Here’s our first Gameday post. I’m shooting to hit about eight games this summer, down from the lofty 11 I made last year, but that’s how the cookie crumbles.

Tonight was the first Tigers game of the season that we were finally able to get to, so the boys ponied up and headed down to the CoPa for an inaugural interleague matchup. The day started off like any of the previous ten Michigan days – cold, dark, and dreary. I had checked the forecast last night and we were looking at a 30% chance of rain through gametime; odds we considered to be in our favor. If you start turning away at a 30% in Michigan, you’ll spend your life indoors. That’s no joke either. Anyway, today the delegation consisted of Kevin, Soifer, Nick and myself. Nick’s another kid from back in the High School era. Soifer, as we know, member of the original experience from the Groves days as well. Kevin, he’s as much baseball fan as me and co-chair of the Andres Torres Fan Club. So we pile in the Buick and it’s down to Detroit. Obviously, our route is obstructed by various construction sites but there’s no way around that; we had left late anyway, with no intention of sitting around for an hour and a half in the cold. Heck no. So we get to the park around 6pm and grab a meal at the in-park Leo’s Coney Island. Interesting fact – a Cheese Coney at Leo’s in Birmingham is about $1.10; a Cheese Coney at Leo’s in Comerica Park is about $3.75. Heck, they add a buck just for the cheese part, which is a solid joke. No refills on the monster 16oz drinks either. The final tally – $12 a head. By now it’s 6.30pm and we’re heading to the seats.

If you know anything about Kevin and I, it’s that we very rarely pay full price for a ticket to a baseball game. In fact, our record is $2.50 each for one game, and that was a $5 for parking. We had free coupons for upper deck seats, which we promptly vacated, pulled on one of our many usher friends, and ended up in the first couple rows in left field. Today we were using tickets from Soifer’s Dad’s office, some fine duckets in Section 134, Row 22, (right, as seen last year). Basically, 22 rows back from the center of the Tiger’s dugout. That’s a big section for the business men, or, as it was tonight, the drunks, incompetent parents, Piston fans, and TV News hosts. It was an outstanding, all-star mix of folks tonight, but we’ll get to that soon enough. The game started with the typical celebrations, National Anthem by Country Singer, Little League team night, etc. But someone had thrown a wrench into the typical routine; there was also a Pistons game on tonight. They were facing elimination, down 3-2 to the Cavs. Here’s the thing. As has been previously discussed, I don’t care for the Pistons one bit. I used to love basketball. I went to the occasional game, watched some on TV, and was a big fantasy junkie. Then came the Championship – I believe it was 2004, maybe 2003, I don’t care. For the first few rounds it was alright, I even enjoyed a couple games at the Chili’s bar with Jeff, (old school guy from the way back days when I worked at Pet Supplies Plus. Plays amateur ball. Baseball nut.) But after that Lakers series where ‘we’ took the Title, it all went downhill. Basically, everyone who had never seen a basketball before was suddenly the Piston’s #1 fan. I wasn’t down with that, so I quit. And now, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s Pistons bandwagon fans. This will come into play on multiple occasions later.

Back to the game. The first inning was, for the most part, uneventful. You’ve got the chronic late fans, which is an obvious problem when you’re sitting in seat 1. Basically, anytime a vender passes or someone gets up, it’s a break in the action for you. And they are about five times more likely to pass by you just as the pitcher enters his windup than any other point in the game; it’s uncanny. So that was the first inning for you, late arrivals and beer sales. Beer sales which, it turned out, would come back to haunt a few of the surrounding fans. Who will likely wake up tomorrow with no recollection of the loud stories they told or the intelligent heckling they did.

Now, the top of the second is when things began to get scary. Bonderman gave up two runs, and I can personally claim responsibility for one. That would be the Rich Aurelia home run. In typical fashion, my Mom picked gametime to call me. Of all the times she could’ve called to chat all week, she picked gametime. She’s very adept at doing so, in fact, this is the fourth time it’s happened in the last 12 games. Pretty remarkable for someone you talk to on the phone once or twice a week. So, we stand at 1-0, Reds. Next comes a Scott Hatteburg walk and an Austin Kearns double that moves Scott to 3rd. Then Hatteburg scores on a sac fly by Javier Valentine, DH. Good to see the Reds beat us at our own game. Reds up, 2-0. Jason LaRue takes a terrible cut to strike out – so terrible, in fact, that he helicoptered the bat down the 3rd base line. It wasn’t a typical helicopter either, it was weak and barely had any spin on it. Good job, Jason. Brandon Phillips grounds out, inning over.

In the bottom of the 2nd, the Tigers went down uneventfully, again. Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. strike out swinging in the top of the 3rd, with terrible swings at low balls. Maybe Ken failed because the guy to my right yelled, "What happened to you, Ken!" and then to his friend, "Ever since he left Seattle, he’s fallen off the face of the earth." Because he’s getting old, dude. It’s not like he made a conscious decision to be unhealthy, so give the guy a rest. The Tigers go down on the bottom of the third, again uneventfully. This was the last time anyone thought we had a chance in the game.

Now it’s the top of the fourth, and things just blew apart for the Tigers. Scott Hatteberg singles. Austin Kearns walks. Javier Valentin walks. Now the bases are juiced up, no outs, Jason LaRue – catcher! – up to bat. And he gets drilled, driving in Hatteberg. Reds up, 3-0. Now it’s Brandon Phillips up, bases still tagged. And he hits one into the gap – clearing the bags for a triple – but wait! The throw comes into Guillen (SS) who sees what looks like a close play at 3rd and chucks the ball in the general direction, very Knoblauch-esque. Error number 11 for Carlos, Brandon Phillips comes home. Technically a triple with a score on the throwing error, but for all practical purposes, an in the park grand slam. Quite uncommon. Either way, Reds up, 7-0. Leyland has had enough of Bonderman and he gets yanked for Ramon Colon, who came over in the Kyle Farnsworth dump last year. I was pissed when that went down, because Farnsworth is my boy. Anyway, when Ramon comes in you figure the game is pretty much shot, and it was. 3 innings down, 7 runs back. Felipe Lopez grounds out, so we finally get an out there. Then Adam Dunn – he who knows only the K, BB, and HR, literally; dude has 13 singles, 6 doubles, 14 HR, 52 K’s, and 37 BB’s – homers to right. This makes the choice to bat him in the two-hole all the more mysterious. I’ve never witnessed a HR in person that was so obviously out. For a while, Soifer and I honestly thought it was going out of the park. It missed by a few rows. And the entire Al Kaline Porch.  It clocked in at 440ft. But what can I say, it was traveling parallel to us and my outfielder’s eye didn’t have a good fix. Reds up, 8-0. At least my fantasy team, (Brandon Phillips and Adam Dunn,) was benefiting. We finally got out of that inning, now down by 8. Then, for awhile, I thought the Tigers would make a real game of it. Polanco singles to left, Pudge singles to center, Ordonez singles to center, scoring Polanco. Reds still ahead, 8-1. Carlos Guillen grounds into a double play, but moves Pudge to third, and Shelton doubles him home. Reds still up, 8-2. Then, a real miracle happened. With two outs and two runners on, Craig Monroe got a hit. Mark your calendars, because it may never happen again. Shelton scored from 2nd, 8-3. Shortly after, inning over.

In the fifth, Brandon Phillips knocked in a run with a sac fly, Reds up 9-3. He had 4 official RBI’s, 5 if you count his error-induced, in the park grand slam driving himself in. In the bottom of the 6th, Marcus Thames homered for the Tigers, putting us at 9-4. And that’s where we finished out. But if the Tigers didn’t entertain us, the crowd wasn’t going to allow any boredom in the stands. It started out with a 2-year-old child wondering around the aisle. Heck, when I’m at work in the hardware store, mothers won’t walk 4 feet down an aisle when I show them a product if it means they have to leave the stroller. This kid was wondering around the aisle, on the other side of his parent’s seat, and right in front of me. Screaming bloody murder in my ear. Absolutely terrifying screams. I have no idea why he was so upset. Maybe it was because his mother, instead of coming to get him, tried to coax him back with a frozen lemonade. This didn’t work for five minutes, and finally an usher came down and told the Mom that no small children were allowed in the aisle. Basically, keep on eye on your brat, lady. The kid can’t even say words yet, he shouldn’t be roaming around the CoPa screaming. He might get snatched. Well, she’s not winning any mother of the year awards.

But we did have some millionaires in the house. Millionaires, I presume, because of what I gleaned from the conversation behind me. Things like, "yeah, I think that’s a good place to buy boats. I was on one that came from there a couple days ago, and it was brand spanking new, couldn’t have been 20 hours old. I think Charlie bought a couple good boats from there too… so, Sunday a big day to sell real estate?" These two guys had jack. And when they left in the 6th inning, they asked us if we wanted their peanuts, which they hadn’t finished. Thanks, because I know that I can’t afford the things on my college budget that you can on your millionaire salary. Thanks again, sir.

And of course, no game is complete without the drunk. But when you mix the witty drunk with the heckler with the loudest voice on the planet, certain fun ensues. Fun like, "Adam Dunn, you’re a bum. Buuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmm!" The guy had superhuman lungs. He had that last ‘bum’ going for no less than 15 seconds. I’m not kidding. Three sections worth of fans were looking right into his sunglass-covered eyes. I nearly responded to the guy, who was a few rows above us, "Dunn is a bum? Because they rhyme? And how much do you make a year? Compared to Adam, you’re a hobo." Drunk Heckler also came up with the following shot at Rich Aurilia, "Number 33… haha!" Clearly, there’s something about the number 33 makes any player who wears it a big loser. You learn something new every day.

Then I had to suffer through two intense bandwagoning Pistons fans. Two women, right above the line, at around 28. All decked out in their Pistons gear. At a baseball game. After hearing the 20th update of the score – which seemed to always find the Pistons ahead by a meaningless two points – I said, simply, "you’re at a baseball game!" Clearly, I was wrong. A chorus of "Deeetroit Baaasketball" followed that erroneous statement. Now, as if throwing the Bandwagon slogan into my ears for the 217th time that night wasn’t bad enough, I was informed by one of the ladies that, "your first-place team can’t even sell out a game on a Friday night!" after which point I stopped listening. First of all, you’re at the baseball game, not the basketball game. Obviously, the Tigers have some draw, or you and bandwagon HQ wouldn’t be in attendance. Furthermore, you haven’t touched on the root of the problem – that you’re cheering for a basketball team while attending a baseball game. If you wanted to watch the basketball game, you should’ve picked that as your Friday night event – not a "girls night out" to the ballpark because, quite frankly, you couldn’t find a date.

But that’s where it got interesting. All of the sudden, a resounding cheer erupted from behind me, in the suite level. I was puzzled, because there was nothing going on at the field – we were between pitches or something. I looked back and saw every suite TV tuned to the Pistons game. Fantastic. Come to a baseball game to watch a basketball game on TV. For the next 10 minutes, random cheers came from the entire suite level and a couple hundred fans who were watching the suite TV’s from down below. The Tigers and Reds must have been completely baffled. Why, wonders Pudge, did everyone just cheer when LaRue threw the ball back to Hammond? What’s going on? And the energy just fed off itself like the nasty machine it was. Pretty soon, the entire stadium was cheering whenever the suite level went off. I don’t think anyone except the suite ticket holders knew exactly what they were cheering for, but the remaining 20,000 fans weren’t going to miss out on whatever it was. That’s not to say that the entire park didn’t have the Pistons on their
mind, it’s just saying that they weren’t watching the game and had no
idea exactly what events were transpiring. The crowd was circling the wagons, and they weren’t going to watch a baseball game simply because it was happening in front of them. C’mon, the ‘stons are facing elimination here! Ben needs me! Ben needs to know that I got his back! Finally, the Tigers made the loss official and we headed home.

Good game, boys. The fans congratulated you with things like, "Well, they had to lose sometime." Right, because the Tigers have never been known for the losing ways. And then, "well, if they had won tonight it would’ve been an 8-game winning streak, and that wasn’t gonna happen." Clearly, Tiger Fan is still in denial. Get with it, people – the Tigers aren’t a 3rd world baseball team anymore. They’re halfway decent. Accept, and move on.

As for the in-game analysis, there really wasn’t much. Bonderman was off, and that’s what cost us the game. He allowed seven earned. Had he had a quality start, you can say he allows 3 runs in 7 innings, and then the relief would be perfect. Tigers win, 4-3. Obviously, that’s the biggest leap into revisionist history ever, but you get the point. Other than that… probably the most unremarkable game ever, outside the fans. And the near-foul ball catch. I bring my glove to every game. And today, I brought my A-game. The closest we got to a foul ball was about 100 feet. But I’ll be ‘darned’ if I wasn’t on my feet and reaching. "You need to jump, Reid! Lay yourself out for those!" shouted Nick. Maybe next time.