The View from 322: Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Sunday in the Park with Kids

Sunday, Sunday Sunday!

Sundays at Comerica Park are Family Day.  I decided to bring, you know, my family.  I had two free tickets due to last week’s rainout that canceled my game, so I used the handy-dandy Ticket Exchange feature to get four seats together. 

So let’s get this out of the way, right off the bat: Family Day at Comerica Park absolutely rocks.  As soon as we made it through the gate, we were being ushered into a line for a free face-painting session.  Ten minutes later, I had a 7-year old blue tiger, and a 9-year old white tiger (I thought white tigers were extinct!).  In the fourth inning, my wife offered to take the kids on the carousel, which is free on Sundays.  I gave her my thanks, since I really wanted to watch the actual game. 

The game itself was a pleasure.  Final score: 4-3 Tigers.  But more importantly, the kids had a blast.  At the end of the game, there is an opportunity for kids to run the bases.  They really wanted to do this, for some reason, so we went to get in line.

We asked someone who looked like they worked at the stadium where to go, and we were told the line was forming under the scoreboard.  When we got there, we found that this was technically correct: it STARTED there.  By the time we got there, the line already stretched literally halfway around the stadium.  My wife and I looked at each other in alarm.  I couldn’t see any way this was going to take any less than an hour, probably more.  To make it worse, the line wasn’t moving AT ALL. 

I didn’t want to disappoint my kids, so we got in line.  But I had a plan.  We would stand there, waiting for my kids to get impatient and decide that wanted to go.  I figured the over/under on that happening was about seven minutes.

Five minutes after we got in line, the line started to creep forward.  Then it creeped a little more.  Then, suddenly, it was as if a starter’s pistol had gone off.  The line started moving so fast, we literally couldn’t keep up. 

Deep, deep into the bowels of the stadium we went.  All the way around again, but this time we were doing it underneath the seats.  We came out through a right-field entrance, jogging toward the infield. 

The staff was ready.

It began to dawn on me that this happens literally every week the Tigers are in town.  They have a SYSTEM.  There was a rope set up, guiding us on a set path near the foul line.  There was staff everywhere, motioning us to MOVE.

About midway to the infield, the path subdivided.  “Kids to the RIGHT.  Parents to the LEFT!”  shouted a burly security guard who was clearly positioned to tackle any drunk grownups who want to do an impromptu baserunning audition.  And just like that, my kids were gone.  They were ushered down their line while the slowpoke parents tried to keep up.

I had a plan.  My wife was going to film the kids rounding the bases.  I was going to film the scoreboard, which had a running stream of the kids on the basepaths.  It was foolproof. 

Except neither of us could actually SEE our children.  Realizing I was almost certainly going to be unable to see my kids, I simply started my phone’s video camera running, and aimed it vaguely at the scoreboard.  Meanwhile, the staff were doing everything they could to move us along.  I’m almost certain I saw an usher with a cattle prod.  Moving at top speed, I couldn’t actually aim my phone at the scoreboard.  Looking at the video from my phone afterwards, it looked like documentary footage from Vietnam.  It was just frantic people running in front of a shaky camera that struggled to stay in focus. 

We rounded the path in the foul area to near home plate.  “Collect your child by third base!”  a security guard bellowed.  We stumbled along in a scrum of parents, to find our kids waiting for us near third base.  “What took you so long?” they demanded. 

Later on, poring over the footage from my phone, I found that I had, in fact, captured a few seconds on my kids on the scoreboard, running the basepaths.  Victory was mine!

As we drove home, my wife and I declared the day a total success.  How often do parents get to say that?  My son hugged me as we got out of the car.  “When can we go again?”  he asked. 

“Soon,” I promised.  “Soon.”