Detroit

I woke up around 4:00 am to catch my first of four flights on that Thursday, from Norfolk to Washington DC. Of course I got there about an hour early, because the Norfolk security line is incredibly unpredictable. Pretty smooth flight, no drama with the boarding pass, it was emailed to me about 2 hours before the flight. 

In DC, I felt like breakfast, so I hit up a sit down tavern and had a great egg white and turkey sausage sandwich on an English muffin. I especially enjoyed the flavor of the turkey sausage, I wondered if I could somehow replicate it. I just drank iced tea, I've never been a big fan of bloody marys, coffee liquers, and other breakfast cocktails.

I boarded the flight to Detroit and was given seat 11A. Turns out I was upgraded to 1A in first class. And of course I had probably the gayest flight attendant crew I've ever seen. I won't get into details, but let's just the way they talked, and the type of humor couldn't be ignored. I'm not getting into a whole thing here, but these guys were at work and they should have been a little more considerate. I did order a screwdriver and it was pretty good while listening to a Dateline podcast. Something about true crime.

We landed 20 minutes sooner than expected. I was excited, I was thinking maybe I could snag an earlier bus to downtown. So our gate was on the far end of the terminal and I had to walk to the middle to exit, which took a good five minutes. I then had to go up three floors via escalator, walk over a jet bridge, then take an elevator three same three floors down to get to ground transportation. And as I walked over the bridge, I could see the 261 bus and it was ready to pull out. I got downstairs just in time to be too late. So i had to wait an extra 30 minutes to leave. But hey, I was the only passenger on the 11 am bus. I wish he could have just asked me where I needed to go and just taken me there. 

I got the next bus 30 minutes later and it took an hour to get to Woodward and Clifford, about two blocks away from Comerica Park. but I still arrived around 12, giving me about an hour before the game. The stadium does not appear high but the playing surface is a good amount of height below street level, I guess the thinking was to not overwhelm the skyline with a baseball stadium. 

I always appreciate a ballpark with statues to pay respect to the past and Detroit had 6 for players like Ty Cobb, Willie Horton, Hank Greenberg, and Al Kaline. When I entered the park in the right field corner, there was also a statue dedicated to the late Ernie Harwell, the long time broadcaster. 

For food, I went with a couple of steak tacos and an Atwater City Juice beer. Both excellent.

My seat was the front row of the upper deck behind home plate, which is usually my favorite. Justin Verlander was making his pitching debut for the Mets, and as he's a former Tiger, the crowd was pretty into it. And speaking of the crowd, it must have been field trip day. If it wasn't for those kids, the stadium would have sounded like a cemetery.

Verlander gave up back to back homers in the first inning and that's all the Tigers would need. The Mets had no offense again, they let Eduardo Rodriguez look like Sandy Koufax in his prime, getting shut out over eight innings. And I love Brandon Nimmo, but when you get caught stealing in the ninth innings, down two runs, with one out...that's a purely stupid baseball decision.

I got the bus back to the airport, which was another hour. Not wanting to hang around downtown made that decision easy. I had three hours to kill so I went over to theairport's Atwater Brewery, plugged in, and had an amazing burger and a couple more brews. I even chatted with a guy named Chris, who was a really good dude. 

The gate for Charlotte was slammed. I figured they would email me my boarding pass, which is the standard operating procedure at most airports now. But I didn't get one, and after nearly all the passengers had boarded, I went to the desk. Much to my horror, they told me they had called my name several times but I had not responded. I never heard them! So they had given my seat away, but one woman for whatever reason, had to get off, I think due to a connection issue. So I got her seat! I was so lucky! Suffice to say on the connecting flight, my eyes were zoned in on the standby board. I eventually got home about 12:30 am. 

So let's recap the numbers. My travel day lasted 21 hours, the game lasted a shade over two hours. I took 4 plane rides...and my team got only 3 base hits. Such is the plight of the 2023 New York Mets.