A baseball post

Posted by jdg | Saturday, October 07, 2006 |

Despite my general disinterest in all things sport, this afternoon we walked over to Comerica Park to check out the scene during the last few innings of the final division series game against the Yankees, and from the street urchin seats we watched them build their lead from four runs to eight, finally sending the Yankees back to their $17 million Park Avenue condos, and causing the pitcher from last night's game (Kenny "The Gambler" Rogers) to stand on top of the dugout spraying champagne on hundreds of fans who were all taking pictures of him with their camera phones. Sorry New York, despite your $200 million worth of hunky ethnically-ambiguous all-stars you just couldn't defeat this guy, or even get a hit against him until the top of the seventh. Before that, a homeless guy with a googly eye walked up to us and asked what the score was and I said "6-0 and the Yankees haven't gotten any hits yet," and he said back to me, "Well they don't deserve any motherfucking hits."

We didn't get to see much of the actual field, but we were standing next to this guy, so that totally made up for it. Would you rather hang out with guys from Warren wearing berets and drinking $9 beers? I just can't help but get swept up in the joy of all this victory, and my heart surged when the Tigers won each of the last three games. Even though we're home now, we can still hear the roar of the crowd in downtown Detroit when we open our back door. And Juniper has been running around our house naked shouting "yay Tigers!" It's easy to get her to love a team whose stadium is covered with dozens of giant versions of her favorite animal at the zoo, as it was for me in 1984 when my dad took me to my first Tigers game.