Category: travel

On my first evening in Detroit I hit up the Tigers game. It was great!!

I was staying at a Holiday Inn (platinum style!) in downtown Detroit, so it was only a short stroll over to the park. Downtown Detroit isn’t doing too great. There were probably 6 or 7 buildings that I walked by that were boarded up with signs advertising “Cheap lease!” Some of those boarded up buildings were skyscrapers – extra sad. There were broken windows and a fair amount of graffiti, but overall it was a pretty clean environment.

Despite the financial doom and gloom, the park was bustling with activity. I got there just after 5pm when will-call opened. I approached the window and asked for my tickets. Stupidly, I approached the ‘players will-call’ window and the guy behind the counter was none-to-pleased that I made a mistake. His frustrations at my mistake changed to a bit of respect when he looked at the tickets.

“hm. These sir, are very good seats.”

And that they were! I was just a few rows back from home plate on the Tiger’s side in the shade. The view was spectacular. I ordered a $3.75 Lemonade and got to watching. Superstar Jackson was pitching for the Tigers and he was stupidly good. He was still throwing 95+ mph pitches into the ninth inning. The Tigers won it, 4 to 2.

A few things about the park. The tigers everywhere are just totally totally awesome. There are two on top of the score board in full color. It seems that whenever a player reaches home plate the eyes of the tigers glow green. Awesome! The crowd wasn’t as energetic as the Red Sox crowd. Occasionally the organ at the baseball diamond would start a riff to get people clapping for a rally… and the claps would just kinda fade to crap as soon as the organ stopped. I remember Fenway fans having a bit more spunk.

Overall a great game and a beautiful park.

I strongly recommend that anyone who finds themselves in Detroit check out the baseball park, it’s a really fun experience.

On the flight to Detroit yesterday I met a hilarious man named Biz. He was a little old dude who was flying back home to Detroit to hang out with some of his childhood friends for some golf. He was pretty chatty on the flight, but not in the annoying manner. He was actually really awesome. Back in his hayday, he’d been selected for the Army in the draft and served two years in Korea. He met his wife during training in Kentucky and lived there now with his four boys aged 21 to 36. He had a ton of stories but his best went a little something like this:

I’ll tell you something great I did. You know how your driver’s license is always a terrible picture? They won’t even let you take a picture more than once. Well, for the last four years I’ve been stuck with a terrible license picture. When they took the picture, I wasn’t ready and I wasn’t even wearing a nice shirt. It was a terrible picture. So when it was time to renew my license, I went to my barber shop and asked my barber to give me the best haircut he’d ever given me. And he did it up really nice. Then I went to the DMV and when I got to the front of the line there was this big sargent lady, she must have been 6’3″. I put on all my charm and after she took my information I asked her if I could go out to my car to get a few things I forgot. She said it’d be okay, so I went out to my car and got my white suit and my white ruffled shirt and my bow tie and put them on. Then I walked back inside, and people laughed because I was wearing my suit shirt with my shorts and loafers. But I didn’t mind. I walked right up to that sargent and I said “If it’s okay, can you take a few pictures if the first one doesn’t come out okay?” She agreed! So I stood in front of the blue screen and I smiled. They took the first one and asked me if it was okay, a whole bunch of people were giving their opinions. They took three pictures before everyone agreed it was great!

Biz then pulled out his wallet and showed me what must have been the most adorable license picture I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a little gray haired man with a perfect white suit and a black tie, beaming like it was the best day of his life.

“The moral of this story,” he finished, “is that if you’re gonna get your picture taken, wear a nice shirt.”

Ha! Way to go Biz.