A Night at the Ballpark

Last night Stein and I took our nephews Michael and Jake to the Tigers game. We wondered about the weather and consulted the Internet to prepare ourselves for the game. Yesterday was a hot and humid day, so much so that I felt like I was walking through soup on the way to class in the morning. Weather.com said that it was going to be 85 degrees at 9:00 pm, with continued humidity. I thought, this is going to be a long game. It did end up being a long game, but it wasn't because of the weather. The Tigers started losing sometime in the first inning, and there really was no hope after that. It just wasn't an exciting game. (Besides seeing the yahoo father jumping onto the field trying to retrieve a ball thrown to his son by a Devil Ray player. Yes, the police got involved.)

And the weather? Beautiful. The minute we got to Woodward Ave. (the main street just outside the park) a cool breeze was blowing. And that cool breeze didn't stop blowing, so it didn't feel humid at all. I asked Stein where the breeze was coming from. In Chicago, it's so easy to say the lake. But downtown Detroit? The river? I didn't care. Whatever it was, it was welcomed. We had great seats too, so that made a big difference.

Although this isn't a food blog, I know I do talk about food a lot. So I have to make a few food comments about the game last night. So we were in the park no longer than 5 minutes last night, and we wanted to eat. How could we resist the smells coming from the ballpark? Smells of hot dogs, pizza, funnel cakes and the like were wafting through the concourse of the park. We headed over to the Hebrew National (when you can't have Best's Kosher, Hebrew National will do in a pinch) hot dog stand where we ordered a hot dog for me and 2 brats for the boys (Stein was holding out on eating). We nearly had our food eaten by the time we got to our section (only about 2 sections away). I guess we were hungry. At about the third inning, I looked at the guy in front of us shoving some sort of white thing in his mouth. At first I thought it was part of a funnel cake, but then I looked closely. It was sushi. Ah yes, of course. Sushi at the ballpark. Wha? Maybe I'm a purist, but when it comes to eating ballpark food, you can't even venture into the realm of healthy. (Not to say that all sushi is healthy, but come on.) So for all those maybe confused on the concept, here are some rules: All sausages are ballpark foods. As are all mainstream desserts (funnel cakes, lemon chills, ice cream sandwiches, licorice ropes, boxes of candy). I will even say pizza, although that's sort of stretching it. And then you have the appetizers - pretzels, nachos, popcorn, and peanuts. All okay. But sushi? Nah.

Back to the weather. (A friend of mine used to say that older people talk about 2 things repeatedly - the weather and road construction. Well, I think I may be admitting to being older by commenting on the weather repeatedly in this post...) While I sit here writing this post, it is raining. It started last night when we got home from the game, stopped during the night and then started again this morning. I am so happy. We have been lucky to have had a great summer, very mild compared to other summers, for sure. But we haven't had a lot of rain, and definitely not a lot of thunderstorms which we love. While it's not thunder storming right now, it is dark outside. It is a perfect excuse to be inside right now. I always feel guilty when it's a nice day and all you want to do is just stay inside. (I know a lot of this has to do with my mom's voice inside my head that still says, "Get outside. It's too nice to play inside.") In fact, Stein and I sometimes selfishly wish for rainy days after a slew of nice ones just so we could stay inside. Stein is going golfing this weekend, so I hope the rain doesn't last long. But just all day today would be nice...