You Can Put It on the Board

Crotch-cam view of the Comerica advertising-conveying device

Meet the Detroit scoreboard, same as the Cleveland scoreboard. And Cincinnati's. And the White Sox's. And so on. When's it going to end?


I made it to Comerica last Friday to see Justin Verlander embarrass Ubaldo Jimenez and the rest of the Cleveland Indians. Jose Valverde did his Carlos Marmol impression just to give everyone a good heart attack in the ninth, but even he couldn't spoil the fun entirely.

The occasion was a reunion of about two dozen members of a Detroit-area clan (into which, not coincidentally, I will be marrying before long). There was much fond reminiscing about Tiger Stadium, which is now an even sorrier sight than the spot that once held Ray Winder Field, or the site that used to be "Historic Greenwood," for that matter. The memorializers all agreed that the JumboScreenTronMegaSuperPixellator thingy that dominates left field in the no-longer-new Comerica is a tremendous irritation. And it was: too bright, too loud, too full of crap, and focused far more on selling stuff than on showing the occasional replay, which might actually have been useful. We were wincing from the impact after a while.

Look, I know stadiums have to sell advertising on every available surface to make the money to pay the players, who have family and Biogenesis bills and whatnot. But I also know that when you holler at me all afternoon or evening long, I'm not going to choose to spend too much time with you—especially when in many cases I could stay home and jab at at the mute button on my remote every now and again. Where's the young sabermetric genius who's going to figure out how to raise the ad dollars without pummeling the audience?

I'm J. Arthur Crank, good night.