ComicEra: Not a Park for the People
by Will Horwath
Detriot Free Press
September 1, 2000
YOU DIDN'T really think I'd like it, did you?
I love old things: old books, old wine, old friends, the old Detroit Tigers before they moved to ComicEra Park.
I loved baseball at the Corner: a Rolling Rock at Reedy's before the game with photos of Billy Martin, the Mick, Ted Williams and Al Kaline looking on, and a Canadian at Casey's Pub afterward. Casey's, where Lou Gehrig sat and listened to the Yankees-Tigers game on the radio the day he called in sick after 2,000 or so straight days at the office.
Yeah, I know. Things change. The old ballpark wore out its welcome, along with the 20th Century. Now Mike Ilitch has what he needed (a source of income), and Detroit exchanged something no one else had (Tiger Stadium) for what everyone else has (an amusement park, where baseball is just another ride). I hate it. Did you really think I wouldn't?
Not because it feels more like the Mall of America than a ballpark. Not for the Pepsi porch and McDonald's golden arches that perch upon right field.
Not for the obscene scoreboard -- Mike's Monster -- that overwhelms everything like a 62-inch Hitachi in a 10-foot room, bombarding your senses with 400 images a minute. As if the game itself wasn't enough.
I don't hate Comic-Era Park baseball for the beer prices that no one seems to mind (the same people who complain about $2 a gallon at the gasoline pump don't balk at filling up at $7.25 per 16 ounces of Bud Light). Nor for the ticket prices that make boys into millionaires.
I hate ComicEra Park baseball because, at any price outside of a corporate suite, it's not easy to actually watch a ballgame. I know. I've been four times. My $75 seat was farther from the field than Rush Limbaugh is from the truth. My $60 seat behind the ComeriCat dugout was great, but then it was a corporate ticket, not available to the average Joe. My $30 seat was horrible. My view of home plate was blocked by the constant stream of people walking up and down the aisles.
For over an hour, the sunset behind my $25 seat turned Mike's Monster into one huge, blinding mirror that prevented me from seeing any ball hit into the air, but didn't stop anyone from going up and down the aisle with beer and hot dogs and nachos and burritos and Pepsis and pizzas and ice cream, along with people getting up and down and up and down letting the people who were eating the beer and the hot dogs and the nachos and the burritos and the Pepsis and the pizzas and the ice cream to and from their seats.
Then there was the missing smells. ComicEra doesn't even smell new. Tiger Stadium had the heady scent of stale beer and the left-over cigar smoke and sweat of the generations who came to see Heinie Manush and Mickey Lolich and Al Kaline, Hank Greenberg and Mickey Cochrane and Charlie Gehringer, Alan Trammell and Gibby and Yaz.
These are reasons to dislike ComicEra, but what compels me to hate it is what it represents: corporate isolation. Tiger Stadium was part of a community; ComicEra isn't. The people are left dispossessed.
Gone are the bleachers where average Joes and Josephines sat. Gone are the peanut vendors outside the ballpark, yelling "50 cents here, a dollar inside." (Inside, they're now $3.50.) Gone are the street hawkers of hats and T-shirts and baseballs. Gone are the signs that people used to hang along the railings. Gone are the bars where baseball people met to talk about old times and rehash the game. Gone are the parking lots on people's front and back yards. Gone are the smells and the hustle and bustle of the people of the community around the park that was baseball.
Baseball in the ComicEra is about nothing but money. The bleachers may be "Long gone!" but the plastic, shielded corporate suites, isolated by money from the common fans and the grime of the game, arch around the field from one foul pole to the other -- a pot of gold at each end.
Baseball was always America's game because the working man could easily afford to take his kid out to the ballpark, if he was lucky enough to live close to a major league city. During the 1930s, it was an escape from reality into an enclosed garden of Eden. Not anymore. Today, a night at ComicEra for a family of four can easily cost over $150 ($400 if you lock into the $75 seats and $20 parking).
It isn't right. And in case you haven't noticed, there aren't a whole lot of minority kids out at the old ballgame. Major League Baseball is becoming more like the NFL, the NBA and the NHL -- theme parks for rich, white folk. It isn't right.
My friends said, "Will, you'll get used to it."
No I won't. I've gotten used to death, divorce and bleeding gums. I won't get used to baseball in the ComicEra. Nothing can make me.
Oh, I'll be back, next year -- when the Yankees come to town -- but not for the park. I'll be there for the game.
Until then, don't look for me on the corner of Woodward and Hockey Town. I'll be at the Toledo Mud Hens' Ned Skeldon Stadium, a $2 beer in one hand, a cigar in the other, sitting in my favorite $5 seat along first base close to the smell of the game and with a bird-dog view.
Or you can look me up at Tony Packo's -- we can rehash the game over beer and hot dogs.
WILL HORWATH of Southfield is an advertising and marketing copywriter. Write to him in care of the Free PressEditorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, MI 48226.
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