you can see that I'm dressed like a schoolboy

summer is long gone. it's too cold and rainy to be outside for long. it's time for apples and spiced cider and settling down for a long winter's nap. and yet, here I am in the midst of baseball longing. like a warm hug after a long journey, I am filled with the infectious energy of detroit and how everyone is rallying around their team. oh it's silly and trite, to be sure. but to be downtown during a world series game, sitting in LJ's Lounge or another anachronism still stuck in 1984, to feel the tension of each pitch with dozens of strangers and the uproarious joy at each run scored...it's a culmination; a completion.

detroit last won the world series in 1984. the end of the automotive dream was quickly accelerating and the motor city was better known as the murder city. there was rejoicing when they won, but also rioting and mayhem due to an overzealous police force and the frustration and calamity of the times. before that, the tigers last won in 1968, just a year after the race riots that devastated the city and inspired john lee hooker's "the motor city's burning." unlike in '84, the '68 tigers helped reforge and unite the city in the wake of the previous year's disaster.

now, detroit is a spent city: exhausted, but with warm coals still under the ashes showing glimmers of hope and revitalization. what will this year's world series bring? how will this era be defined in the history of the city?