Tigers fans show pent-up playoff fever at Comerica Park viewing party

Detroit A decade of pent-up passion for the playoffs was on display Tuesday as dozens of Detroit Tigers fans lined up and then filled a portion of Comerica Park, where they began watching the Tigers take on the Houston Astro in a big screen in the outfield in a first round wild card game.

Fans filled Witherell Street behind the right-field bleachers before the gates opened at 1:30 p.m. and the Houston game started at 2:32 p.m. The last time the Tigers were in the playoffs was in 2014, and this year’s team wasn’t expected to make the playoffs until they finished the season with a 29-13 record for the final playoff spot in the American League.

Heather Meade of Madison Heights and her family were first in line, arriving at 11 a.m., an hour and a half before the gates opened.

“We’re big fans,” Meade said. “I have a whole collection of shirts from the Saturday games that they give away.”

Fans were limited to the right field bleachers for the viewing party. When the gates opened at 1:30 p.m., Meade and her family received new T-shirts to add to their collection; the first 1,000 fans received free orange t-shirts with the message ‘Tigers in the Wild’.

Tickets cost $5 for fans to watch the game on Comerica Park’s 15,000-square-foot video board that was installed next to the concourse televisions before this season.

A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Detroit Tigers Foundation, which has awarded millions of dollars in grants, tickets and scholarships throughout Michigan, Northern Ohio and Southern Ontario, Canada, since its founding in 2005, the Tigers said.

Sureena Koppolu said she didn’t have a ride to Comerica Park from her Farmington Hills home, so she paid for one.

“I took an Uber here,” Koppolua said. “I wouldn’t want to miss this. I love the Tigers.”

For Ann Coymer of Flint, coming to the ballpark brought back happy family memories.

“It’s tradition: I used to bring my mom and aunt here,” Coymer said. “That’s why my dad went to Tiger Stadium.

Tuesday’s viewing party continued a tradition of Tiger fans watching games remotely that dates back more than a century. When the Tigers won the American League pennants between 1907 and 1909, The Detroit News was one of many Detroit businesses that displayed scoreboards outside their facilities. In those days before radio and television, thousands of people often crowded around the scoreboards, waiting for operators to post the latest results from the telegraph line.

During the 1984 World Series, Games 4 and 5 at Tiger Stadium were broadcast on a 20-by-30-foot television screen in Hart Plaza.

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