Kevin J.
Yelp
Not much in the way of big league ballparks I can compare Comerica Park with. Besides CoPa I've only been to the old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, a football stadium that was a terrible place to watch baseball at, and Tiger Stadium. And you really don't want to hear some insufferable old coot reminiscing about how much better the old stadium was, especially with the veritable forest of poles it had, do you? I'll try to keep it to a minimum, considering it's been almost 25 years now.
The view of the downtown skyline is beautiful and the place does have that relaxed ballpark vibe. The statues of Tigers greats in the outfield are pretty epic, even if I would prefer stands that ring the whole field. They could have just had the lower deck and not sacrificed the city view. I went to a game this past Saturday and the Wave in a stadium that doesn't go all the way around just doesn't have the same energy. It's cool some fans started the Wave at one point but it's more like a ripple compared to what The Wave used to be at Tiger Stadium. There I go again...
I like the big central Tiger statue outside but they could lose some of the other Tiger trim. Every single light ringing the ballpark in a Tiger's mouth is way too much - pretty tacky looking in my book. The carousel looks nice but the ferris wheel elicits eye rolls from me. No great view that I can see from those ridiculous baseball gondolas just looking at it from the ground. This ain't Boblo or even Barrymores so give it up.
It's wack they don't take cash, a classist policy I will always rail against. There's cash to card machines but the box office is strictly card only. It's like they're encouraging scalpers for people who don't have credit/debit cards or aren't up to date on their payments.
The gentle slope of the seating tiers and the upper deck being set back from the lower doesn't give those in the nosebleeds very good views but I think it's pretty standard for modern ballparks. Can't have poles everywhere though CoPa will never have the wild, intimate atmosphere that you-know-where did.
Concessions are overpriced but hey, you know the deal. The big league meal of a hot dog, chips and a fountain drink actually ain't too bad at $9, probably better than you'd find at any corporate cineplex and isn't even much more than you'd play at Senate Theater. (Random Senate Theater plug in a baseball stadium review, lfg!)
I've been to a few ballgames here over the years, 2 this season. The most memorable was in 2007 when I bought a single ticket to a game against the Yankees that had a rain delay of three hours. I had just gotten off work early at this bar I was pouring drinks at after the band canceled that night. I got there in the fifth inning. The game ended up going 13 innings with the Tigers eventually winning after a Carlos Guillen homer at around 3:30 am. Pretty surreal to be at a ballpark at that hour, though I'd pull a couple all nighters here last year when I briefly had a gig as a stagehand and worked set up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. I still haven't actually been to a concert at CoPa though so I can't sling out opinions of how it fares in that department.
Saw a rainbow here on Saturday after a rain delay. That was cool.
I don't like that the giant scoreboard no longer shows out of town scores. Need that much room for ads, huh? Or that it doesn't keep the score up while showing replays. A little strip on the bottom is all you need there. I also don't like that they don't show replays of the visiting team scoring or making great fielding plays. The Tigers didn't give us much to see in a 1-0 loss against the Royals in June, or in a 14-3 shellacking by the Padres on Saturday. I definitely wasn't rooting for San Diego but I saw people rocking the brown and yellow jerseys and the visitors scoring is just an important part of the game, y'know? The replay blackout is taking homerism a bit far if you ask me, and no one did but this is Yelp and you must still be reading. There was one Padres homer I couldn't see too well from section 323 in the upper deck and wouldn't have minded peeping on that massive scoreboard.
I have nothing to base this on but my feeling is Comerica Park is pretty generic apart from the city skyline and the two token amusement rides. It's not bad but I won't ever reminisce about it the way I do Tiger Stadium. That 3:30 am game was pretty cool but the ballpark itself didn't add much to it.