Comerica Park: 12 and counting...

Matt's been meaning to put a post about his Father's Day trip to Detroit. Last year, for Father's Day, Matt got his dad tickets to Busch Stadium in St. Louis to see a Cardinals game against the Phillies.
Are Matt or his dad fans of the Cardinals? No.
Fans of the Phillies? No.
The point is to go to the stadium. Of the 30 current major league teams, Matt's been to 12 stadiums.
This year, Matt and his dad took a five-hour drive to Detroit to see the Tigers play the Dodgers.
Are they Tigers fans? Nope.
Dodgers fans? Nah.
(They're Mets fans.)

But they wanted to see the park.
Comerica Park lived up to its billing as a beautiful baseball field with a mall around it. Even the team is pretty up front about the game nearly being secondary, which is kind of sad. But the stadium was built during a time when the Tigers were losing 119 games, so maybe you didn't really want to see the field then.

OK, let's get the distractions out of the way. Comerica has a merry-go-round and a ferris wheel inside the park. At first, Matt was like, wow, that's cool. And then, well, not so much. (The Tigers on the carousel were a nice touch.) It was $2 to ride either one, so Matt and his dad skipped them. Plus there was more baseball-centric things to see before the first pitch.

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On to the cool stuff. First of all, they have these giant towers all around the stadium with memorabilia and facts about the Tigers through the decades. Very cool. It's too bad they can't do stuff like this at Wrigley because people would eat it up at $5 a pop.
Then, Matt and Dad wandered over to the statues in the outfield for the Tigers retired numbers (Al Kaline, Willie Horton, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Hal Newhouser and Ty Cobb). The statues had a unique style that really emphasized the player in action. Balls seemed to shooting off Greenberg's bat, and the dirt was flying up as Cobb slid into a base. Check out the picture of Kaline leaping to catch a fly ball. If you look closely (click on the picture to enlarge it), you can see the ball is actually suspended a few inches off his glove. The viewer gets to see that perfect moment, just before the conclusion. Really nicely done, Matt thought.
That goes for the outside of the stadium, too, where they've gone all out on the Tiger theme, and it works. Sadly, the girl who took 18 minutes preparing to take Matt and Dad's picture in front of the giant Tiger kind of blew it. Oh well.
The rest of the stadium was beautiful with nice seats and good sight lines everywhere. The food was OK, not terrible or spectacular. The scoreboard was impressive and fountains spouted water in the outfield when the Tigers scored.
Oh yeah, the game. well, it was a wild one. Matt liked seeing the Tigers because there were a few potential future Hall of Famers on the field. Ivan Rodriguez is in for sure. Miguel Cabrera (who homered) and Magglio Ordonez (who needs a haircut) could be on their way. (Juan Pierre - nah, he could never get to 3,000 hits. Or could he?)Plus, there were two Hall of Fame managers - Jim Leyland and Joe Torre - skippering their clubs. Well, actually,they were just holding on that day. The game had errors and two men on the same base and plays at the plate and failed squeeze plays and and homers and back-to-back triples. When it ended, the suddenly-hot Tigers won 12-7. Root, root, root for the home team.
One other note about the game: Matt got decent seats through stubhub, in Row 34 behind home plate, looking right down the left field line. Strangely, Matt and his dad ended up sitting right behind two-time Academy Award winning actor Gene Hackman. Who knows why he was there. Maybe since he's a Hollywood type, he just follows the Dodgers everywhere. Matt kept yelling out, "Hey French Connection" and "C'mon The Conversation" or "Little hit there, Hoosiers" to get Hackman's attention so he'd turn around for a picture. But he never turned around. Maybe he didn't want the attention. Or maybe it was only some guy who sort of looked like Gene Hackman. Nah, it was him. Mr. Lex Luthor.

So that brought Matt's stadium total to 12. (Matt's dad has been to many more, including a bunch of retired stadiums.
Here's Matt's ratings of the fields he's visited:

First tier: Fenway Park (Boston Red Sox), Camden Yards (Baltimore Orioles) and PNC Park (Pittsburgh Pirates)
Second tier, and close behind: Busch Stadium (St. Louis Cardinals), Comerica Park (Detroit Tigers), Wrigley Field (Chicago Cubs)
Third tier, still close behind: Coors Field (Colorado Rockies), Miller Park (Milwaukee Brewers)
Fourth tier and further back: Shea Stadium (New York Mets), U.S. Cellular Field (Chicago White Sox), Yankee Stadium (New York Stinkees)
Fifth and this is a bad stadium: Metrodome (Minnesota Twins).

You can read ESPN Page 2's else review of all these stadiums right here.

Twelve down, 18 to go. (Matt sure hopes they don't tear down Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium and move the Twins out of the Metrodome in the next two years. Nah, that'll never happen.)

Well, it was another great Father's Day trip with a great guy. As for next year...Cincinnati isn't too far....or Cleveland...or...