Playing the Fields

In an era when live major-league baseball has retreated to pleasure palaces packed with flashing videos, blaring music, and gut-busting food courts, has the old-fashioned game lost something? Across seven ballparks in seven days, one fan goes looking for an answer

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Stone tigers prowl the entrance to Comerica Park

GAME 3
Kansas City Royals vs. Detroit Tigers
Comerica Park, Detroit
July 22, 2007

Our first introduction to Motown comes in a dilapidated lot near the stadium, courtesy of a man who may be a parking attendant or maybe some guy just hanging out. He wants $5 to "watch" our car while we're at the game, which seems more threat than deal, so we fork it over. Welcome to Detroit.

While the city has taken its lumps over the years, "Foxtown," a revitalized entertainment district around Comerica Park, is pretty spiffy. They call the area an "urban village," and that's a fairly accurate description for this grouping of theatres, restaurants, bars, and shops, anchored by Ford Field—the Lions' home—and Comerica Park.

Detroit has been slow to warm to CoPa's gleaming fun-park vibe: Their hearts belong to Tiger Stadium, which closed in 1999. With its goofy dimensions, comically dreadful bathrooms, and shabby charm, it was the weirdest ballpark in the league, and one of my favorites. For this reason alone, I was ready to hate Comerica. The new 31-acre park doesn't try to recall Tiger Stadium. A mere 24 hours after wrapping ourselves in the century-old charms of Wrigley, Comerica's sterile, remote setting comes as a culture shock. From our seats in row L of the left field bleachers, the action feels miles away.

But the ballpark is a pleasant spot to spend three hours. HOK Sport, the architects, got some things right, such as spacious seats, room for plenty of vendors, and terrific sightlines. In fact, no matter where I go in the airy concourse, the game is visible. The players look like tiny animatronic robots, but at least you can see them.

The Tigers have a colorful history, and Comerica—if you can look past the food court behind home plate and a Ferris wheel with gondolas shaped like baseballs behind third base—pays homage to that history. A Tigers Hall of Fame lurks beyond center field with bronze busts of legends such as Greenberg, Kaline, and Cobb; around the concourse, lively exhibits break down the team's many peaks and valleys over the decades. Dad is smitten by it all. "I would've taken you to a lot more games if parks back then had all these rides and gift shops and museums," he says.

Only eight years old, Comerica is still searching for an identity; some traditions feel a little shoehorned. When a Royals player jacks a homer in the seventh, fans holler, "THROW IT BACK . . . THROW IT BACK," and the poor guy who caught it does. The tradition, so natural at Wrigley, seems out of place here, where people don't appear to have any real malice toward their opponents. Even the ritual following a Tigers home run is lame: Atop the 33-foot scoreboard in left field, the eyes of two giant prowling felines light up. The crowd barely seems to notice.

In what's becoming a disturbing trend, the home team loses again. Sunburned and exhausted, Dad and I drive to the suburbs and bunk at the lovely Southfield home of Alicia and David Nelson. David is a Conservative rabbi and Tigers fanatic who has attended every opening day for 36 years. "The first day of the first season at Comerica was hard," he said. "I felt we had left an old friend standing in the dust. Then I walked around and saw all the new features . . . I feel disloyal to Tiger Stadium, but I've come to enjoy Comerica Park."

Photograph: (Images 1 & 3) Mark Cunningham/Courtesy of Comerica Park; (Image 2) AP Photo/Amy Sancetta

This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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