the Tigers pumpkin that will confuse my entire neighborhood

I HAVE CREATED PUMPKIN. And it is… uh, well, not exactly good, but it’s definitely going to make a statement. A statement that will not be understood by anyone who lives near me, but that’s where the internet and you lot come in, right? I know that you cats will understand, even when my neighborhood child-wranglers may not.

Behold!

It’s a very wonky Tiger Stadium! I figure that since it’s a ‘dead’ stadium, it works for Halloween.

On the sides it looks like this:

So, yes, I have a pumpkin at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.

I realize this looks like it was carved by someone trying to gnaw the image out of the pumpkin with their own teeth, or possibly the teeth of a household pet, but that’s as good as it gets. Let us all recall that Roar of the Tigers has absolutely zero aptitude in the third dimension, and I am counting pumpkin carving as a 3D art.

Lessons learned:

–It is wicked difficult to do small detail with carving that goes all the way through the pumpkin. The way to do small detail work is to carve down only a thin layer of pumpkin, not cutting all the way through to the cavity. Otherwise you have little bits falling off and it all ends in tears.

–When you haven’t used your gouges and chisels in three-four years, you are guaranteed to stab yourself in the hands multiple times.

–It helps to have a pattern. Otherwise you end up trying to eyeball Tiger Stadium onto a curved surface without consideration for the (limited) abilities of your tools, and you get this.

–You will never get all the stringy bits out of the inside. Never. There will always be one stubborn patch that does not come off, or one that you can see but not reach with your spoon.

–If the pumpkin wall is too thick for your weeny CVS pumpkin carving saw to go all the way through, it is going to take you a long freakin’ time to carve that pumpkin, and your hands will start to hurt because also you have been stabbing them with gouges meant for wood, and you will get fed up and start cursing all of gourd-dom.

Next year I’m just doing a cat again. That is the sane course of action.

Oh, and these are my companion pumpkins, to flank the big boy:

Hopefully the Boston B will keep the local delinquents from smashing anything.

What are you folks doing for your pumpkins this year? I hope some of you submitted things for the contest!

pug marks, June 10-11

photo by Samara Pearlstein

Excellent game. Miller was shaky early, but it looks like Glavine was shakier overall. How many 22 year old kids get to say that they went up against Tom freakin’ Glavine, and outdueled him? Granted, 4 runs in 5.1 innings isn’t too great, but it’s loads better than 9 runs in 4.1 innings, which is what Glavine managed. Big pat on the back for Miller. He earned every swing of that offense explosion today.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that some TV station somewhere is a bunch of jerks (I think I need to blame FOX for this one, right?), I didn’t get to actually SEE the game. Since I therefore don’t have much more to say about it, today’s a good time for some more pug marks.

pug mark 1
Brandon Inge should break his toe more often.

Since his return from the injury (which he is playing through), Inge has been 6-for-17 with a home run, a double, and 5 RBI, all for a line of .353/.450/.588. For comparison, in the 5 games before his injury, he was 3-for-17 with 1 double, no home runs, and no RBI.

Either Brandon Inge is a secret masochist and the pain is helping him hit, or the pain meds are making him feel just fiiiine and groovy up there at the plate.

pug mark 2
JUSTICE MUST BE DONE!

It’s coming up on that time of the year again. Yes, All Star voting time. Now, the world is used to seeing the All Star game smothered in an excess of Yankee bile, but usually the Yankees involved have SOME claim to the position. This year, however, we are seeing a crime perpetrated right before our very eyes.

Placido Polanco, who is superior to Robinson Cano in pretty much every way, is trailing him in the All Star voting standings, due only to the fact that Cano is swaddled in pinstripes. Quo Vadimus, a Detroit blog, has a Campaign for Righteousness, telling people to go to the polls and vote for Polanco.

A vote for Placido Polanco is a vote for freedom!! JOIN US IN OUR GLORIOUS CRUSADE. Unlike religious crusades, you can happily engage in this one, secure in the knowledge that you are ACTUALLY, PROVABLY IN THE RIGHT.

pug mark 3
The plans to demolish Tiger Stadium have been OKed. Nominally OKed. This is Detroit, after all, and we all know how efficient Detroit is when it comes to getting things done. Especially when it comes to buildings.

Big Al wants the city to just get on with it already. I agree with him that I think the place is beyond ‘saving’ at this rather late date. I am a bit more nostalgic for it than him, though. This probably has something to do with my constant exposure to Fenway Park.

pug mark 4
Kenny Rogers had a promising rehab start. Woo. Miller’s start today may have worked out alright in the end, but I wouldn’t like to rely on the offense that heavily again, you know? I’d be happy to get Kenny back sooner rather than later. Uh. Obviously.

Curiously enough, one of the only triple-Aers to get any hits off of Rogers in 3.2 innings was former Pirate and briefly former Toledo Mudhen Tike Redman.

pug mark 5
Is there anything worse than losing a no-hitter with two outs in the 9th? And having that one hit account for the one run that means you lose the game? I would say no.

Alas for me and all Michigan fans, because that’s what happened to Zach Putnam and the Wolverines yesterday. The link is to my write-up of it over at my other blog; it was traumatizing enough that I’m not keen to get into it a second time over here. Sniffle, sob, etc. We knock off the #1 team in the country, Vanderbilt, and then get stuck with last year’s national champions. Someone up there really wants us to suffer.

Game 2, which is now a possible elimination game, is at 4 pm PST (7 EST) on, I think, ESPN2. So if you’re keen on watching it, there y’go.

pug mark 6
I was going to link one of the analytical pieces over at Tiger Tales here, but then I couldn’t decide which one to link. There’s the most recent Run Preventing Events post…. there’s a good post about Bondo (almost) leading the universe in Fielding Independent Pitching… there’s a nice little concise prospect report. Just go check Lee’s stuff out if you’re into baseball analysis and Deep Thought and all those things you’re less likely to get ’round here.

pug mark 7
If you have ever expended one tiny bit more thought on baseball mascots than they deserved, you should read my insane rant on the subject. I have very strong feelings about mascots, OK? And some of them are just… well, they deserve strong feelings. I’ll give Paws credit, though… he’s moved up some in my estimation with his new, less mothy suit this season.

pug mark 8
This is kind of hilariously recursive… I’m linking to Mack Ave. Tigers’ version of a pug marks post. LOL INTERNET. But it’s worth it, because Kurt goes into who he likes and dislikes in the bullpen before he gets to the links, and I mostly agree with him. Except I would say that instead of “sorta disliking” Fernando, I “hate and mistrust” Fernando, and I’m much higher on Ledezma than he is.

the ballpark in winter

photo by Samara Pearlstein

Typical Michigan in January: the sky done up in various shades of gray, intermittently spitting freezing rain or snow on us, and filling the pauses with bitingly cold wind. I had gone to the Auto Show in the morning with a couple of friends, and we had somehow or other ended up in Corktown for lunch, mainlining Coke and grenadine like the 5-year-old college students we so clearly are in the shadow of old Tiger Stadium.

We were sitting near a window, and I was facing out. The grays and whites in the sky, as I watched them roll by (over some wickedly excellent mac and cheese) were the exact shade of Tiger Stadium’s walls. It was depressingly fitting in a way, the world and the ballpark both in winter.

The two friends I was with are not baseball fans in the least. One of them hardly even knows what FOOTBALL is, and we are all Michigan students, which should give you a good idea of her complete obliviousness to the world of sports. But she IS a photographer, in particular a Detroit photographer, which is a special breed of shooter. It’s someone who understands all about the impulse to find beauty in decay, and the desire to document it, to preserve it even in ruin as something preferable to nothingness.

As we walked out of the restaurant, I begged them to let us stop the car across the street from the ballpark so I could hop out and take a few shots. They wouldn’t be great, because I would just be shooting from across the street, I didn’t have my teleconversion lens or anything, and there was, what with the weather and all, no interesting light to speak of. But it was important for me to grab a few even cruddy shots, because I don’t get down to Corktown very often, and the next time I did, Tiger Stadium might be gone.

It is a little disgusting, the way the place is already being put up for bid, its vital bits and pieces the subject of furious competition among various memorabilia sale companies. Yeah, I know bloody well that it’s probably the only way the city can afford to tear it down, and it’s terrible to let it stand and moulder like it’s doing right now. I know that’s how the business works, and that it’s the demand from us, the fans, that makes something like this kind of vulturing profitable. But there’s something incredibly crass about the whole thing, at least to me, and I don’t feel particularly good about it.

Anyways. I snapped my few cruddy shots, surprised as ever by the immense whiteness of the place, and the way the decay has taken hold even from outside, across a busy(ish) street. The light towers are rusting, stark orange against the black and white tones that showed up otherwise. The letters of the Tiger Stadium sign are corroded, although still a beautiful shade of blue.

Actually, the blue was surprising, a touch of color all around a building where most of the color had long since been bleached out. I always remember how white Tiger Stadium is on the outside (that big, looming white presence it has when you pass it from the highway), and my prevailing memories of its interior are of how dark (dark green?) it was, but for whatever reason I didn’t remember the blue until I saw it in person.

Although the tiger logos are clinging to the walls, they too are weathering away, in an interesting fashion: orange paint first. It’s a sad thing to see the Detroit D and its attendant feline (always a much more dignified presence than some of its other incarnations, i.e. Paws) in this state, and in that way I fully understand the need to knock the whole thing down if no one is going to bother fully restoring it.

Still. Y’know?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Comerica and I think they’ve done a beautiful job with it, especially compared to a lot of other “new” ballparks. But as someone who spends as much time as possible each summer at Fenway Park, I do find it lamentable that soon enough there will be a whole lot of people out there who will have never so much as laid eyes on old Tiger Stadium. Not even in its winter.