Love, Comerica Style

I wrapped up my five day weekend/business trip/vacation with a game at Comerica Park last night. As always, it was a great time with great friends. Despite a wasted outing by Nate Robertson, it was great to be back in the city for a game.

Over in the right hand column, you might notice a link to the Detroit Tigers Forum. Originally born in 1996 at freep.com, it's as great a collection of cyberspace Tiger fans as you will ever find. (Don't try the link today, as the site is temporarily down...) Over the years of endless debates about everything ranging from just how sorry a GM Randy Smith was to what type of beer we might be tasting some evening during a game, the Forum has brought together a couple hundred Tiger fans from all over the globe to commiserate and celebrate the last 12 years of Tigers baseball.

Over the years many of us have met in "real life," and I've developed great friendships with people I would have otherwise never met. I met up with three such fellows yesterday. They go by the names of Joe Sweet, LP Fan, and Nightwing in our forum, and I'll refer to them the same around here. (LP Fan was the guy that I went on the monster road trip with earlier this year.)

We did what every Tiger fan should do on game day, and that's meet up at Nemo's for pre-game beers and eats before taking the Nemo's bus over to the park for the game. Prior to the food and drink though, we walked over to see Tiger Stadium for what I am sure will be my last time.

The demolishing is about halfway complete. For the first time in my life, I stood on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull and was able to look into the stadium. All of the outfield is entirely gone. There was nothing left but the flag pole. All of the seats have been stripped from the lower level of what is left of the stadium. It was a weird combination of emotions to see the place where I spent so many great nights in my youth mostly reduced to rubble. It was like visiting that sick relative that you know you are seeing for the last time. It was sad, but you'll always remember her in her prime, and not how she was when she finally went.

However, the rest of the day was enjoyable. It was a nice evening at Comerica Park. The game was nothing to write home about. Nate pitched a great game, only to see F-Rod blow it in the 8th. The A's won 3-2. Oh well, we're not going anywhere this year anyway. This brings my 2008 record to 4-4 at Tigers games, with my last planned trip to see them play coming up Friday night at U.S. Cellular Comiskey Park Field.

Our gang had loads of fun catching up last night, and many missing forumites were discussed, but to a man we all agreed that we couldn't wait to do it again next year. And isn't that really one of the great things about baseball? No matter what, there is always next year.

I had a great time boys. Thanks.