Day 4 - Detroit

Start: Greenfield, IN
Stop: Detroit, MI – Comerica Park – Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Detroit Tigers
Finish: Novi, MI

After the game on Friday night, we got in the car and headed towards Indianapolis to stay at my fiancée’s apartment with her and her roommate. Unfortunately, Indy is 4 hours away from St. Louis, and in the Eastern Time Zone. So we got to her apartment at 3:30am and promptly got our stuff together and went to bed. We woke up around 8am, had breakfast with Rachel and her roommate at McDonald’s and headed off to Detroit to make it to the 3:55pm game at Comerica.

This was the second game we would be attending with a bigger group than just the three of us. Our aunt and uncle and their family, as well as our grandpa and grandma, met us at our aunt and uncle’s house. Our uncle was able to get very good seats to the game, so we were able to enjoy the game from 5 rows behind the Tigers’ dugout. We got there in time to see the Dodgers batting practice, but it wasn’t very flashy. We figured they may have been practicing opposite field hitting or something, because we didn’t see any go over the fence.

We have all been to Comerica Park before, so we were familiar with the park and with the area. Kyle wasn’t overly impressed with the park in the preview a few weeks ago, but once we got there, he seemed to change his mind a bit. There’s something nice about a downtown ballpark, and Comerica is definitely a downtown ballpark. You get to see all the fans walking to the game and all the local businesses showing support for the team (including a church sign near the park that says “Pray for the Tigers here!”). Inside the park was also nice. The scoreboard wasn’t anything to write home about, but we may have our standards too high after seeing the new high-definition board at Kansas City. The stadium was packed (sell-out game) and the fans were very into the game. It certainly helped that team was winning, but we were still impressed with the level of fan interest and knowledge.

The Tigers took the lead in the fourth inning, scoring six runs to make it 7-4. They allowed more runs, but never gave up the lead. Fan favorite Pudge Rodriguez went 3-4 and Miguel Cabrera and Marcus Thames both hit home runs.

We had a good time with our family there as well. Our youngest cousin, Evan, had just come from a picnic and he got his face painted to look like a tiger, in hopes that he could get up on the video board at the park. He didn’t get on by himself, but when the woman sitting in front of us held up a poster with something written on it, he got up next to her and got on the board for a second. We also got him to go talk to Paws, the Tigers’ mascot. Paws autographed his program and he took a picture with the four of us.

After the game, we went out for food at a Greek restaurant, which took a while because we had a big party, but overall, it was pretty good. We had the saganaki, which is usually a flaming cheese dish, but they didn’t set it on fire at this restaurant. My lamb chops were excellent. After dinner, we went back to our aunt and uncle’s house, and Kyle, Jason and Alex (our cousin) went outside to throw a ball around. It was late, but they had a light so we could see everything. At one point, Jason was standing in front of my car, because they were throwing in that direction, and he was in charge of keeping a ball from hitting it. So then the ball got thrown very quick in that direction, and Kyle couldn’t make the catch and Jason wasn’t paying attention, and when he looked up and saw it, he stuck his bare hand out on instinct and it bounced off the heel of his hand. Jason immediately went down, wincing in pain. It got swollen fairly quickly, but it looks like it’s just a bad bruise and nothing’s broken.

All in all, we had a good time with our family in Detroit and were very appreciative that we got to spend the day with them at the game as well as dinner and our post-dinner activities. We then went to bed to get up for our trip across the border.

Game Result: Tigers win, 12-7
Record: 2-2