Another Tigers Game Homerun

Thursday, 11 October 2012

During the regular season i got to go to a few Detroit Tigers baseball games at Comerica Park.  Karrie and I went in May and sat in left field.  That's when we were in Section 149 Row 1 and Miguel Cabrera hit a homerun just a few feet over our heads.  Here's the link to that day out in left field.

Then about a month ago i somehow got to see a game from one of the luxury boxes at the stadium.  It was from another company, who invited other coworkers.  Much like First-Class in an airplane, seeing a game from a luxury box is the way to go.  There are seats and tables where you can sit and watch the game.

They also have a room that connects just to your section where we had food and drinks.  It also had a tv and a bathroom.

We were allowed to stay there long after the game had ended and well after all the other fans had to leave.  It was great, but probably not worth the two to three thousand dollar cost.

Then at the end of September Karrie and i went to another game.  Before the baseball season began Karrie bought two sets of tickets. This time we sat in right field in row 5. 

Once again these were great seats and wouldn't you know it, we almost caught another homerun.  In fact we almost caught two.

The first homerun was early in the game when Jhonny Pieralta hit a homerun to right field and it landed about 4 feet in front of us.  We were in row 5 and the ball hit the empty seat in row 3.  After hitting the seat it bounced forward and someone near the front picked it up. Unfortunately they didn't show this on the ESPN highlights of the game.

The second near catch came later in the game from Prince Fielder.  He hit a ball that just carried over the fence.  Someone in the front row missed the catch and it bounced back onto the field.  That ball was actually about 20 feet away from us.  This homerun was on the highlights.  Although it's a little tough to make us out, i'm the one in the white baseball hat.

It was a great game and somewhat significant.  Miguel Cabrera had 2 homeruns, his 39th and 40th, the latter being a grand slam.  This is the first season he's had over 40 homeruns.  Also Prince Fielder got his 100th RBI.  I think Cabrera hit a homerun in every game i was at in Comerica Park this year.  Probably the reason why he won the Triple Crown.

Here's a link to the highlights of the game on ESPN.

EDIT:  Apparently the link above doesn't work anymore.  It used to be highlights from that game.

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Comerica Park - View From Seats in Stadium

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Here's a view of Comerica Park from the right field upper deck seats. Last month i went with Karrie and her work to a game. It was great, we all met at her work and then took a bus down to Detroit.

Sitting in the upper bowl was actually perfect because that day it was over 90 degrees and really sunny. The seats we had were under the awning and we were shaded from the sun.

Like some of the other pictures i've taken at Comerica Park, this is a panorama photo that i made by combining several pictures together.

(click to enlarge)

It was great not having to worry about parking or traffic. The bus parked right along I-75 and it was just a short walk to the field. Also we all brought along food and drinks and we had a great time on the ride to and from the game.


Here's some of the other times we went to see a Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park:

• Earlier in the year when we sat in centerfield and almost caught Miguel Cabrera's homerun.
• Last year at the ALCS playoff game. This is when i tried to buy tickets online from Ticketmaster and then Karrie was able to get them the day of the game really cheap.
• This was also last year when it rained for 3 hours then the game was canceled.

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Detroit Tigers - Comerica Park Centerfield

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

At the start of the season Karrie bought 2 tickets for $9 each for Detroit Tigers vs Seattle Mariners. We sat in left field, section 149, row 1.

(click to enlarge)

Being right behind the bullpens, we got to see all of the pitchers warming up, including Max Scherzer, the Tigers starting pitcher.

He pitched ok, but gave up a lot of hits and the Mariners scored a few runs.

Here's video of him warming up.

http://youtu.be/HSdf6wzVIMQ

The funny thing before the game was the rookie pitchers for the Mariners walking to the bullpen with their cartoon, little kid, backpacks.

It was a little cold and windy. But for the middle of April i wasn't expecting it to be 54 degrees.

Definitely the best part of the game was Miguel Cabrera's homerun.

It was coming right for us, flew over our heads and landed 5 rows behind us. You can't see our faces because right as the camera zoomed in, we turned around to watch where the ball went.

Jose Valverde warmed up a bit, but the tigers never came close enough for him to come in at the 9th inning for the save.
We got up in the 7th and walked around the stadium.

I stopped at one of the balcony's to try and get a cool picture of the ferris wheel. It sort of came out how i wanted, but not perfect. There was too much stuff in the way.

Here's the view from the upper deck. It's been a while since i've had tickets up here, i forget that they are not that bad of seats. But with left and right field tickets selling for under $15 dollars i don't see any reason to sit way up in section 238.

Anyway, it was a fun game to go to, even though it was cold and the Tigers lost.

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Tigers Playoffs

Monday, 12 September 2011

Last September i was thinking of buying tickets to see a Detroit Tiger playoff game. But it turned out that the ALDS (round 1) was going to be September 30 - October 6. I was going to be in Italy those days so i wouldn't be able to go.

But i thought, i'll just try and see if i even could get tickets. I remember hearing stories of people going crazy trying to buy world series tickets a few years ago.

Here's what the process was like. I went to tigers.com the day the tickets went on sale and saw this
I clicked on Game 1 and was directed to this screen, the Virtual Waiting Room. I have to say that this is actually a good idea. It's not first come-first serve but sort of a random selection. And it stops people from just clicking the Refresh button 5000 times.
It said that it would automatically refresh the screen. But i figured if 1 was good then 10 would be better. So i went back and clicked Open in New Tab ten times. At the top here you can see all the browser windows i had open.

I don't know if it actually helped though because all of a sudden, all of the windows went to this screen. I thought "great, it worked, i can buy tickets now." It turned out, not really.
This was the next screen. I selected 2 tickets together in the Right Field Grandstand and clicked Continue.
It then went to everyone's favorite screen, the wavy text verification. This is so that they know you are a real person and not a computer program trying to buy up all the tickets, then sell them online for triple the price. So i typed in the words and hit continue.
It went back to the previous screen with this error.
So i tried again.

Once or twice it said this.
This process went on and on for about 20 minutes and i was really sick of typing in those hard to read words. Until finally it worked. I actually had given up on the right field grandstand and just selected 2 tickets, best available. Apparently the best available were $60 in row 22 of the upper deck. After taxes and fees (which are totally made up) the total would have been $140.
The crazy thing is that there was time limits on everything. 2 minutes to pick your seats, 3 minutes to verify, 3 minutes to enter your name.
It turned out to be a good practice run if the Tigers made it to the ALCS (round 2). I was going to have to order them at 4PM in the lobby of our hotel in Rome.

It ended up that i couldn't get tickets for round 2 (ALCS) because they went on sale at 10am the day i left for Italy.

The tickets were $110 face value. Luckily with all the sports going on here in Michigan: Lions Monday night Football and MSU vs UofM.... the tigers got left behind a bit.

The day of the games the tickets were going for less than face value and Karrie bought right field bleachers (my favorite seats) for $25 each. It was game 4 and it was cold and rainy but it was great. Way better than upper deck for $250.

It started a few hours late because of the rain, then went into extra innings and the Tigers ended up losing but it was still fun.

Here's the tarp on the field before the game.

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Salvation Army Baseballs

Friday, 8 July 2011

I went to a Salvation Army and saw these two baseballs in a cabinet. They had the Detroit Tigers logo on them and a bunch of signatures. I couldn't really read the names but the balls were only $3 so i bought them.

After looking more closely i started to recognize some of the names. One of the balls had '93 written on it so i checked the names with the 1993 Tigers.

This is the first ball. I labeled the names that i recognized, but there were a bunch more that i couldn't read.

• Sparky Anderson
• Alan Trammel
• Lou Whitaker
• Cecil Fielder

(click to enlarge)

The signatures on the second ball have faded more, but there are a lot of the same names.
At the same store i also bought a rocking chair for $30. It was practically new, it still had the plastic cover on the ottoman. It's really comfortable and sell's online for around $170.

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Random Pictures from 2010

Thursday, 12 August 2010

I didn't feel like creating separate post for all of these so i just put them all together. They are some of the random things i've done in the past few months.

This was a smoke stack at one of the GM plants i visited last month. It was either in Dallas or Kansas City, i can't remember.
Waiting to fly home in the rain.
Truck frames at one of the GM assembly plants.
Good luck guessing what book this is. Although if you know me you probably have a good chance at guessing it. Katie will probably know since it's her book that i borrowed.
Unfortunately some animal has been eating the tops of almost all my sunflowers. I started with 20 and i'm down to 4. It is not going to end happily for one of us.
Tigers game
Fireworks afterwords
Washing the cars and watering the driveway
Somebody's cookin' chicken
Grandma and Jack
Some pictures from the Toledo Zoo.
No those weren't my footprints, honest.
This lady didn't see that part of the road was missing. She was too focused on that Big Mac.
Just trying to fit in at the LA Dodgers game.

Before going on the Price is Right they take your picture in front of this green screen where you can select different backgrounds. They give you a card then try to get you to buy the picture afterwords. I just saved the proof from the site. Now John and I didn't see a lot of other dudes going up there and i didn't really want to go. It was weird. But whatever, glad i did.

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