Catching up with the Tigers
Randomly, when I’m in the Detroit area I get less of a chance to write then when I’m at home. I’m still trying to catch up / get my thoughts around the last few days and the pitching changes, and why Detroit suddenly doesn’t look at awesome as they did after sweeping the Rays. To recap, I spent four days (friday -> monday evening) in Detroit where I did the following:
- Ran into Lloyd Carr walking around downtown ann arbor (friday)
- Attended the Michigan / Notre Dame game (saturday)
- Attended the Tigers / Blue Jays game (sunday)
- Ate lunch next to Peter Karmanos at Lafayette’s Coney Island (monday)
Couple of thoughts I had in relation to all of them:
1) Lloyd Carr (always liked Carr — his first year as the head coach was my freshman year at UM) — saw him eating dinner on main street, in the front window of a restaurant. He had a smile on his face that I’ve never seen. Similar to the smile I saw on Bo’s face once when I sat next to him at Cottage Inn Pizza… a smile that they seemed only willing to express when they’ve retired. I bet hanging out with Jim Leyland for a few rounds of drinks would be a great time when he’s not worried about his team, a side fans may not always get to see as he has so many issues to worry about while under contract. Just would love to sit around ’shooting the bull’ with Jim when he felt he could let loose.
2) College Football vs Professional Baseball. Attended both games, had a great time at both. I think i’ll touch on points later with a full post, but it felt different in so many ways. Here’s one: Football was much cheaper overall, but a huge time suck (tailgate + game put me at close to 8 hours commitment). Baseball was less time but more money. Actually a decent amount more money due to concession prices and… no beer at most college football games.
3) It seems impossible, but its absolutely true: There are no coney islands on the west coast. None. Zip. Zero. So I wanted a coney dog after staying at the RenCen Marriott Sunday night. Went with my wife & parents to Lafayatte at about 12:30pm; place was nearly empty, and we looked two seats down from us at the main table and noticed karmanos sitting there with another gentleman. After about 10 minutes, Karmanos gets his bill, looks at the waiter, and pulls out the Chris Rock-esque “hey, you got change for $100?” Yes, it felt a little weird to have my hands full of chile and cheese fries four feet from a billionaire. Also really weird to have a very popular lunch spot absolutely empty during the lunch rush. RenCen was also empty, as was downtown Detroit. On a Monday. For Detroit, attendance is down 20% through 71 home games. Maybe its because the race isn’t as close as expected on their current home stand. But this doesn’t bode well for the 2010 season ticket renewals / suite purchases. It might be downright scary.
Random: Just an FYI, don’t go to ann arbor on a football saturday and expect to use a cell phone on an AT&T network. Ultimate fail. I got lucky to get a call through before the network dropped dead, but when you’ve planned a trip two years in advance to have 25 people meet and the plan is that someone will ‘park on the golf course and call to give their location’…