The smell of the place is indelible. It smelled like tobacco, smoke, sweaty people (but not a bad smell) and the food that people eat at a baseball game hot dogs, hamburgers and greasy fries. These smells I associate with the place and the many experiences I had there. The smell overrides any one experience I observed on the field with only a couple of exceptions.
I remember the time my grandfather took me down the long isle to the edge of the playing field. The players became life size, and thus for me bigger than life, I could smell the grass and the dirt. It was as if I took the binoculars that I had been looking through backwards, (everything looking farther away from me) and turned them around, (the way they are supposed to be used) so that everything looked so much bigger. I looked out at the field and I was dizzy, I could hardly take the last step down to the edge of the field where the stands began. My senses were on overdrive to the point that I felt uncomfortable, and my vision seemed to be warped. The short walk down the isle to the edge of the playing field like a wild joy ride.
Another strong memory was the time I took several people to their first baseball game. It was the day of the summer equinox, a Tigers/Yankees game. There was not a breath of a breeze and the temperature was the mid-ninety’s in the shade. Several of the people that I took to this game had only seen baseball on TV and told me that it seemed slow and boring. Happily, when actually at the game, their impression changed. Without moving we all sweat in the stands on the third base side watching the game.
Briggs Stadium