Tiger Geist

It still makes me cry.

Living in San Francisco since 2000, I’ve only been to a few Tiger games at Comerica Park. I’m able to see them at least once / year in Oakland, but its not quite the same. But I’ve always tried to make a game in Detroit when I’m home visiting family.

In the summer of 2007, Detroit had an excellent team and were favorites to return to the playoffs. Unexpected circumstances led my wife Erica & I to return to Detroit in June for a week. Normally on trips to Michigan everything is planned out ahead of time: Dinner with her family; dinner with my family; drinks with friends; hang-overs (I spent the day after my 30th birthday hung over in the bathroom of Comerica Park with my family); rinse; repeat. This trip, we had nothing planned and a ton of free time.

I looked over the schedule vs our free time, and there were two available games to go to. One game had Justin Verlander pitching; the other had Chad Durbin pitching. I said “hey, lets go see Verlander pitch”, since Durbin wasn’t very good. The response I got from my lovely wife was “you can go if you’d like”… which is equal to “if you really want to piss me off, go to the game”. So I stayed home with lovely wife Erica (I have to keep repeating that to myself) and watched a marathon of “deadliest catch” with her sister and brother in law.

Later that night, I got a text message from my friend Kevin from San Francisco, who had no idea I was in Detroit at the time. “NO HITTER! OMG!!”. I looked at the text message and screamed “TURN ON THE TIGER GAME!!”. Sure enough.. everyone was jumping around and going crazy at the stadium. I spent the night filled with rage in Brighton. Lovely wife Erica said “we can go tomorrow”… which was foolish. What was the chance that there would be TWO no hitters thrown in a row? What were the chances that one of those no hitters would be thrown by Chad Durbin? Zilch.

So, forever in the minds of Detroit fans will be the no hitter thrown by Justin Verlander, similar to the memories I have as a child of the no hitter thrown by Jack Morris. But forever, in the back of my mind… will be the story of how I was detained against my will from going to that game.