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.

2008 Upper Deck Series 1

I'm only doing this because I feel obligated. There is nothing much at all interesting going on in this set. The base cards look like 1995 Upper Deck. The O-Pee-Chee insert cards sorta resemble 1969 Topps, and the Hot Commodities insert cards look like insert cards from one mid 90's Fleer. Nothing much original at all going on with these. 

This is the first year in a long time that I've collected Upper Deck and that's only because these fell in my lap so to speak. I see I haven't been missing much. I do like the card of Chad Durbin, where you can see Curtis Granderson way back in center field getting ready to make a mad dash to whichever wall this ball ends up going over. Anyhow, on to the checklist.

47 Edgar Renteria

80 Jacque Jones

261 Jeremy Bonderman

262 Chad Durbin

263 Andrew Miller

264 Bobby Seay

265 Todd Jones

266 Brandon Inge

267 Sean Casey

268 Placido Polanco

269 Gary Sheffield

270 Magglio Ordonez

377 Magglio Ordonez Team Checklist

385 Curtis Granderson Season Highlights

394 Justin Verlander Season Highlights

I always liked '69 Topps. But these just flat out suck. You can barely make out the player's name with the light gray metallic ink used. There was not much effort put into these at all.

OPC-MO Magglio Ordonez

OPC-ER Edgar Renteria

OPC-GS Gary Sheffield

And yet another lackluster insert set. Oooh, flames in the background. I get it. Hot Commodites. Oh boy! Didn't Fleer do something like this about ten years in a row with the Smoke N Heat insert cards. Yawn.

HC13 Justin Verlander

HC15 Gary Sheffield

I just happened to pull two of the Yankee Stadium legacy cards that were games against the Tigers. Whitey Ford and Kevin Maas. Whitey didn't even play in the game he's pictured on. I would put up a pic of one of them, but I just realized that I've lost total interest in this set. Plus the Tigers game is about to start and I want a beer.

A Tale of Two Saturdays

We are now two weeks into the 2008 baseball season and I have made a trip to each of the parks in my new hometown of Chicago. (Well, Elgin, but I'm working on it...)

So here is a brief recap.

Weather at Wrigley: Beautiful clear skies, temps in the upper 50's.

Weather at The Cell: Torrential downpour, temps in the upper 30's.

Statue unveiled at Wrigley: Ernie Banks

Statue unveiled at The Cell: Juan Uribe

Seats at Wrigley: 7th row behind home plate, $60

Seats at The Cell: 18th row behind right center, $32

The View at Wrigley: Do I really need to describe this?

The View at The Cell: 30,000 empty seats.

Overheard at Wrigley: Do you serve Heineken?

Overheard at The Cell: Detroit Sucks!

Prominent Sponsor at Wrigley: Budweiser

Prominent Sponsor at The Cell: Jim Beam

Entertainment for kids at Wrigley: Cheering for Kosuke Fukudome.

Entertainment for kids at the Cell: Getting a tattoo out in right field.

They don't call 'em clichés for nothing.....

Here are a few links to some video I took at both games.

All joking aside, The Cell was a lot nicer place than I thought it would be. The winter weather and Gavin @&#^$% Floyd almost pitching a no-hitter against out Murderers Woe just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. 

Someday I'll go back, preferably when Hawk Harrelson and A.J. Pierswhazhizname are dead. YOU CAN PUT 'EM IN THE GROUND........YES!!!