I had a great time this weekend watching the Tigers play in person against Seattle!  It gave me a lot of hope that this will be a great season.  Everyone was looking good – the pitching, defense, and of course offense, were nearly insurmountable by the opposing team – who happens to be in 1st place in the west.  Tonight we start a new series against the Angels, who are last place in the west.  Los Angeles has lots of problems with pitching and injuries, so if the Tigers can keep playing like they did against Seattle, it should also provide a couple more victories, if not a sweep.

There were several highlights of the games I went to.  Of course, there was Edwin Jackson’s shutout gem.  I was extremely fortunate to view Rick Porcello’s first major league victory – the first of many to come.  The bullpen was strong.  I got to see Josh Anderson’s speed on more than one occassion.  The two squeeze plays have to be # 1 in my book, though.  I was seated on the 3rd base line, giving me a perfect view of them.

There were no homers for the Tigers in those three games, which surprised me.  (It’s the first time I have ever been to a Tigers game were there were none.)  But, they definately showed they could also do it with small ball.

What really impressed me was the amount of Tigers fans that came out to Seattle!  On the third game, I was sitting in the middle of a pack of them!  We were cheering wildly, encouraging our team and ourselves.  I even heard one Mariners fan comment that he thought he had come to the wrong stadium.  I had a good conversation with another Tigers fan who attended the ’68 World Series.

The Mariners fans were very respectful of me during those games.  They never swore or threw anything at me, which makes Seattle one of my new favorite “visitor” ballparks to visit.  There were a few drunk fans around, like every place you go.  Funny thing was, the home town security actually calmed them down.

That’s my report for the 3 Tigers games I am able to go to for sure this year.  Hopefully there will be more, but when I live 3 time zones away from Detroit, that seems like a difficult proposition.

TCS