9301140381
DETROIT FREE PRESS
930414
Wednesday, April 14, 1993
METRO FINAL
1C
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1993, Detroit Free Press
A BRAND NEW BALLGAME AT FAMOUS OLD ADDRESS
Here was my first clue that things had changed down at Tiger Stadium: I
heard a vendor recite poetry.
"Don't be shy, don't walk by
till you try our roast beef on rye. . . . "
His name was Rasean Reeves, a 19-year-old from Detroit, he was smiling
while he worked -- maybe that was my first clue, come to think of it -- and he
was working in something called the Ball Park Deli, which was in something
called Tiger Plaza, which is a giant food court on what used to be the
players' parking lot. Now Rasean had a new poem.
"Fill your belly,
Come eat in our deli! . . . "
Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Or, in simpler terms, Tom Monaghan has
left the building. On Home Opener Day 1993, at the corner of Michigan and
Trumbull, there were burritos and daiquiris and flavored coffees and frozen
yogurt and plush seats and a Dixieland band and a clear scoreboard and
waitress service. There were delighted crowds. There were kids with big eyes.
Put aside, for a moment, whatever happens to the team this year, the
pitching, the defense, the competition. No matter what, Tiger Stadium on
Tuesday had something it has been missing for years: life.
"Did you see that food plaza?" Sparky Anderson was saying, sitting in the
dugout before the game. "Man, that's some kind of thing. They got a bar
there. I ain't never seen a bar that big."
He laughed. "There's gonna be a few boys pretty well oiled when they leave
the old ballpark."
Open for business.
Ka-ching! Ring up money, and runs
The first real cash-register day of the Mike Ilitch/Detroit Tigers regime
went off Tuesday as if scripted by Disney. Blue skies. Full house. A win by
the new pitcher. Every player who stepped to the plate either smacking a home
run, or an RBI.
There was even a standing ovation for a guy most people thought would
never be a Tiger again: Kirk Gibson.
"I felt like a rookie when I heard that," Gibson said after the game. "It
was really hard just to keep myself in control. I wanted to do everything in
that one at-bat."
Well. It was that kind of feeling Tuesday, wasn't it? You wanted to do
everything. See it all. Do it all. Sample all $8 million of Ilitch's stadium
renovations, and watch the millions more he spent for baseball talent. It was
Opening Day Plus One, a little bit more special, a little bit more real. I
don't want to say the ballpark was paradise compared with what it used to be.
I will say I half-expected munchkins to come out singing "Ding dong, the noid
is dead. . . . "
Open for business.
"They can say what they want about this guy," Anderson said, nodding toward
Ilitch, who was surrounded by reporters, "but he spends the money. He's
interested. And you know why? He played the game. He loves it. Baseball is
like that. Once you've been a part of it, you never really get it out of your
system."
Oh. By the way. About the game?
Tigers won, 20-4.
Open for business.
Optimism, bats explode
Offense? Ha! It was as if they took all the hope, all the goodwill, all
the baseball desire that had been smothered inside Detroit winter coats and
undressed it, unfurled it, threw it into the wind and let it sprinkle onto the
bats of every Tiger who stepped to the plate.
Bam! A three-run homer for Rob Deer, who hadn't hit a home run this season.
Bam! A three-run homer for Travis Fryman, who hadn't hit one. Bam! A
three-run blast for Mickey Tettleton. Bam! Four hits for Cecil Fielder.
Earlier in the day, before the game started, Gibson had been taking batting
practice. He spotted me, rolled his eyes in that way he has of challenging
you, and said, "We're gonna be better than you think. Don't worry about the
pitching right now, or our record in the first week. We shouldn't even be
thinking about that. You know what we should think about? October. Those
stands out there in rightfield, filled with people, and about 10 times louder
than they'll be today. That's what you think about. That's how you get there."
And he jumped in the cage, his whiskers nearly leaping off his face.
Call him overly optimistic. Call the fans overly generous. Call all the
goodwill of Tuesday afternoon, the bands, the free hot dogs, the Tiger
hankies, the rhyming vendors in the food court, call all that a calculated
show by Ilitch's marketing hounds. Be cynical. Most people are.
But you know what? I saw a guy Tuesday I hadn't seen in a while. His name
is Gene Roof. He is now the Tigers' first-base coach. When I first met him, he
was a minor league manager down in Fayetteville, N.C., and we spent a week
together riding the buses. One time, he told me a story.
"When I was playing minor league ball, we had bus rides so long and so
crowded I had to sleep in the luggage rack up top. I came down, I was so
charley-horsed, I couldn't move."
He shook his head. Now he was sitting here, in a major league dugout, with
happy fans drinking daiquiris and eating barbecue.
You know the point of that whole story? Very simple:
Things change.
Open for business.