Motor City BroGo – 1st Gear

No doubt by the title, you have probably guessed that this year, my brother and I went to Detroit for our BroGo (Brothers Going places together).  For a number of reasons, we missed having a BroGo in 2022 so we especially wanted to be sure and have one in 2023.  But how did we choose this location?  Several inputs on both our parts made this a great choice.

In the early 2000s, I traveled to Detroit several times with my youngest son, always in January for the Detroit Auto Show, known officially as the North America International Auto Show (NAIAS).

On one of these trips in 2003, we additionally took in the Henry Ford Museum.

I was very much impressed and thought my brother would appreciate the historical perspective of this museum.  Also, although my son and I did not have time for Ford’s Greenfield Village also on the museum grounds, I thought my brother would enjoy that as well.

A number of years ago, I had initially suggested that my brother and I take in the Woodward Dream Cruise, an annual event held in Detroit in August when all makes, models, and vintages of cars cruise up and down Woodward Avenue, a real thrill for any car lover like me.

Although my brother is not a car lover like me, I still suggested Detroit even though August did not work into our schedules as I knew these two museums would be worth seeing.  My brother, an avid major league baseball fan, discovered that the Detroit Tigers had home games the second week of September when we were looking to go.  Since, he has an unofficial goal of visiting as many major league ball parks as he can, he was sold on the location.

As always, he did some very thorough research on what things there were to do in Detroit. And has been an underlying theme of our BroGos, he also researched highly recommended craft breweries in the area.  Based on his findings, he prepared an excellent itinerary for our five-day visit.

Flying in from two different cities and into two different terminals, the first time we got together on Tuesday the 12^th of September was on the shuttle bus to the rental car facility.

After picking up our car, we had just enough time to check into our hotel in nearby Dearborn, before heading to the baseball game.  On our way downtown, we drove through several rainstorms which did not portend well for the game.  But once we got to the stadium, our fears were allayed as we found it had not rained there.

As the game got underway, we wandered around a little to orient ourselves with the stadium.  This was only the third major league baseball stadium that I had ever been to but for my brother, it must have been one in the teens.  As I followed my brother around, I thoroughly enjoyed watching him take it all in and voice his praise for the high quality of the stadium.  Before settling into our seats, we obviously had to grab a local craft beer.

The Tigers were playing the Cincinnati Reds and since the Tigers were not doing very well that season and had no chance of making the playoffs, the stadium seats were mostly empty.  After some rambunctious Reds fans nearby started cheering too loudly, my brother struck up a conversation with some die-hard Tigers fans, a father and son sitting two seats over from us.  Hearing my brother’s enthusiastic conversation with them about baseball, I could tell he was having one of those rare, wonderful dialogues with fellow baseball lovers.

One of the things we learned from them was that the Tigers’ best player, who held homerun and hits records, was retiring at the end of the season.  They knew there were just a few home games left for them to see him play and so they had made special efforts to attend these final games.  After that, we found ourselves paying particular attention to the game whenever he was up to bat.

Our stomachs began to tell us it was time to find some dinner and so we excused ourselves from the conversation to find some food.  My brother had learned in his research what were some of the best foods at the stadium.  Many stadiums have a signature offering and my brother found that Shawarma fries was very popular here.  So, after procuring that and then finding empty seats down low, we enjoyed our dinner while watching the game.

While sitting in these great seats, we also got an up-close chance to watch their retiring star.

Between innings, we had a chance to discuss how we wanted to organize our itinerary.  When my brother typed up our planned activities (he is very organized), he had not assigned certain days and times to each venue.  This was mainly because we did not know how much time we might want to spend at some of the museums which included visits to the Henry Ford, the Greenfield Village, the Ford Piquette Plant, and the Motown Studio.  After some thoughts, we settled on a tentative schedule, obviously subject to change as this was a vacation.

After finishing our dinner, we wandered back up to our assigned seats to continue the discussion with the Tigers fans who sat near us.  Unfortunately, after we left, with the multitude of empty seats, they must have moved to seats with a better view.  We knew they had not gone home as the game was tied through the ninth inning and went into extra innings.

At least for me, it was the first time to see one of the new rules put into place this year.  To avoid the game going on for too long as has occasionally occurred in the past, at the top of the 10^th (first extra inning), a runner is placed on second base in prime scoring position.  Cincinnati took advantage of this rule change and drove in the runner breaking the tie.  In the bottom of the 10^th, Detroit was not able to score with their runner on second base and so the home team ended up losing that night.

Driving back to our hotel, we were both sorry that we had not seen the home team win.  But we still very much enjoyed the game and with the rain holding off, made for a beautiful night for a game.  And this was just the first of many fun activities we would get to do over the next four days.

     To be continued…