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AUGUST 4

Ray flew into Detroit to begin our 2^nd annual baseball trip. The plan this year hinged on two consecutive days in New York—a Sunday game, rescheduled to begin at 8:00, with the Cubs vs. the Mets; and a Monday night game featuring the Sox vs. the Yankees.

When building the itinerary we devoted three days to New York for other activities, including ‘Boogalooing down Broadway’, not knowing exactly where Broadway was, nor even coming close to understanding the intricacies of the boogaloo.

But that was for later. For now we were headed for Comerica Park in Detroit, a park Ray had yet to visit.

We first made a respectful pass by old Tiger Stadium, a place where we began our baseball sojourns some 15 (or more) years ago. She’s still standing, although we thought she looked forlorn and neglected. We’re not sure what plans anyone, much less the City of Detroit has for this place, but for now it stands fenced and weedy.

We circled Comerica to find parking and found a particularly helpful attendant who saved a place for us to have easy egress, which we ultimately needed. When Ray told him about our trip, he sighed, and expressed his admiration. This incident became the germ for a mission statement for our journey.

We skated into Comerica for a mere $6 each and took a look at the statues of Tigers past adorning the outfield area. Near the main concourse, the former Tigers’ announcer Ernie Harwell, one of Ray’s heroes, had his own statue.

After a sumptuous meal of ballpark food we settled into some seats, not ours, down the left field line, near Ichiro, and made our first audio report for the blog.

The Tigers (Motto: ‘We’re trying to look good even though we play in Beirut’) looked great in their home whites and the field is spacious and clean. It was some special day for little league kids because the stands were peppered with brightly colored t-shirts.

The game itself was uneventful. In fact, it later won our award for the worst game of the trip (Tigers eventually win 3-1 against the Seahawks (Motto: ‘Ichiro is all we have’)), but in the best stadium. So we decided to make an early exit to beat some of the Detroit traffic. And we had a long way to go to get to Washington, DC, before midnight.

We didn’t beat the traffic because we were thwarted by construction. It took a fair amount of time to reach Toledo, but once there it was all clear through Pennsylvania. On the other side of the road, a six mile backup loomed because of a horrible looking accident which occurred a few miles past one of the tunnels. Actually it wasn’t a backup as traffic was just plain stopped and people were out of their cars. The state patrol wouldn’t let cars into the tunnel so the parking lot was long, hot and looked frustrating.

We made Breezewood by 9 and looped into DC by 11 found our hotel in order and settled in easily.