What a difference a year makes:Game 13 of 22+

Summary:
Score: Angels 2 Detroit 1
Temperature: 68 o
Attendance: 38,688
Winner of the Dunkin' Donuts Race: Biggie Bagel
Number of multicoloured beach balls launched from the top row of section 325 in the 7th inning: none :(

I'll make a minor correction to yesterday's blog. Yesterday I wrote that the game changes day by day. Actually, it appears that it can change almost hour by hour. A few times today, Dale has reported that these Sox were up on those Sox and then described how this team's victory and that team's loss alters the Tigers' standings. This hour by hour, day by day attention to wins and losses is a fascinating thing to watch. To give you a sense of how different this season is from last year, attendance at a Sept 5, 2005 game was 26, 150 and the Tigers' record was 63 wins and 72 losses. Now, they're regularly getting 38-40,000 fans out a game and, as of tonight, their record is 85 wins and 53 losses.
Last night's game was about as exciting as it can get. Undoubtedly, we've seen the Tigers one run down in the bottom of the ninth before but it's getting to the point where every win counts and everyone in the park knows that every win counts (except perhaps the person behind us who thought bat and ball boys were actual players paid millions of dollars to "sit on a chair in the field and watch the game"-- bless her though for coming out, I say). I knew words would fail to capture the buzz and excitment of last night's game so I used my digital camera to capture a bit of video of last night's excitement. I did capture a still image of the crowd in the last inning: but I'm still not sure words, video or images could capture the magic of last night's game. I've spent a while tonight trying to figure out if and how to post quicktime videos but, as you'll note by the absence of a quicktime video, I've not figured it out. Perhaps you can imagine the energy from 38,000 people standing cheering Marcus Thames in what was the final at-bat for the Tigers. It's all pretty amazing: I don't think any of last year's 26,150 fans could have dreamed a season like this would be one year away. I don't think many of last night's 38,688 fans can believe it either.