8.13.2025

The doctor and me at Burner Phone Park to support our team. Tribal affiliations. Our people identify with Detroit. Frenemy territory. This park has always been utilitarian. Characterless. Loud. Southsiders are one thing, White Sox fans are another. We are versus them. We represent something noble, late summer hopes of a city overgrown with algae and plants like an abandoned swimming pool. Chicago has nothing to prove which somehow makes it worse. Fenway Park the year after the Red Sox won the Series was a terrible place to be, the doctor tells me. He was on first response duty at the ballpark. Why do they sing Sweet Caroline I asked him. Because they're idiots, he said. We take our seats. First row left field. Equal parts White Sox and Tigers fans. Guy behind us getting steadily drunker and louder. All of us in the sun. Young law school guys from South Carolina. One drops his drink, everyone gives him shit. He purchases a replacement, a tall fluted vessel filled with frozen vodka slush. Everyone gives him shit. Guy behind us getting drunker and louder. Universal appreciation for the ball girl who gets behind and traps it. Carries herself like a professional softball player and might be for all I know. Words with the guy behind us at the end. The woman with him hates his guts. There's no problem here, the doctor says. That's right you don't want that problem, the guy says. Tigers win 1-0.