The View from 322: Chapter 4

I pull up to Border Patrol, and hand the guy my passport.

“Where are you going today?” He asks.

Somewhat sheepishly, I reply: “I’m going to the Tigers game.”

He bursts out into laughter, and hands me back my passport without asking any follow-up questions.  As I drive away, he is still laughing.

C’mon, man.  It isn’t raining that hard.

Actually, I’m questioning my own sanity, too.  My windshield wipers are operating at their highest setting, and the sky is a uniform dark grey.  The weather report suggests that the rain should clear up soon, but there is no visual evidence that the meteorologists are anything other than snake oil salesmen with fancy satellites.

In the seven minutes or so between the Tunnel and a parking spot, the rain has lessened to a light drizzle.  I take a moment to gather my hat and my poncho, and by the time I get out of the car, it has stopped raining completely.  Gotta love the Midwest.

Originally, my father was slated to join me to this game, but my mother has been having some health issues of late, so he decided to stay home with her.  Next up was my daughter, who was excited to go with me…until she woke up this morning, looked out the window at the sky, and said, “NOPE.”  I have my suspicions, however, that part of the reluctance was the availability of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on our Nintendo Switch.

The Qline is essentially empty.  The entire city of Detroit is still hung over from hosting the NFL Draft this weekend, and the traffic patterns haven’t been restored yet.  As a result, the conductor of the streetcar informs us that we will have to get off one stop early, in front of the Little Caesar’s Arena, since the train will be doing a U-turn instead of completing its route.  I shrug, and hoof it the extra three blocks or so.  It still isn’t raining. 

As I head to my seat, the groundskeepers are taking the tarp off the field.  It looks like we will be starting on time, despite the Noah’s Flood that had engulfed the city not an hour ago.  After all the games I’ve already been to this season, this will be my first game in my actual assigned season seats.  I’ve exchanged every single time up to this point, either due to Opening Day seat shuffling, a rainout, and bringing additional family members. 

I’m excited, right up until the point that I discover my seat is a focal point for all the precipitation in the section.  I’m in the front row, right next to a concrete barrier: all the rain flows to my seat, and stays there.  My feet sploosh as I sit down.  Luckily, I can prop my feet up on the concrete step that mounts the glass partition in front of me. 

As I sit, I’m the only person in my entire section.  Indeed, I could probably count on my fingers and toes the number of people in the entire stadium who are seated.  Some of this I attribute to the weather.  My guess is lots of people looked outside this morning, and decided it was better to play Zelda than attend a baseball game.  Some of it, though, is that I’m  rather preposterously early.  I left extra time, due to weather concerns, on top of the usual time-wasters like the border and waiting for the streetcar.  Everything broke my way this time, so I ended up sitting on the edge of my own personal pond with an hour and a half until game time.  The annoying part of this is that it’s sort of the least ideal time imaginable: it’s not early enough to catch batting practice (although they may have called it off, anyway, due to rain), but it’s way too much time to just grab a hot dog before the first pitch.

For the record, I tried the Shawarma today.  I’ve been eyeing it since the first game, but there was always too much of a line.  This time, unsurprisingly, there was no line whatsoever.  I walked right up, and ordered my shawarma with everything, including the pickle.  I have spent about a year and a half of my life, all told, living in the Middle East, so I’m pretty picky when it comes to Shawarma.  I really wasn’t expecting to be bowled over, but I definitely wasn’t expecting the hummus to come out of a squeeze bottle.  Once seated, I munched away.  It actually was better than I expected, although the chicken was definitely not roasted on a spit, and the hummus, well, it came out of a squeeze bottle.  I probably won’t order it again, but if you aren’t from the Middle East, it’s perfectly acceptable.  But if you have a friend who wears a hijab, maybe suggest she try the cheese pizza instead.

By the second inning, the seats had filled in considerably.  I attribute this directly to the fact that the clouds had lessened to the point that there were occasional peeks of blue sky.  Indeed, I never felt a drop of rain during the entire game, and in fact became concerned that I might get a mild sunburn, since I hadn’t bothered with sunscreen.  I was alone on my side of the section, but the other side had maybe a dozen people scattered around it.  I considered moving to a slightly different seat in order to escape the water, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I always hate when I have to kick someone out of my paid-for seat.  I just don’t feel comfortable taking a seat that isn’t mine. Squish, go my shoes. 

When I was a kid, I marveled at the dominance of Jack Morris.  He actually wasn’t as dominant as I thought he was most of the time (his ERA was in the mid-threes), but he was someone who projected the sense that they were the ace of any pitching staff around.  Then, later, I had the chance to watch Justin Verlander pitch a few times in person.  He truly was dominant.  I remember watching his fastball actually get faster as the game wore on, and the befuddled hitters trudging back to the dugout with no idea what had just happened to them.  I get that sense now with Tarik Skubal.  Although he gave up a run in the first inning, he shut down the next 14 straight batters, en route to a dominant 7-inning manhandling of the Kansas City Royals.  Unlike Verlander, He doesn’t throw 100-mile heat, but instead interchanges mid-90s heaters with absolutely preposterous changeups that leave the hitters swinging at air like an axe-wielding lumberjack trying to swat a fly.

The last time Skubal pitched, he was untouchable for five innings, but then he started to noticeably tire.  This time, he got through six innings smoothly, and although he was clearly struggling more in the seventh inning, it was only enough to raise his pitch count.  He’s a heck of a find by the Tigers.  He has been mentioned as a dark horse Cy Young candidate, and while I don’t think he’s quite there yet, he definitely has the makings of the kind of ace that Jack Morris looked like through my childhood eyes.

The final score was 4-1, as Skubal’s relief squad managed to contain the Royals for the next two innings. 

Everyone went home happy.  I just hoped my shoes would dry.