When I add more words and more words to this blog, as I have shown so far, I will mostly be chatting about photography.
And, for good reason.
I love taking photos! I love talking about it, studying it, giving advice to other photographers and getting advice in return. Therefore, I enjoy blogging all things camera, lens and shooting.
However, as we all do, I also have other interests in my life and from time to time I will take up this space to talk about those interests with a few photos added to the mix as well.
One of those interests is baseball.
Like many a young boy growing up in small-town America, I loved playing baseball.
I still remember as a kid on my family farm in Montana, I would impatiently wait all evening staring out the window hoping for my father to come home early enough to beat the encroaching darkness just to play catch and hit around baseballs.
When he made it home in time, I was exhilarated and when he didn’t, I was crushed.
I’ve been hooked on baseball ever since.
Growing up in Montana, I lived nowhere near a Major League Baseball team and therefore I didn’t attend my first Major League baseball game until I was a sophomore in high school when I visited the old Yankee Stadium in New York.
I didn’t attend my second MLB game for another 10 years when I moved to Milwaukee and visited Miller Park, home of the Brewers.
Now, I make it to games as often as I can and with the increased proximity to a variety of MLB stadiums, this year I decided to commit to the audacious life bucket list goal of visiting all 30 MLB stadiums in my lifetime.
Over Labor Day Weekend, I notched my fifth stadium when I visited my cousin, Nick, and his wife, Michelle, and newborn baby girl, Aurora, in Detroit.
I hadn’t been to Detroit since I was young, before the recession, so I was very curious about the city and barely thought of the game until I walked into the gates.
The outside of the stadium wasn’t all that impressive as there were just a few small parking lots leading up to the stadium and we took an angle that took us through construction, so the surrounding neighborhood left something to be desired as far as fan gatherings or Tiger-themed party areas.
However, the stadium itself was fantastic and it gave the visitors a fan-friendly experience made for the fan and not for money or just an assembly-line production of moving thousands of people from the gates to the seats and then out the gates.
I took my picture in front of the giant Tiger at the main gates and in front of the Ty Cobb statue copying his sliding into base pose, as I made my way around the entire stadium.
The causeways leading around the seats were all fantastic. You barely felt like you started walking away from your seats before you reached multiple vendors for food and drink. They also had a great open-air food court with a baseball-themed ferris wheel. And, it all was made in an old-timer baseball approach that a baseball lover like me thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.
As for the view from the seats, the field was closer to average than spectacular, but we did really feel like we were on top of the action.
The in-game atmosphere was uninspiring with the crowd being less than enthused. But, this may have been more to do with the 85 degree heat in humidity than anything else, so I have to give the crowd a pass.
As for the game itself, the Tigers won after surviving a bases-loaded jam in the 9th inning and ended on a force out, which was challenged by replay. You don’t have a better ending to a baseball game, so that happy coincidence was also an exciting plus.
In totality, I almost enjoyed everything as much as Wrigley Field as my favorite stadium, but for completely opposite reasons. Wrigley had the best atmosphere and in-game experience, but weaker facilities and attractions, while the Tigers stadium was perfectly opposite in it’s strengths and weaknesses.
