This post should have been written months ago. I'd like to say it was because I was so busy, but the company I worked for this summer only allowed me to work 7.5 hours a day. Somehow, a few things I planned on getting done this summer, like updating my blog with stories from my trip, fell off the radar. But I did see five seasons of Lost.
When I last wrote, I was on my way out of the Greyhound after a long trip from New York to Cleveland to make my connection to Detroit. I checked my pockets before I was off the bus and realized that my Discovery Pass, the pass that allowed me unlimited travel for two weeks and is not replaceable, was missing. It surprised me because I had put it in a pocket with a zipper and could not remember opening the pocket. I was halfway to the door and ran back to my seat to see if my pass was there.
It wasn't in my seat. I thought maybe I had done something with it in my sleep or that someone had somehow taken it or picked it up. Then after the couple sitting behind me left their seats, I looked there to see if it was behind or under my seat. It was there! I couldn't believe my luck. To lose that pass before I had even arrived at one stadium would have been disastrous. I could now sit in the station and watch the birds fly around in peace. Birds. Inside the station.
One recurring theme I noticed from my time on the Greyhound is that a lot of Greyhound folk are lonely people. They will often talk to anyone about anything. I first realized this while sitting in line and hearing a teenage girl talk about cheerleading, her boyfriend, and anything else that came to mind, including this pearl of wisdom: "This (crap)'s a piece of (crap)!" (I keep the language at a PG level here.) There were moments when no one was looking at her and she was looking at no one. She was just talking. Thankfully she was on a different bus, and my ride from Cleveland to Detroit was pleasant other than the foreboding clouds and intermittent raindrops that threatened to delay the first game on my trip. I arrived in Detroit, walked across the street from the station to Michigan's largest used book store, and then proceeded into downtown Detroit.
I hadn't been to Detroit since I was a child, and remembered almost nothing. It was quite different from what I expected. I knew that the area had been hit hard by the recession and the general state of the American automobile industry, but it was worse than I expected. It was like a ghost town. Lunch hour was the only time I really saw anyone, and then it was only a few people here and there. I wandered around, ate lunch, and found little to occupy my time until the gates opened at Comerica. I used the internet at FedEx/Kinko's, had a great cup of hot chocolate in a cafe, and read. I was in the cafe when it started to lightly rain. I knew that the forecasts predicted rain and was concerned that the game might not happen that night, but hoped that the forecasts were inaccurate.
The rain picked up, and never became a downpour. It would have been smart to bring an umbrella, but I neglected to do so. I purchased one at CVS. I made my way over to the stadium to kill time. It was here that I realized that my new umbrella was worthless in the Detroit wind. I was trying to keep a handle on it when a worker tried to give me some advice. I asked him if they would play the game in that weather and he said "Oh yeah." That was great news and I continued walking around the beautiful Comerica Park. All around the stadium are these huge statues of tigers (the animal), which gives a cool feel to the place. I had my backpack with me and decided that there was enough time to take it back to the station to leave in a locker so that it did not get even more wet. On my way, a man said something like: "Hey, come over here, I got something for you." I was thinking: there's no way I'm stopping for this guy to try to sell me his drugs. He got right next to me and showed me what he was trying to sell. He secretively pulled his hand out from under his jacket and was holding . . . an American flag pin. :)
I returned to the park, hung out in the team store, and was relieved to see them open the gates right on time: 5:30. The field was covered by the tarp, but the rain was not too bad. I walked around the inside of the stadium and grabbed something to eat. Comerica Park is a beautiful stadium. It's hard for me to justify getting rid of the classic Tiger Stadium, but Comerica does as well as a place can. I walked to the outfield and looked at the statues of a few Tiger greats: Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Hank Greenberg, and others. One man offered his knowledge about Ty Cobb to his guests, which made me laugh: "Tyrus Raymond Cobb! That's not what it says, but that's his name! He'd come in with his spikes up! He'd sharpen 'em!"
Being inside the stadium and seeing a light rain were both encouraging. I was excited about seeing a game between divisional rivals (the Chicago White Sox were in town) and seeing Ozzie Guillen (the hilarious White Sox manager from Venezuela) manage. I made my way back to home plate and was checking out the carousel (never seen one in a baseball stadium before; you can ride tigers on the carousel) and the Big Boy restaurant (I had a Big Boy t-shirt that I always wore when I was little. I think my brother worked at one and gave it to me.) I turned around and saw an announcement on the screen in the outfield: game postponed due to rain. My heart sunk. I begrudgingly left the stadium. This day in Detroit was like many experiences I've had during my life as a baseball fan: initial excitement followed by disappointment, followed by a diminished and skeptical hope for better luck the next time around. By this time, my umbrella had broken, and I couldn't take it back because I had thrown out the receipt outside of CVS. I threw the umbrella away and made the cold, wet trek back to the only place I could go at that point in the day: the station.
I went to the bathroom and had another man try to stop me. I tried to ignore him and he said "Now why don't you let an old man holler at you?" I thought that deserved a moment of my attention, and watched as he tried to sell me . . . you guessed it, an American flag pin. Not even that, or seeing a Mennonite lady and her child at the ticket counter or vending machines, could cheer me up. Greyhound stations in general are not fun places to hang out, but Detroit seemed worse than most. I went over by the ticket counter and sat so that I could dry off. The man next to me had some kind of a breathing apparatus and a big bag of cheese puffs, which probably contributed to his terrible cough. There were noises that came out of his mouth that I had never heard before. They shouldn't be leaving a human's mouth. Wet and stuck with the Greyhound folk in the station for five hours before my bus left was the price I was paying for a baseball game in Detroit that didn't happen and a night sleeping on the bus for six hours to get to Chicago where, for all I knew, rain would postpone both games I planned on seeing there. All I could do was hope that the rain wouldn't reach Chicago.
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