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    • Detroit Tigers fans ready for ‘exciting’ MLB playoff atmosphere
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    Detroit Tigers fans ready for ‘exciting’ MLB playoff atmosphere

    Vaseline Posted on

    The lines formed around Comerica Park early Wednesday morning in anticipation of Detroit’s biggest baseball game of the past decade.

    And at 1 p.m., the gates finally opened to a sea of ​​old England “D” hats and jerseys, ready for the Detroit Tigers’ first home game since 2014: Game 3 of the ALDS against the Cleveland Guardians.

    “It’s exciting,” season ticket holder Jim Graves, 61, told the Free Press. “We haven’t had playoff baseball here in quite a few years, so it’s nice that they put this great streak together to give the city something to be excited about. And now the excitement isn’t just with the Lions .”

    Graves and his wife became full-time season ticket holders for the 2024 season and saw interest in the Tigers grow exponentially over the past two months as they began an improbable run to sneak into the MLB playoffs in August and September.

    PREGAME READ: How Keider Montero went from Tigers playoff roster to start of Game 3 of ALDS

    Like the rest of the Tiger fanbase, Graves was just hoping for a strong finish to the season. He expects the atmosphere to improve after the sold-out regular season finals.

    “Things have been going well for the last month and a half,” Graves said. “As good as it was in September and as good as it was when they got the win against the White Sox, I expect the atmosphere to be 10 times higher today.”

    That excitement extends to everyone who spent the summer working at Comerica Park. 35-year-old beer salesman Darryl Gray was ready for a “nice” day at the ballpark and believes in the Tigers’ chances of keeping the run alive.

    “I’ve been here all season, the turnaround, everything,” Gray said. “I think they have a good chance of getting to the ‘ship.’

    Others return to the ballpark after the run drew them back into their Tigers’ diehard fandom. Dave Reece, 74, didn’t watch much of this season after canceling his cable, but he followed the scores and got back into it.

    Reece, a fan since the 1960s, has attended Tigers playoff games dating back to the 1984 World Series run and said he’s ready for the “unexpected” to erupt Wednesday.

    “A lot of chaos,” Reece told the Free Press. “A lot of exciting chaos. The fans will be great. Players will be fully charged. (They are) so young and exciting. I’m looking forward to it.”

    Reece wasn’t wrong in his assessment of how the players felt about their first home game in the playoffs. The core of the young Tigers made no secret of their enthusiasm about playing in front of a sold-out crowd. The Tigers entered the stadium Wednesday morning eager to see the scene for themselves.

    “An electric atmosphere,” rookie Parker Meadows said of his expectations. “I’ll probably get chills the whole game. I remember it happened when (Jackson) Jobe made his debut, it was a sellout, so I’m looking forward to it.”

    Riley Greene said he experienced much more traffic than normal on his commute to Comerica and thought he was sharing the roads with the hordes of fans who would arrive later.

    “We’re all super excited to be back home and we’re all hearing it’s going to be a packed house tonight, so we’re super excited to get started,” Greene said.

    Through four playoff games, the Tigers have only had to deal with playing in front of a crowd. Manager AJ Hinch said having the crowd behind them will be the new factor to deal with. And he could see that this was the case five hours before the first pitch when he and the team arrived.

    “The coolness of the air means it’s not the middle of summer and from field one, this group of fans here in Detroit are going to be rowdy and on our side,” Hinch said before the game. “Our players are looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to it because there’s another element to wearing the (old) English ‘D’, the white kit – we’re playing at home.

    “We have over 40,000 fans screaming for us to do something positive. I mean, it’s October, can you get anything better than that?”

    The game is a moment the Tigers have been building towards for a decade since the last playoffs in 2014. And now the team is eager to share that moment with the fan base.

    “The city deserves it,” Meadows said. “It’s been a long time and they’ve supported us all year and we’ve been through adversity, but the fans keep showing up. It’s loyalty.”

    “It’s exciting for me to finally see playoff baseball here again,” Graves said. “The city deserves it, the team deserves it. They have played hard for a month and a half and they deserve it too.”

    Jared Ramsey is a sports reporter for the Detroit Free Press about the city’s professional teams, the state’s two flagship universities and more. Follow Jared on X @jared_ramsey22and email him at [email protected].

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