Road Games

Opening Day in Another City

Every city has its thing. Kansas City has great barbeque. Steve did not apprecaite watching the dudes doing the cooking sweating — it looked like the sweat just added flavor to the meat. Arthur Bryant's, ladies and gentlemen. 

In a strange twist of luck, a group of us attended Opening Day in Kansas City in 2006. Of course, one of us had predicted that it was "gonna be the year" because of this and that and, of course, the addition of Jim Leyland as manager. A lifelong, diehard Tiger fan, I think I predicted they would win most years — with the exception of about 1990 through 2005. We call that era the dark days …

We flew into Kansas City and took in a great week–end of site seeing and baseball. We even were able to get into the ballpark and watch the Tigers' Sunday workout. We drove into the parking lot jamming some Kid Rock and just wanting to develop a plan for Monday. Instead, we decided to see if we could go into the park — and the security guy let us.

You remember that Opening Day. The one where Chris Shelton (above, with Trevor Thompson) knocked the ball around and looked like he would be the MVP. Yeah, we knew he wouldn't but it was still cool, considering somehow he made the team over Carlos Pena who was a big part of the Jeff Weaver trade from 2002.

Anyhow, I had lunch with Kenny (red shirt, above) the other day and we got to talking about how we're all so busy and never have time to do much as a group anymore. Then we started talking about how fun it was in Kansas City back in '06. Kenny said, "Maybe we should pick a road series every year in July and just go." That sounds like a good idea …

There's no Opening Day party like a Detroit Opening Day party, though …