In honor of the Red Sox being in town, tonight I made the 45 minute drive to Detroit, despite climbing gas prices, and watched the game at Comerica Park. And while I may have missed last night’s streakers and Schilling’s blown save, I think I definitely made the right choice to go tonight. I sat very close to my seats in the second game of last month’s double header against the Twins, but three rows closer.
Although you might not guess it by the final score, the game was a close one. The Red Sox jumped out early on a homer by Varitek that also scored Ramirez, who had reached base on a walk. Until the sixth inning, the Sox were in that rare position of having more runs (2) than hits (1). Other than Varitek’s homer, Detroit’s starter, Nate Robertson, pitched an outstanding game. The Tigers first scored in the fifth with four hits resulting in two runs to tie it up. In the bottom of the eighth, the Tigers went ahead when Magglio Ordonez hit a sacrifice fly that scored Chris Shelton.
At this point in the game, Robertson was pitching a two hitter (including Varitek’s left field blast), but for reasons unbeknownst to nearly all Tiger fans that called up the post-game show, manager Alan Trammell replaced him in the ninth with Fernando Rodney. “Oh man,” said the guy behind me, “Trammell must want another shot at Schilling if he’s bringing in this guy. He’s the worst pitcher in the league.” The scouting report pleased me, and Rodney didn’t disappoint… the Red Sox fans. After Renteria flied out to left, the namesake of my future son, David “Big Papi” Ortiz, came to the plate and jacked a homerun off Rodney (30th of the year) to tie the game and send it to extra innings.
And what an extra inning! Trammell put in another pitcher, Craig Dingman, and, man, did the Sox ding him. In the 2/3 of the inning that he lasted, he was responsible for 2 earned runs off of a pair of singles by Tony “Who died and made you Mark Bellhorn?” Graffanino and Kevin Youkilis, making his ERA for the game 27.00 (and eventually serving him with the loss). But that ERA was nothing compared to the infinite ERA put up by Jamie “The streakers should be strung up by their toes” Walker. Walker faced four batters and gave up an RBI single to Damon, a single to Renteria, a three run homerun to Ortiz, and a double to Manny Ramirez. When Ortiz hit his 31st roundtripper of the season, bringing the score to 8-3, the stadium started emptying faster than a pitcher of pims at Amrys’s birthday weekend. But even if the fans were done, the Sox weren’t. Just to rub salt in the wound, Varitek hit his second dinger of the night of off the new Tigers pitcher, Franklyn Germán, to bring the score to 10-3. Millar mercifully decided to end the half-inning after that by popping up to the catcher.
But wait… as fruitless as it seemed, the Tigers still had their half of the 10th to battle. And after two quick outs, they actually did rally a bit. After two walks and a single, the bases were loaded for Craig Monroe, who proceeded to hit his first career grand slam to bring the score to 10-7. Suddenly the few remaining Tigers fans left in the stadium woke up… just in time to watch Brandon Inge fly out to Adam “Who the heck is this?” Stern to end the game.
What surprised me most, and perhaps it shouldn’t have, were the number of Sox fans at the game — I’d estimate a third of the 32,129 people in attendance. The guy behind me was a little annoyed by this, although he decided that I was respectable a) because of my scorebook and b) because I was a Twins fan and not an Indians fan. According to him, back when Jacobs Field opened and Cleveland’s games were always sold out, Indians fans used to flock to Detroit in troves when their team came to town. As this was back in the mid-90s when the Tigers were even more horrific than they are now, Cleveland fans would out number Detroit fans. Red Sox fans weren’t quite that numerous, but I had many more allies tonight than I did when the Twins were in town.
And speaking of the Twins… they beat the White Sox tonight 9-4 in 16 innings. And the Yankees lost to Tampa Bay, 4-3, in 11 innings. Today seems to be the day for extra inning games with good outcomes.

Starting Thursday, I’ll be off on a whirlwind tour of Canada and upstate New York, with planned stops at Niagara Falls (alone), Rochester (new home of Melissa Cain), Cooperstown (for the Hall of Fame, naturally), and Albany Slingerlands (for Amrys’s birthday shenanigans).
In order to prepare for the Cooperstown visit, I was checking out the Hall of Fame website and wound up browsing the online exhibits, particularly the photo contest. There’s a great shot of a double rainbow at Fenway and of Bill Mueller laying out for a catch. Remember when Dusty Baker’s son ran out to get the bat prior to the end of the play during the 2002 World Series and almost got plowed over? Well, perhaps this will refresh your memory (ESPN article for those who really don’t remember). But my favorite picture is this image of Comiskey as seen through a puddle’s reflection. I love the sepia tones. When I conjure up a mental image of “baseball,” it looks something like that picture.

Me at Comerica

For the second game of the night, I switched sides of the field. It seems that by doing so, I also transferred luck to the visiting team — or maybe it was all the roster changes. The Twins starting pitcher in game 2, Scott Baker, wasn’t even on the roster for the afternoon game, as he had just been called up from AAA. In the meantime, outfielder Michael Ryan was sent down. The Tigers made a similar move between games, calling up their starter, Justin Verlander, while sending down infielder Kevin Hooper. To make things even more confusing, both pitchers were immediately sent back to the minors after the game, while the Twins’ Terry Tiffee and Detroit’s Vic Darenbourg were called up. Both teams had line-up changes involving their catchers as well — Joe Mauer moved to DH while Mike Redmond caught for the Twins, and Pudge Rodriguez, injured in the first game, was replaced by Vance Wilson.

Just prior to the national anthem, the announcer remarked, “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise and gentlemen, remove your caps.” What a gender specific order! Well, being that I am certainly not a gentleman (and some might argue that I’m not much of a lady), I left my cap on.

John McDonald leads off after an 8th inning single

The top and bottom of the first inning were nearly identical — Joe Mauer hit an RBI double to score Nick Punto for the Twins and Magglio Ordonez hit an RBI double to score Curtis Granderson for the Tigers. The matching scorecards continued in the second, with both teams going 1-2-3. In the third, Shannon Stewart’s single kept the Twins from going 1-2-3 the way the Tigers did, but the halves of the scorecard really diverged in the 4th.

After Hunter and Jones singled, Justin Morneau hit an RBI double to start off the inning. Mike Redmond tried to follow in Morneau’s shoes by stretching his two RBI single into a double, but he was tagged out in a 9-3-6-3 rundown. Justin Morneau continued to add runs for the Twins by taking the first pitch of the sixth inning deep, putting the Twins up 5-1. In the meantime, Scott Baker pitched an outstanding game, giving up only five hits over seven innings.

The final score, as displayed on the Tigers scoreboard

The Tigers tried to mount a rally in the bottom of the 7th, scoring one run on a walk and two singles. With two on and one out, Vance Wilson came to the plate in an at-bat that has been talked about on Detroit sports radio for two days. Wilson is currently batting a meager .145, and the armchair managers around Detroit have been lambasting manager Alan Trammell for leaving him in in such a crucial situation. “Pudge could have caught two innings! Brandon Inge can catch!” they cry. But as a Twins fan, I’m glad Trammell left him in. The first pitch of Wilson’s at bat: 6-4-3, double play, inning over, rally quashed. The Tigers had only one hit in the rest of the game, and the Twins were victorious, 5-2.

This was the first game where I saw someone other than myself keeping score. A young girl and her friend sitting next to me had the scorecard from the program open. Her father, upon seeing my own more elaborate scorebook, told me that he had a standing offer of $5 to his kids if they could ever completely score a game without missing a batter. I let the girl (maybe 12, 13 years old) pick up any batter she missed from my scorebook. But alas, the father decided that that was cheating, as she would have easily missed at least two batters without my help. After the game, someone won a car, and we were treated to a half-hour of fireworks being shot off right behind second base. All in all, a good day.

Joe Mauer on second after his 7th inning double

For the first time this season, I went to a game in which I was actively rooting against the hometeam. Thus, it was quite the disappointment when the hometeam won. Thanks to construction on I-94, which I didn’t know about beforehand, I arrived at the game 10 minutes late, and bought my outfield grandstand tickets from a scalper the box office. I missed the top of the first, although I figured out what I missed from the jumbotron in later innings. Ahh, Lew Ford grounded out to the pitcher in the first — I’ll score it a 1-3. But the seats were decent — 11th row from the field, just behind third base.

The Tigers scored early on three singles in the bottom of the second. Omar Infante got the RBI off a single scoring Magglio Ordonez from second. The game remained a pitchers duel until the top of the 7th. Joe Mauer, former quarterback for the Cretin-Derham Hall football team that clobbered my own Wayzata High School Trojans by some ridiculous score on their way to a state title, led off the seventh with a double. He scored two batters later on a Jacque Jones single.

Bronze statue of legendary Tigers first baseman Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg

The Twins defense looked good at the start of the bottom on the 7th. Juan Castro laid out for diving catch at shortstop to keep Omar Infante from getting on base. (I wasn’t fast enough to snap a picture.) But on the very next pitch, Curtis Granderson homered deep to right field, regaining the Tiger lead. Carlos Silva recovered and struck out Brandon Inge on six pitches to end the inning, but the damage had been done. The Twins never recovered and the final score remained 2-1.

The remaining play of note happened during Jacque Jones’s at bat in the bottom of the ninth. On the first pitch, Jones fouled straight back and the ball glanced off of catcher Pudge Rodriguez’s shoulder. The game stopped while the trainer came out to take a look, but eventually Pudge stayed in the game. However, he was not back in the line-up for the second game of the night, a roster move that may have cost the Tigers the second game.

Since this was the first game of a day-night double header, I had three and a half hours to kill between games. I spent the first hour wandering around the stadium. Like SBC Park in San Francisco, Comerica Park opened in 2000. Both stadiums have large bronze statues of their team’s former great players.

The Tigers merry-go-round – $2 a ride!

In comparison with Fenway, the oldest stadium still in use (1912), both of these newer stadiums come with attractions not directly related to the baseball game taking place on the field. SBC Park has the Coca-Cola Superslide and Little Giants Park, a miniature ballfield for kids to run around in. Comerica has a beer garden, a ferris wheel with carts shaped like baseballs, and a Detroit Tigers merry-go-round. I toyed with the idea of spending $2 on a ride, but I eventually decided against it. After all, I came to see some baseball, not play on an amusement park.

In order to make sure we bought two tickets clean between games, the staff at Comerica required us to leave the stadium and not re-enter until 5:30. I bought my tickets for the second game, wandered around downtown Detroit for a bit, and ate at the first air-conditioned restaurant I could find — the Hard Rock Cafe. After a dinner of chili and a rootbeer float, I returned to Comerica for the second game of the evening…

Today was my first ever major league double header. The Twins and the Tigers split a pair of games at Comerica Park and I was in the stands for both games. My original plan for the weekend was to go to Chicago and see the Red Sox shut out the White Sox (well, okay, I didn’t know it was going to be a shutout). However, after a phone conversation in which my mother expressed concerns about me hanging out in the south side of Chicago alone and my father pointed out that my beloved Twinkies are in Detroit this weekend, plans changed. What sealed the deal is that the Red Sox will be in Detroit in a few weeks, so I can catch the Good Sox then, without having to give money to the Evil Sox. Besides, despite what my father believes, I maintain that I am a Twins fan first and Red Sox fan second. It’s just that it’s a close second.

Prior to today’s games, I bought a new scorebook. It’s just so much nicer than scoring out of a program. I even left blank pages at the front so that I can transfer my program-scored games into it. Unfortunately, I think the scoring from the game I saw with Amrys and Mike is lost forever with the old scorebook. It does occur to me that I could recreate it with the MLB radio archived broadcast, and perhaps I shall.

The actual game reports will have to wait until tomorrow. But there will be pictures, so it will be worth the wait.

Edit: All pictures from both games are posted here.

I reclaimed the television for the final round of the Home Run Derby. But I was reduced to radio for David Ortiz’s three homer performance in the semi-finals that eliminated him. It’s too bad home runs don’t carry over from round to round, or it would have been Abreu and Ortiz in the final. On the other hand, with the first round going the way it did, the second round would have been moot.
Abreu was on fire tonight — 41 total homeruns, more than double his nearest competitors (Ortiz and Pudge Rodriguez had 20 each). Granted, the homerun derby doesn’t actually count for anything, but it was still an impressive display.
But more importantly, I learned an interesting piece of baseball trivia tonight: Twins legend and Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew is the man behind the silhouette in the MLB logo.
Also, I had a mild epiphany during interviews with Varitek, Ortiz, and Damon and I would like to officially declare the following: David Ortiz is my favorite active MLB player and my two favorite all time teams are the 2004 Red Sox and the 1991 Minnesota Twins. (The 1987 Twins are close, but there’s too much overlap between them and the 1991 Twins for me to consider them a separate team.) I suppose there’s a bit of stating the obvious in that.