Detroit Rock City

This post should have been written months ago. I'd like to say it was because I was so busy, but the company I worked for this summer only allowed me to work 7.5 hours a day. Somehow, a few things I planned on getting done this summer, like updating my blog with stories from my trip, fell off the radar. But I did see five seasons of Lost.

When I last wrote, I was on my way out of the Greyhound after a long trip from New York to Cleveland to make my connection to Detroit. I checked my pockets before I was off the bus and realized that my Discovery Pass, the pass that allowed me unlimited travel for two weeks and is not replaceable, was missing. It surprised me because I had put it in a pocket with a zipper and could not remember opening the pocket. I was halfway to the door and ran back to my seat to see if my pass was there.

It wasn't in my seat. I thought maybe I had done something with it in my sleep or that someone had somehow taken it or picked it up. Then after the couple sitting behind me left their seats, I looked there to see if it was behind or under my seat. It was there! I couldn't believe my luck. To lose that pass before I had even arrived at one stadium would have been disastrous. I could now sit in the station and watch the birds fly around in peace. Birds. Inside the station.

One recurring theme I noticed from my time on the Greyhound is that a lot of Greyhound folk are lonely people. They will often talk to anyone about anything. I first realized this while sitting in line and hearing a teenage girl talk about cheerleading, her boyfriend, and anything else that came to mind, including this pearl of wisdom: "This (crap)'s a piece of (crap)!" (I keep the language at a PG level here.) There were moments when no one was looking at her and she was looking at no one. She was just talking. Thankfully she was on a different bus, and my ride from Cleveland to Detroit was pleasant other than the foreboding clouds and intermittent raindrops that threatened to delay the first game on my trip. I arrived in Detroit, walked across the street from the station to Michigan's largest used book store, and then proceeded into downtown Detroit.

I hadn't been to Detroit since I was a child, and remembered almost nothing. It was quite different from what I expected. I knew that the area had been hit hard by the recession and the general state of the American automobile industry, but it was worse than I expected. It was like a ghost town. Lunch hour was the only time I really saw anyone, and then it was only a few people here and there. I wandered around, ate lunch, and found little to occupy my time until the gates opened at Comerica. I used the internet at FedEx/Kinko's, had a great cup of hot chocolate in a cafe, and read. I was in the cafe when it started to lightly rain. I knew that the forecasts predicted rain and was concerned that the game might not happen that night, but hoped that the forecasts were inaccurate.

The rain picked up, and never became a downpour. It would have been smart to bring an umbrella, but I neglected to do so. I purchased one at CVS. I made my way over to the stadium to kill time. It was here that I realized that my new umbrella was worthless in the Detroit wind. I was trying to keep a handle on it when a worker tried to give me some advice. I asked him if they would play the game in that weather and he said "Oh yeah." That was great news and I continued walking around the beautiful Comerica Park. All around the stadium are these huge statues of tigers (the animal), which gives a cool feel to the place. I had my backpack with me and decided that there was enough time to take it back to the station to leave in a locker so that it did not get even more wet. On my way, a man said something like: "Hey, come over here, I got something for you." I was thinking: there's no way I'm stopping for this guy to try to sell me his drugs. He got right next to me and showed me what he was trying to sell. He secretively pulled his hand out from under his jacket and was holding . . . an American flag pin. :)

I returned to the park, hung out in the team store, and was relieved to see them open the gates right on time: 5:30. The field was covered by the tarp, but the rain was not too bad. I walked around the inside of the stadium and grabbed something to eat. Comerica Park is a beautiful stadium. It's hard for me to justify getting rid of the classic Tiger Stadium, but Comerica does as well as a place can. I walked to the outfield and looked at the statues of a few Tiger greats: Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Hank Greenberg, and others. One man offered his knowledge about Ty Cobb to his guests, which made me laugh: "Tyrus Raymond Cobb! That's not what it says, but that's his name! He'd come in with his spikes up! He'd sharpen 'em!"

Being inside the stadium and seeing a light rain were both encouraging. I was excited about seeing a game between divisional rivals (the Chicago White Sox were in town) and seeing Ozzie Guillen (the hilarious White Sox manager from Venezuela) manage. I made my way back to home plate and was checking out the carousel (never seen one in a baseball stadium before; you can ride tigers on the carousel) and the Big Boy restaurant (I had a Big Boy t-shirt that I always wore when I was little. I think my brother worked at one and gave it to me.) I turned around and saw an announcement on the screen in the outfield: game postponed due to rain. My heart sunk. I begrudgingly left the stadium. This day in Detroit was like many experiences I've had during my life as a baseball fan: initial excitement followed by disappointment, followed by a diminished and skeptical hope for better luck the next time around. By this time, my umbrella had broken, and I couldn't take it back because I had thrown out the receipt outside of CVS. I threw the umbrella away and made the cold, wet trek back to the only place I could go at that point in the day: the station.

I went to the bathroom and had another man try to stop me. I tried to ignore him and he said "Now why don't you let an old man holler at you?" I thought that deserved a moment of my attention, and watched as he tried to sell me . . . you guessed it, an American flag pin. Not even that, or seeing a Mennonite lady and her child at the ticket counter or vending machines, could cheer me up. Greyhound stations in general are not fun places to hang out, but Detroit seemed worse than most. I went over by the ticket counter and sat so that I could dry off. The man next to me had some kind of a breathing apparatus and a big bag of cheese puffs, which probably contributed to his terrible cough. There were noises that came out of his mouth that I had never heard before. They shouldn't be leaving a human's mouth. Wet and stuck with the Greyhound folk in the station for five hours before my bus left was the price I was paying for a baseball game in Detroit that didn't happen and a night sleeping on the bus for six hours to get to Chicago where, for all I knew, rain would postpone both games I planned on seeing there. All I could do was hope that the rain wouldn't reach Chicago.

The New Greyhound

It was fitting that my trip's first destination was Detroit, considering that the first Major League Baseball games I ever saw were in Detroit's Tiger Stadium. I lived in Michigan from ages 1 to 8, and among the few things that brought us to Detroit, from what I can remember, were baseball games. But before I get to talking about Detroit, let me talk about how I got there. For the four or five weeks before I arrived in Detroit, I had been planning all of the logistics of my trip. I knew that at some point I needed to purchase my bus pass from Greyhound, which would allow me unlimited travel for the two weeks and get me from city to city. After a long final exam on May 11, I went to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to buy my pass. As I was waiting in line, I noticed that there were some very interesting people around me. I asked myself, are these the people I want to spend the next two weeks sitting next to? I really wasn't sure, but I was definitely beyond the point of no return. I got my pass and returned on Sunday night to catch the bus to Detroit.

With this pass, all I had to do was show up a few hours before each bus left and ask for a ticket. I went early to make sure I got on the bus I wanted to. With the spare time I had between then and boarding the bus, I went to my school to quickly print off a few things. It is hard to put in words the feelings I had, being at the law school without any obligations while other people were still studying for finals. I returned to the station and got in line for the bus. While getting my ticket and waiting in line for the bus, I again asked myself if this was really something I wanted to do. Sleeping on buses is not pleasant, but the thing that worried me the most was the people. Not people who I feel are going to rob me or pose some sort of physical threat; I am talking about people who are going to annoy me. Smells, noise, conversations, personal space and bus seat boundary violations, and so forth.

While I was in these two lines, I paid particular attention to the people around me and what they were doing. One guy at the ticket counter kept yelling "Hampton, VA? Anybody going to Hampton, VA?" He wanted to cut in front of people, but didn't want to take anybody's seat on the trip to Hampton, VA that was leaving in just a few minutes. An older man, who looked almost exactly like this Scooby Doo villain, stood a few people behind me and mumbled something no one could understand. Downstairs, while waiting for my bus, I encountered more interesting people. Behind me was a woman who giggled non stop with her boyfriend (her giggle, voice, and general mannerisms toward her boyfriend were just like those of the lady squirrel in Sword in the Stone: flirty, touchy, and giggly), a kid who looked almost exactly like Dwight Schrute, a guy who loved to hear himself talk and make up five-syllable words, and a man who I thought was homeless but in reality was a ticketed passenger (who left a HUGE mess of sunflower seeds in his seat that I noticed when we arrived in Cleveland) trying to talk to the Russian girl who did not speak any English. Being in these two lines was like being Eurydice in this clip from Black Orpheus (start at around 6:00 if you want to see what I'm talking about). She's walking through a unique crowd of people and is obviously unsure of what's going on and what she's doing. Despite my uncertainty, I got on the bus. We were riding overnight to Cleveland and from there I would change buses to get to Detroit.

Maybe you've been to Greyhound's web site recently or seen advertisements elsewhere for the "New Greyhound." The New Greyhound is a myth. I saw one new bus the entire time I was gone, and I was not on it. I know it says that they have specific routes, but I didn't see a single one until the last day of my trip. And, of course, I saw one driving down 5th Avenue the other day when I was walking home from the subway. The bus I was on from New York to Cleveland, and everywhere else, was exactly the same: little space between seats, no blinds on the windows (daylight and street lights constantly illuminating the whole bus), no wi-fi, and very little of anything else. It also didn't help that the guy next to me did not smell good. I had ear plugs, but what I really needed were some nose plugs. Furthermore, these two girls were talking at louder than normal levels for significant amounts of time. But it was what it was, and the trip to Cleveland happened, despite a rough night of sleep.

As I was leaving the bus, I checked my pockets to make sure that I had everything. I didn't have everything! I was missing my bus pass! I would have to buy another because there are no refunds or replacements for the pass. Losing it was throwing money away. I couldn't believe that I had lost it because I specifically put it in a pocket where it would almost be impossible to fall out. But it did! I went back to my seat and looked all over, but couldn't find it. Behind me was the giggly girl and her boyfriend, who had just woken up (they had been sitting a few rows in front of me and then, just as my luck would have it, moved into the row right behind me; but the giggling wasn't too bad). Would I find my pass? Check in for the next segment in a few days for that, the baseball game that never happened, and Detroit Rock City.

Perfect Day

On Saturday night, around midnight, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Miami headed for New York City. It turned out to be among the least pleasant thirty-three hours I have experienced this year, but the previous thirteen days made them bearable. The trip from Miami, which ended today at around 9:30 AM, and the other thirteen days provided many memorable experiences. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be sharing these experiences with you. For now, we'll have to settle for a few basics which will form the foundation that the rest of my stories will build upon. While you read, perhaps you'd enjoy some music. Here's a great song from Lou Reed, with lyrics that have a special meaning for the most incredible experience I had on my trip and in my lifetime of watching baseball games in person (see item 4 below).

1. I left New York at 10:15 PM on Sunday, May 16 from the Port Authority Bus Terminal and arrived at this same terminal today at 9:30 AM, which means that my trip lasted two weeks, eleven hours, and fifteen minutes.
2. During these two weeks, I saw eleven baseball games in ten different cities, with Chicago being the only city where I saw two (two teams in Chicago, two different stadiums).
3. My first day was the most disappointing. Knowing that it was likely to rain, I hoped that they would at least play a few innings in Detroit. I even was able to walk around beautiful Comerica Park (a major upgrade in terms of architecture from the old Tiger Stadium that I visited as a child, but a downgrade in terms of history), teased by employees there who thought they would play the game. The game didn't happen and Detroit seemed like a ghost town. It was not a fun start to the trip.
4. My last day was, without a doubt, the most incredible game I have ever seen in person. Before I left on my trip, I knew that Roy Halladay (the best pitcher in baseball, if you ask me) was probably going to pitch on May 29 in Miami. Miami was the last stop on my trip and my law school friend from Miami and I bought tickets a few hours before it started (see ticket in picture above). The day of the game had a 50 percent chance of rain, but everything cleared up perfectly for the match-up between the Philadelphia Phillies and Florida Marlins. Roy Halladay did pitch, and he threw a perfect game. No Marlin safely reached first base. Twenty-seven at bats became twenty-seven outs. He allowed no hits or walks and hit no batters. His team committed no errors. It was my first time in Miami and I still can't believe my luck to have witnessed that. In the eighteen perfect games that have occurred since the beginning of the twentieth century (two occurred in 1880, for which there are no records of how many were in attendance), 482,785 fans have seen perfect games in person. That number might be off because I think it might count ticket sales instead of actual attendance. In any case, that is not many considering how many people have been alive in the past 110 years. I am glad that it was 482,785 instead of 482,784, and haven't been able to wipe off the smile since Saturday. There will be plenty more on this later.
   
5. My bus rides covered over 6400 miles. Greyhound people are interesting. I can't criticize them too much because I have been one for two weeks. There were some normal people, some shady looking people, some weird people, and some crazy people. I guess it wasn't much different from being in the elevators in my building here in New York . . . except I never slept on the elevators or spent hours on end in them. The stories from the actual bus trips do not have anything to do with baseball but are some things that you will be reading about in the near future.

Those are some of the basics. Tomorrow or Wednesday I will post again either about the first day or the last day. I am not sure if I prefer to ride the momentum of the perfect game and post about it now or to continue in chronological order as I had planned. In any case, something enjoyable should be up soon.

Clintercity

Well, I guess it should go without saying that I've neglected my blog for the past few months. I only had one post left from my trip to South America last summer, and here's the summary of it in a sentence: Machu Picchu was incredible. I went to Washington after that for a little family reunion, saw the Mariners lose against the Yankees unfortunately, and came back to New York for year 2 of law school. Year 2 is now over, as of Friday, and I am leaving tonight on a trip to see baseball games all over the eastern half of the United States. In honor of my trip, I posted a picture I took with my phone last year in Pittsburgh at PNC Park, which is a beautiful place to watch a baseball game. And since the Pirates are so bad, they basically pay you to watch the games.

This is the order of cities that I am going to visit, with a baseball game in every city (two in Chicago): Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Savannah (to see the Savannah Sand Gnats in America's oldest minor league baseball park!), St. Petersburg, and Miami. I have an unlimited travel bus pass from Greyhound that will take me from city to city. This schedule works out pretty well, while it is all not as fluid as it could be mainly because you can't just go from city to city each day and see a game; every team plays half of its games on the road, which means that many days they are not playing at home. This is the reason for a little bit of zig zagging. Otherwise, I would go to Cleveland first, probably, then Detroit, etc. It should be quite the adventure. You can catch all of the action right here. I'll have my iPod with me, which means I'll be updating this blog with my travels every so often.

You might ask where I got this idea. When I was thinking about where I would attend law school, I was often in touch with a good friend who also loves baseball. I was thinking about going to school in Virginia, and we thought about all of the stadiums within ten or so hours of the place where I would be living. We agreed to do a trip like this in the summer of 2009 if we were both not married. Well, she got married, I went to Brazil, it didn't happen. But as I was trying to figure out my summer plans and found a summer internship here, I started to think about how I wanted to do it even if it was by myself. I found out that I had two weeks between the end of school and my summer internship, and so I started making plans. Everything has worked out beautifully on paper, and let's hope it works out over the next two weeks. I am going as far away from New York as I can because those are the toughest stadiums to get to. The ones that I have not visited that are closer (Baltimore, DC, etc.) are ones I can get to in a day or a weekend. But I guess the underlying motivation here is that this trip will be a connection of a love for baseball and the enjoyment I get out of facing certain challenges (fun ones, not normal life challenges).

Here are some of the pros and cons of my trip. First, the cons. One is that there is not a lot of room for error. For most of the legs of my trip, I have multiple contingency schedules and plans. That is not a problem as much as potentially missing a game because of weather or some other unexpected obstacle. For example, tomorrow night it is supposed to rain in Detroit. If a game is rained out, there is no room for waiting a day to catch another game. Another con: riding the bus for two weeks. Some of these bus rides will be lengthy: Minneapolis to Cleveland, New York to Detroit, Miami to New York (36 hours). That last one will be a little bit of a beast. The nice thing about it all is that I've been through a few of these before in countries where riding a bus can be scary and uncomfortable (for example, read here about the 48 hour boat ride down the Amazon or here about the 50 hour bus ride a few days later in another part of Brazil or here which is the beginning of a series of stories about the long trip from La Paz to Cuzco, Peru. Or if you're looking for more reading about interesting activities involving bus rides, read here about almost getting a machine gun stuck in my face at the end of another bus ride.) Another con...being in some of these cities late at night.

So there are some definite cons, but think about the pros: twelve baseball games in two weeks. The cost-benefit analysis can stop right there because that benefit alone outweighs the costs. Think about the things I'll see: Wrigley Field, some of baseball's best hitters (for example, tomorrow night I will see Magglio Ordonez swing the bat, which is poetry in motion) and pitchers, America, cities I've never been to or haven't been to since I was a kid, some old friends, and so forth. I'm excited to see how it all turns out. First stop is Detroit and the bus leaves in a few hours. Stay tuned.