I got to be at Comerica Park Friday night for Kenny’s gem, and watched from our living room high above Woodward Avenue last night as 43,000 screaming fans high-fived and honked their horns well into the evening. My 5-year-old daughter and I stuck our heads out the window, waving our Tiger Towels and yelling “Let’s Go Tigers!” to the revelers below.

I was teary-eyed to see that celebration at the Park, and I think anyone who has cared about this team – this franchise – at least felt it so deeply that it moved them. Looking back on the last 6 years, living next to the Park, attending 20 or 40 games as it were, this city was a comparative morgue until this season. Oh sure, the occasional 15,000, maybe 20,000 on a good night would park and walk and sit and walk back and drive – a simple equation for something to do on a Saturday night. But this season was so starkly different, so intense as to push those same Saturday-night Robots into honking horns and chants of “Let’s Go Tigers” – and this in June!

I kept thinking last night that I wouldn’t even care if this meant the end – if this was all we got to see and hear and share, I’d be alright. It already feels like we’re cheating the system a bit, you know? I guess anyone who was a season ticket holder in 2003 is still looking over their shoulder, waiting for someone to tap them on the shoulder to wake them up from this dream.

The great part is that it’s not the end, but rather the beginning of a new era.

One thing I can tell you with certainty: the debate is over. The perennial debate wondering if Detroit was a certain sport town has simply come to an obvious conclusion… Detroit is – and always has been – a Baseball Town.