Sunday, August 05, 2007

Detroit Tigers v Chicago White Sox - and Greektown's Pizza Papalis

Yesterday, myself and my son went to Deeetroit to see the Tigers V White Sox. We planned to leave early and grab some food downtown before the game. On getting there, we parked up in the Opera House garage. I recommend it ($10) - covered, safe lot about half way between Greektown and the ball park.

Being there, we headed toward Greektown for food - I remember Pizza Papalis being particularly good from the past, so there we went. We were quickly seated, and quickly served our drinks, and quickly got our order in - I let the young lad decide on the pizza - Anchovies, Green Peppers and Pepperoni. Nice. So in goes the order, and we're told that we have a 25 minute wait. No problem - until after 25 minutes, our server comes over, sees no pizza on our table, rolls her eyeballs and says - "I don't believe it. She gave your pizza to someone else". OK, I said - not getting annoyed or anything. Anyways, to cut this long story short, the manager came over, apologized profusely, got us our pizza in about 10 minutes, came back and checked was all good, got us another drink, and then charged us only for our first drink - the pizza was on him. Bargain!!! 10 minutes extra wait for now free food.

The pizza was awesome too.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, this was all really good business. Had they not apologized, admitted the mistake, and made some effort to compensate, then I may have not gone back there again. I wasn't so pushed about the compensation (free food), but they gave it - well done! Now, I would unreservedly go back there - food is great, and the service does its best - what more could you ask for?

And onto the ball game. We had cheap (well, free) seats - face value $8 each. These were in the outfield bleachers - granted we were in the front row. Having been in pretty much everywhere in that ball park, these were comparatively the best value tickets I ever got (had I paid for them, of course). Maglio Ordonez was running around in front of us, and when he was not there, Jermaine Dye was annoying us by fielding very well.

And the game itself. It was all good until the game started. The first inning was terrible. Chicago managed to score 4 runs. Leremy Bonderman fell apart from the get-go. Oh well. Reminded me of the Tigers of 2003. Dang!

The tigers need to get out of this slump, get pitching back on track, and fire up offensively.

The bleachers crowd amused me. One particular older lady had smuggled in about 6 beach balls, which she inflated at different times, and tossed about - all good fun, and then the Beach Ball Nazis appeared to spoil the fun. Comerica security, or crowd managers, or whatever they are called, were in full force, which added to the fun of not letting the ball near them. But each time, they succeeded, and killed the ball. Not sure why they are so adamant about this - there really was not a lot of baseball to watch. While it lasted, it was fun.

The game turned out to be quite a good on in the latter innings - Detroit made a good effort to come back, but eventually finished losing 5-7. Their losing streak continues....

Two things happened after the game....

Close by to us, a fight almost broke out, so the staff got to do something useful and got in the way. I guess that's what happens on Saturday evening games - amateur drinkers have all day to drink and then they can take on the world.

The other thing after the game was the weekend fireworks. As ever, it was a good show. The fireworks trailer was almost in front of us, so we got a little showered in dust and debris, but the explosions and music were a great end to a great evening.

If only we won.

Next time, I will bring my camera.

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