Mine was in 1967, a Sunday afternoon game against, I believe, the California Angels. I went with my dad and the Tigers won. We sat in the upper deck grandstand in right field.

It wasn't the first time I had been in Tiger Stadium though. My parents were big Lions fans, so I had been to a couple of Lions games there already.

But I remember thinking how much better the place looked in summer, laid out for its real purpose, baseball. I really found it thrilling to look down so closely right at the back of my favorite player, Al Kaline. And even more thrilling a few innings later when he lofted a home run into the right field stands. It hit an empty seat about two rows in front of us and bounced directly over my head into the hands of a man a couple of rows behind us. Even after attending hundreds of major league ballgames, that's still the closest I've ever come to getting a ball.