How I paid my final respects to Tiger Stadium

	The corner of Michigan Ave. and Trumbull was jammed on the day of last game at Detroit's hallowed old ballpark. Jeff Kowalsky/Getty Images
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By Cory McCartney

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It was the last home game in what would become a 92-loss season, and it came against an opponent that would finish with 97 losses. But there was no way my fraternity brothers and I were going to miss the final game at Tiger Stadium. This was about saying goodbye, a funeral for an 87-year-old institution on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.

We loaded into two cars and made the 83-mile trip north up I-75 from Bowling Green State University. When we arrived in downtown Detroit and made our way to the stadium, we quickly found ticket scalpers would not aid us in our quest to pay final respects.

Hopes dashed, we filed into Shelley's Place, a bar across the street from the Stadium, where we took in the first few innings of the game. We watched Luis Polonia lead off the bottom of the first with a home run off Royals starter Jeff Suppan, drawing a roar from the 43,356 inside the stadium. A couple of innings later we had seen enough. Our day was not going to end -- at least this part of the day -- inside a bar.

We soon made our way to the northeast corner of the stadium, where an elderly stadium worker was guarding the entrance. When the worker gave chase to a daring fan making a run for a garage door-sized entrance, we knew it was now or never.

The four of us raced up a series of ramps, sprinting until we emerged amid the centerfield seats. But without a ticket, which paying fans were wearing on commemorative holders around their necks, we spent much of the next five innings as nomads, working our way around the stadium, peeking in to get an update and heading back into the concourse, mindful to stay inconspicuous.

Standing in the tunnel out of the view of an usher, we watched Dean Palmer lead off the home half of the eighth with a double to left, followed by a Damian Easley single and an intentional walk of Karim Garcia to load the bases. Gabe Kapler then hit a weak grounder for a force out at home. Next up? A lanky designated hitter who was playing in only his 15th game of the season and the 22nd of his major league career. Robert Fick strode to the plate and what happened next turned a game between two teams who were a combined 63 ½ games out into something memorable.

Fick took the first pitch from reliever Jeff Montgomery and smashed a rooftop grand slam. It would be the last hit in the historic park, and as Fick rounded the bases wearing No. 25 in honor of the late Tigers great Norm Cash, the mix of sadness and retrospection took hold upon us.

The hoopla that followed -- long-time Tigers radio voice Ernie Harwell's voiceover during a 20-minute highlight reel, the parade of former Detroit greats trotting out to their former positions and the removal of home plate to be taken to the site of Comerica Park, just a few blocks away -- was meticulously planned. But what Fick had done earlier was a fitting eulogy.

It was the perfect last act, a finale that made this the best game I've ever seen.

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