My blind date: The future looks good

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
This column appeared in The Michigan Daily in April

DETROIT – A month and a half ago I went on a blind date to the park, and though our first moments together were awkward, we gazed into each other’s eyes and worked through the
unfamiliar territory.
A close friend told me she would take my breath away, this sparkling young lass who dresses in the latest trends, yet shows an important respect for tradition.
Her name: Comerica Park, the new home of the Detroit Tigers.
My friend was right – this ballpark is spectacular. Her ground-level box seats and her Tiger statues surrounding the park welcome in even non-baseball fans. Her spacious outfield and brick walls behind the bleachers at the power alleys should please the purists, in time.
Most importantly, its absence of upper bleachers invites the eye to peer out at Detroit – a city in dire need of attention.
In straightaway center field, beyond the team’s five World Series championship banners, the downtown Detroit Athletic Club monopolizes the eye. Next door, in right-center field, is the Detroit Opera House – another building stuck in the middle of a city that once was great, and could be great again.
This ballpark could bring it all back: Motown, winning baseball and the temptation for suburban Detroiters to claim the city as their home once again – not Grosse Pointe, not Dearborn.
Watch, if the Tigers win a pennant anytime soon, Detroit’s population might top one million once again, if only so suburbanites all over Southeast Michigan can equate their mailing address with success.
Personally, I’m a sucker for beautiful ballparks. At the first sight of green grass, I fall in love as easily as a 13-year old boy on summer vacation. So the minute I ventured down into the box seats, and laid eyes on my evening’s companion, I was sold.
Only problem is, I still have feelings for my last love, Tiger Stadium.
I grew up with an intimate knowledge of her every quality – good and bad.
The posts holding up her upper deck blocked the view of those sitting behind them – the blue and orange coating Tiger Stadium’s seats were gaudy. But I cherished the imperfections because I knew they would reappear every spring.
A ballpark has a way of preserving sacred memories within her baselines, whether they happened 75 years ago or just the other night, in the nightcap of a doubleheader.
And Tiger Stadium held plenty of memories for me. I was fortunate enough to attend the second-to-last game there last September, a blowout victory over Kansas City.
After the final out, I descended from the press box down toward the field for one last look at her brown and green topography. All of a sudden a surge of emotion swept over me, as paralyzing as a 100-mile-per-hour fastball.
It hadn’t dawned on me until that moment, but I had wandered down to the handicapped accessible area down the third base line. This was where my father and I sat six years ago with his grandfather – a 94-year old man who loved baseball more than anything in the world , yet who was confined to a wheelchair on that day.
Grandpa Brondyke died a month later on his birthday, with his soul at rest after having said goodbye to baseball. My father – the man who taught me the game – laid him in the coffin in July with a baseball in his right hand.
My great-grandpa will live forever, down the third base line in Tiger Stadium. And last night, I conveyed this to Comerica Park when we first met.
She doesn’t hold any sacred memories for me yet. But if she stands for 100 years, she might.