isiah Thomas, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, et al.
Favorite pizza? Little Caesars.1
Best radio station? 89X.2
$29? Two for $50.
Detroit plays a prominent role in some of my most cherished memories. I had been to baseball games at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland and Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati as a little tyke, but I don’t have very clear memories of either. My first game at old Tiger Stadium on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull was transformative. It was the first time I had ever set foot in a “jewel box” ballpark, with nearly 80 years of history to its name before I ever laid eyes on it in person.
Like many of the parks of its era, Tiger Stadium had unique quirks that the “cookie cutter” stadiums of the 1960s and ‘70s sought to eliminate: an impossibly deep center field stretching 440 feet from home plate, a large flagpole in play along the wall in left center, and the right field upper deck that hung over the field of play 10 feet inside the wall. I don’t remember exactly how many games I watched at Tiger Stadium before its last hurrah in 1999 , but I can confidently say that it’s more than I’ve seen in Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park that I visited earlier this season, despite living an hour-and-a-half closer to Cincy than Detroit for the past 20 years.
As a ‘90s grunge kid branching out into punk and indie rock during my last two years of high school, the bands I wanted to see rarely stopped in Toledo, necessitating a jaunt up I-75 to the Motor City. The one and only time I got to see The Ramones was in November of 1995 on the ¡Adios Amigos! tour, opening for White Zombie at The Palace of Auburn Hills (RIP). In addition to blowing my mind with a career-spanning 22 song set, I’m pretty sure this was the first time I ever caught a whiff of the electric lettuce in a public place.
My cousins and I made enough trips up north to see shows at St. Andrew’s Hall and the State Theatre that we even developed our own traditions, like holding our breath for as long as we could as we sped through the polluted air over Carbon Works and Zug Island. Or taking a post-show, pre-GPS wrong turn and ending up in a neighborhood of ill repute with only a vague recollection of how to get back to the freeway. Or stopping for midnight coffee and pancakes at the Eureka Road Denny’s, prolonging the good times before our post-curfew trek back to Ohio.
With the exception of the first couple of games at Tiger Stadium, my mom wasn’t really part of my reindeer games in Detroit. In fact, I’m not even sure that I always got permission every time that we went up there. Listen, I wasn’t a delinquent or anything, just a kid from Toledo who couldn’t wait to get out of Toledo. Sometimes rules got bent.
Anyway, fast forward *cough* three decades or so *cough cough*, when I was making my plan to visit Comerica Park for this 30 ballpark tour, I asked my mom if she wanted to join me for a day game. Without hesitation, she replied with an enthusiastic “yes,” so I scored a couple of $20 club seats off StubHub and we were all set.
In my last post, I mentioned that rainouts can wreak havoc on a planned outing to a baseball game. However, they also have the ability to work to your benefit.
The Twins-Tigers game scheduled for Thursday, April 11 was postponed due to rain. The game was rescheduled for Saturday, April 13 as the second game of a straight doubleheader. Anyone with tickets for Saturday’s regularly scheduled game – like, say, us – were treated to two games for the price of one. Free baseball!
I thought the late ‘80s/early ‘90s Tigers were fun to watch, but I wouldn’t say I was a die hard fan at the time. It really wasn’t until 2003 when the team set an American League record for losses in a season that I finally threw in my lot with Detroit. Never accuse me of being a bandwagon jumper. I went to probably a half dozen games at Comerica Park that summer, including a 17-inning affair that started with visiting hurler Roger Clemens trying for win #300, being foiled, and then eventually seeing his Yankee teammates prevail several hours later.
Comerica Park was also a stop on the way home for Erin and me in 2009 after I asked her to marry me at a rented beach house on Lake Michigan. She said “yes,” in case you were wondering.
I’ve been to Comerica more than any other ballpark, though I haven’t caught a game there since before COVID. My stepdad, Leonard, who sadly passed a couple of years ago, used to call me whenever some Tigers tickets landed in his lap, which seemed to happen a lot. He didn’t really care about baseball, but he knew I did and was always more than happy to hook me up. I was only able to take him up on it a handful of times: they were usually tickets for the game that night and it takes about three and a half hours to get to Detroit from Columbus, but when it worked out, I jumped on the opportunities. I think we only ever went to one game together, with my mom and Erin in tow, whooping it up in the mezzanine seats.
We got to the ballpark when gates opened at 11:40 a.m. and did a lap around the main concourse to get our bearings. I’ve been here so many times, and not much has changed in the past few years aside from the installation of the second largest video scoreboard in MLB. That said, in all my visits, I never paid much attention to the Tigers Hall of Fame sculpture garden in left center field, or the giant baseball player topiaries outside the third base concourse, or the tiger merry-go-round in the middle of the food court behind home plate.
The weather report said it would get up to about 60 degrees, but probably not until the second game of the doubleheader. The wind was whipping out to left field at an impressive clip, making it downright chilly in the shade. But that’s not where our seats were. In section 326, behind home plate and a little bit to the right, the upper deck grandstand did an admirable job of blocking the breeze. Without a cloud in the sky, the sun shone down pleasantly, but relentlessly. Flashback to a balmy day two weeks ago in Cincy, I got sunblock in my eye and missed a couple of innings. Here in cool and mild Detroit, I skipped it and began my long, slow transition from Pale Face to Lobster Boy.
Much like the homer happy Tiger lineups I grew up watching, the 2024 edition swings and misses a lot. Minnesota Twins starter Joe Ryan racked up a whopping 12 strikeouts in six innings as Detroit batters came up empty time and time again. However, thanks to efficient pitching from Tigers pitcher Kenta Maeda and some sparkling defense behind him, Detroit held a 3-2 lead after seven frames. Pinch hitter Ryan Jeffers would slug a solo homer in the top of the 8th to tie the game, and a scoreless 9th would send the game to extra innings. More free baseball!
It’s said that one of the joys of baseball is that there’s always a chance you’ll see something happen that you’ve never seen before. As the game moved into the 12th inning in a 4-4 tie, the Twins rallied, posted another run and loaded the bases. Tigers reliever Alex Lange would strike out the next two batters before Jeffers returned to the plate, hitting a routine ground ball botched by third baseman Zach McKinstry that allowed three runners to score. Detroit manager A.J. Hinch popped out of the dugout, took the ball from Lange and gave it to McKinstry to get the final out of the inning. McKinstry – not a pitcher, mind you – lobbed a series of meatballs toward home plate, walking the first batter he faced and giving up an embarrassing three-run homer to Twins right fielder Matt Wallner. I’ve seen plenty of position players come in to pitch when a manager doesn’t want to waste a bullpen arm, but I’ve never seen one punish a player for committing a crucial error by making him take his lumps on the mound.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stands cleared out after the McKinstry error that led to a Tigers defeat. I’m not sure if people were fully aware that there was a second game to be played after a 40 minute break, but after 12 innings and a painful loss I can fully understand the urge to head home. I took the pause between games as an opportunity to get a few more steps in and go shopping for a memento, besides the promotional pom-pom beanie, of course. I settled on a pin of the mascot Paws, posing with a bat as if he just got a hit, but I know in my head that he actually swung and missed.
I won’t bore you with the details of the second game, except to note that the few remaining fans in our section seemed to enjoy ribbing me about my reactions to foul balls hit in our vicinity. I was a center fielder in my last year of organized baseball and I haven’t lost my first step, what can I say? Nice folks though. I suppose you have to have an overall positive outlook to sit in a seat for six hours, 21 innings in total, and endure two pathetic losses.
There certainly were a few moments during Game 2 where I considered checking out like most of the rest of the day’s crowd did. Ultimately, I hung in until the end primarily to say I did it. It’s kind of a microcosm of the whole adventure: I can go to a lot of ballparks this year without going to all 30, but where’s the story in that? Why not set an audacious but achievable goal and go for it?
Apart from a way overpriced Ball Park3 hot dog, Mom and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so we made a special trip a little out of our way to Loui’s Pizza in the suburb of Hazel Park. The place was packed when we showed up and we expected a wait, but they had a freshly cleaned table in the back by the bar and sat us immediately.
This is a quintessential neighborhood pizza joint. Nondescript exterior, no windows and some simple, vintage signage that may date all the way back to the founding of the restaurant in 1954. Inside, formica-topped tables and pleather booths sit beneath red painted ceilings. The wood paneled walls are barely visible behind a bounty of beer bric-a-brac, memorabilia photos and thousands of empty chianti bottles, messages hand-scrawled on their straw baskets. Absolutely bumping on a Saturday night, mostly regulars by my estimation.
I have to thank Tony P. for the recommendation: this is some legit Detroit-style pizza they’ve been deep dishing out here for 70 years. Crust heavy but not too dense, plentiful brick cheese charred to the edges and a sauce on top with just the right levels of acidity and spice. I had two big corner pieces and had to stop myself lest I might fall into a carb coma on the hour-long drive home. Thoroughly enjoyable pizza, atmosphere and experience.
While the doubleheader took Detroit exploration time off the table, the history I have with this city will suffice on this visit. I’ve been having fun here since I was a teenager, and I never leave disappointed.
Bonus game:
As I mentioned in a previous post, I admired this view of Toledo’s Fifth Third Field, home of the world-famous Mud Hens, for the first 11 home openers in this yard. I figured, on my way home from Detroit, I should catch a game here for old times’ sake. So I reached out to my friend and former bandmate David4 to see if he wanted to join me on this nostalgia trip.
We caught up over a beer at the Earnest Brew Works tap room a block away from the park and then walked up to the ticket window. “Can I have two tickets please? I don’t care where. We’re not going to use the seats,” I explained to the clerk.
The Sunday afternoon game was lightly attended, despite it being a gorgeous day for baseball. We sauntered over to our old haunt next to the foul pole in right field, continuing our conversation as the Hens annihilated the visiting squad from Indianapolis 16-6.
It’s been more than 20 years since I lived in Toledo and I haven’t been to Fifth Third Field in close to a decade, but it immediately felt like home. This game, and all the nostalgia that comes along with it, just hits me like that.
NEXT GAMES:
San Diego Padres at Colorado Rockies, Thursday, April 25, 1:10 p.m. MDT, Coors Field
Arizona Diamondbacks at Seattle Mariners, Friday, April 26, 6:40 p.m. PDT, T-Mobile Park
Soundtrack:
I don’t know how many times my wife and I have had a conversation that starts with “Didn’t Little Caesar’s used to be good?” Maybe it was always garbage, or maybe it got worse over time, or maybe kid palates are not to be trusted. But “Crazy Bread”? C’mon, that stuff was the stuff.
Technically Windsor, but a Detroit icon nonetheless. At least until they went country.
Ball Park has been the official hot dog of the Detroit Tigers since 1958 and the team actually helped to popularize the brand, which is currently the top-selling hot dog in the U.S. (Official hot dog brands of every MLB team here.)
If you’re into woodworking, you probably know David as the creative force behind Make Something. Super talented guy, one of my favorite people on this dumb planet.
"One question though, shouldn’t this bar be set up near Section 8?"
<Insert Statler & Waldorf GIF here>
I've already stocked up on the SPF 50 for ya' Dude! 😎 (To all other Readers, I'm somehow actually paler than Justin. As my partners Dad put it while we were at the pool, "You're alarmingly Caucasian")
Not me just learning 89X went country 🫠