I was there

It's still hard to believe, but we were there last night. In person.

Tdec called me about 2:00 yesterday afternoon, and the topic was what to do with our evening. Maybe a movie, we thought, but decided the weather was too nice. Could we squeeze a Tiger game into the budget? Well, if we don't hit the concessions too hard, sure, we thought. Beautiful day for a game, we figured, and surely there would be tickets for a Tuesday-nighter. About 5, we hit the road for Motown.

We debated buying more expensive tickets, but at the Comerica Park box office, we opted for $20 seats in the upper deck behind home plate. We had plenty of time to mill through the crowds, poke into a couple of souvenir shops, and take our seats. Second-to-last row, the way it worked out. We could see every inch of the field and into the home dugout, and even got a bonus breeze sitting so high. Justin's first pitch at 7:05 sharp came under a mostly sunny sky on a breezy 79-degree day.

We downed a couple of mediocre hot dogs and split a big Pepsi. As the game started, it felt like a great slice of Americana -- the perfect day to be there. The first few innings flew by; people were still showing up in the third. It was actually sort of boring until Inge's bullpen-busting homer in the bottom of the third. Verlander looked good, but nobody's thinking "no-hitter" forty minutes into the game.

I started feeling something special in the fifth. The Brewers still couldn't find Verlander's pitches. They were missing wildly, and a lot of their swings looked like they were fishing -- or maybe just trying to slow the ball down. In the sixth, Trase turned to me as if experiencing an epiphany and said, "He's pitching a no-hitter." SHHHHHHH!!!!!! I said. You're probably the only person in the stadium who said it out loud, I teased. "I didn't say nothing," she declared. I guess she got the cat back into the bag, as it were.

The crowd was definitely aware. The buzz continued to build. The 33,555 in attendance were cheering routine grounders like they were Willie Mays basket catches. A woman one section over made a valiant try to get the wave going, but the crowd didn't take her up. She seemed to think we didn't have enough spirit, but the fact was, everyone was too riveted on every pitch to participate in a contrived cheer.

In the ninth, the crowd gave Verlander a long, riotous ovation through his warmup pitches, and stood for every pitch. The clapping and screaming ebbed after each delivery, only to build a little bit more for the next. Somewhere in the middle of the second batter, my heart started really thumping as I dared to believe this might really happen. I remembered Milt Wilcox losing his perfect game with two outs in the ninth. Hell, I just saw a U of M pitcher give up an RBI single in the collegiate Super-Regionals after 8 2/3 innings of no-hit pitching -- going from near-perfection to a loss in the span of three heartbeats. So you start to sort of expect the spell to be broken.

The spell wasn't broken last night. Verlander was unhittable, with a little help from Magglio Ordonez, Sean Casey and yes, even Neifi Perez. The crowd literally went nuts for five minutes. Trase held her face and squealed. People clapped and screamed. Strangers hugged. Folks cried. I started shaking and teared up. It couldn't have happened to a better guy, to a better team. We called my parents, who had no idea we were going to be at the game. They were almost as excited as we were.

We went down to the team store and bought a replica Verlander jersey. Had to do it, even it was $145. Who cares, right? We'll have that forever.

This morning, I've been soaking up the coverage. I'm still jazzed about the whole thing. I've been listening to sports talk, and ESPN, and reading all the papers when I get a chance. There's a good wrap-up of coverage over at Mlive's "Cutoff Man" blog.

They're replaying the game at noon on Fox Sports Detroit. I've got to go now so I can see it again...