2007 Baseball Blog: July 22, 2007

July 22, 2007
Game Time Temperature: 78o
Attendance: 42,210
Winner of the Dunkin' Donuts Race: Dashing Donut
Final Score: KC 5 Detroit 2

This weekend we had 2 back to back games-- one on Saturday night and one on Sunday afternoon. As I noted in the previous entry, on Saturday we had tickets up around section 325 where we had sat almost exclusively since we started attending games. On Sunday, we were back in our usual season seats (section 117) 13 rows up from the field and a bit past first base. Although these are techincally better seats than the 325 ones, it took me a while to adjust to these seats. I had a harder time seeing the whole expanse of the field but I also saw a whole range of new things. From this vantage point I could, for the first time, really see balls and strikes and I could also see the movement of the various pitchers and pitches. I could see all sorts of small things like the ways players looked at each other when one of them made a great play or the way they very consciously didn't look at each other when one of them messed up what could have been a great play. I could also hear the thawp of a caught ball and see what it's like to have a ball coming right at you. It's a whole other game down here. Up in 325, the game is, for the most part, a quiet, elegant chess match that happens way down there. Down in 117, the game is grittier, louder, messier and happening right in front of you. The Tigers have already advertised next season's tickets and that's got me thinking about where we want to be for next year. Different seats make for different games. In the months that come, I'm going to be thinking about which game I like more. Maybe we could even get seats near the Tigers dugout so Curtis could see my "Librarians for Granderson" sign which, so far, has only existed in the realm of the imaginary (sort of like my Jeter poster, Dave).