Circumnavigating Comerica Park, one notices how gargantuan, how imperial the 'baseball only' stadium is. A twelve story scoreboard. Tiger sculptures, the size of mini-vans, perched everywhere, some with baseballs in their fangs. Bats twenty feet high. It impresses mostly and sometimes oppresses.

I kept wondering when all the wrought iron would stop or how many red bricks were mortared to build this colussus, really a 'diamond in the rough' surrounded by the shabby neighborhoods of Detroit.

Walking around the stadium from the inside is just as interesting. The public walkways are wide enough! I didn't have to dodge fans on my way to choose one of the six different flavors of daiquiris.

The girl peddling the daiquiris was unapologetic about running out of change for my twenty. Bring your own one and five dollar bills. In general, the ushers and servers are friendly.

I sat in a wooden chaired section in the last couple rows of field-level where a server brought a decent turkey sandwich. Good salads are here too at non-Midwest prices but it was thoughtful to offer low-fat vittles to a gladiator of the belly wars like me. And don't forget to tip the server who counted my change in slow motion until I relented and said, "Keep it."

While eating the sandwich and paying attention to the combatants on the field, I couldn't help notice the kid-friendly atmosphere, a small ferris wheel whose baskets look like baseball mitts, a merry-go-round for the shortest fans, an idiotic tug-of-war between hotdogs on the giant scoreboard which had grown men jumping in their seats between innings.

On the more serious side, one has to visit the monuments in left center field. The Tigers, one of the most ancient of professional baseball clubs, have produced some amazing players. Fans can have their pictures taken next to the monuments during the game, unlike Monument Park in the Bronx.

A stoney Ty Cobb is seen in a sliding pose with dirt flying off his dangerous cleats. Charlie Gehringer is caught as the ball shoots off his bat in triplicate. Al Kaline's memorial shows him extended, battling after a fly ball.

Unfortunately, the Yankees lost all three games. They got the thumbs down in the arena not from the Tigers' excellent play but from their own sloppiness, poor starting pitching, men left on base and overthrows.

Paul's opinion wavered on Comerica. I agree with him that there is too much foul territory off the baselines and the outfield seems cavernous everywhere, right down to the 345 foot fences down both lines. But homeplate has little space behind it for exciting slides and tags in the future and the sound system is appropriately loud. After all, this is Motown.

Yes, there's a lot of concrete and Comerica will never charm the fan like Camden Yards but there are a lot of great attractions and the baseball tourist is allowed to touch them all. Like the old stadium, this one will be functional for a hundred years, the neighborhoods around it will gentrify and hide Detroit's seediness from the fans and baseball will continue to rule the empire.