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Saturday, July 12, 2008

Take me out to the... um, I forgot.

Tiger Stadium: named after the baseball team, with two decks and a bleacher section — and currently being demolished.

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Comerica Park: named after a bank headquartered in Texas and ringed by statues designed in New York, with two decks, no bleachers, a carousel, a ferris wheel, a sculpture garden, a fountain, stores, restaurants, batting cages, TV screens, trivia questions, seat prizes, rock anthems, and way more happening on the concourses behind the sections than on the field.

It's not a ball game; it's an attention-deficit party.

Scorekeeping with paper and pencil? No way. Updating player stats? ESPN will take care of that and you can Google it later. Talking business with clients up and down the row? Absolutely. Keeping tabs with your stockbroker via the bluetooth clip on your ear? You bet. Catching YouTube vids on your mobile browser? Sure. What the hell, this game moves at a snail's pace. Let's go get some Thai food from the restaurant downstairs; if anything actually happens, we'll hear the crowd and can catch the replay on the TV screens. Home run! The fountain with GM cars on each side shoots water real high into the air. Ooh, cool. This restaurant line is too long. Let's go pitch a few and see who's got the best fastball on the radar gun. Look, a hat store! I want the black one with the orange logo.

America's Adderal pastime: a 19th-century game for the 21st century.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hearty ditto to all this. Noticed two guys nearby (not together) before the game began. Each had a program, and was carefully filling it in, getting ready to keep track of every ball, strike, walk, hit, and rbi.

This was this coolest sight of the day at the ballpark.