#108ing in Detroit Rock City

We are back, with another edition of our semi-occasional trip reports.  Co-piloting this fucking mess, is BeefLoaf and Chorizy-E….we hope you enjoy it!!!  

The Players

Biguns

The Slumpbuster

Wally$

Aloha Mr. Hand

BeefLoaf

and…(the host of the #SundaySoak) Chorizy-E

Thursday

It was an early morning on Thursday.  The plan was for BeefLoaf to be up and on the road by 5am, grab Chorizy-E and then head down to the fine town of Highland, IN to meet up with Biguns and Slumpbuster for the ride to Detroit Rock City, with Slumpbuster manning the controls on the cruiseship that would land us at our destination.  To everyone’s surprise it was the BeefLoaf that was running late, while everyone else was on time.  Regardless, we left Highland, semi-timely and headed off to start our journey……

A note on this carpool…..these are the OG 108ers.  Long before MySoxSummer was doing his blog about going to 50 games and what not, this crew was going to WhiteSox games, tailgating and going on road trips together.  The crew in this car go back to 2008 and it was great to catch up in a ~4 hour car ride together, just laughing about old stories, talking about the current WhiteSox and who each person thinks will be good and who won’t….making fun of each other.  It’s just four old friends that know they are going to stretch the boundaries of what their livers can do this fine weekend.

Finally, it is time to stop at a rest area for a little relief as we are close to Detroit and low behold, who do we find there?????

With the game starting at 1pm and us arriving in town around 11am, we decided to hit one joint and run…..  

Solid beers and decent food….it looked like a pretty happening lunch spot as it filled as we were heading out.

Comerica was literally steps from BeefLoaf and Chorizy’s hotel (thanks to a friend of ‘Loaf’s for the recommendation) and we had lit seats, right behind the dish.  A couple of notes about the stadium…..

1) They have separate entrances for people without bags…but more importantly, for people that are SEASON TICKET HOLDERS!  Also, these lines moved fast.  Sox Park sucks so badly at moving lines at the entrance.  They have to be bottom 5 in MLB.

Almost bought Tigers season tix just to experience this line

2) STRAWS!!!! and TOPS!!!!  

3) They have the t-shirt jeep / bazooka….every park needs this fucking thing!  

The Sox got choke slammed in this one…if not for Jose Rondon’s late HR, we’d have had nothing to annoy the cranky Detroit fans about.  The two highlights, were that your boys made it on live tv for a new york minute.  

AND, that your guy Daniel Palka signed a special ball for Wally$  

Post, we hit up HockeyTown for a bite and to huddle up on where we wanted to go.  A decision was made to hit a dive bar, unfortunately, insufficient research was completed on the matter and the 108ers ended up in a neighborhood and by a saloon that wasn’t a “good fit” for the crew.  We weren’t even quite sure that this was or ever had been a bar, and we had no need for smack or hookers, so we passed.

Yelp says: great spot for hookers, crack, and gun shot wounds

We asked the Uber driver to keep driving and take us to a more proper location….a fitting spot for the 108ers….”Bookies”.  The boys actually had a hoot here, meeting other fans, and jawing with both fans and wait staff.  Drinks flowed until it was time to for our nightly jaunt to the casino.

Biguns’ infamous eyes closed pose MGM ’twas……  

Friday

As every group of friends normally do, we hit this shit way too hard on the first night.  We all knew it was going to happen, we did nothing to stop it.  The first meet up of the day was at Grand Trunk Pub for lunch (it was around 1pm when the 108ers were finally up and running).  There are 3 main ways to deal with too much #108ing from the night before….

Only feet from this beer, Chorizy was sweating while trying to eat french fries

1) Start drinking again immediately.  This was the route that Wally$ chose….more on that later.

2) Get hydrated as fast as possible.  Biguns chose to go this route.

3) Order food, take one or two bites and fight back vomit.  This route is also known as “the Chorizy-E”

After lunch, it was time to head back to the rooms for some and for Wally$ to grab Aloha Mr. Hand, who was just arriving in town, with a fistful of tix for the Friday / Saturday games.

The crew then when on a barhopping of sorts, hitting Detroit Sport & Social (connected to the Little Caesars arena), Kid Rock’s joint

It’s impressive just how much Chorizy doesn’t want to be in this pic

and a smaller bar called Harry’s.  Drinks were had, acquaintances made and we moved on to the game…….

SIDE NOTE:  Friday night also promised to be a very fun night for the 108ers since it was Flint Tropics jersey night for BeefLoaf (Jackie Moon), Biguns (Coffee Black) and Chorizy-E (Monix).  We were told by the first local that saw us that “you are going to get a lot of love from the locals“.  That fucking joker was CORRECT.

Once in the ballpark, we had the best seats some of us have ever enjoyed in our lives, although they were a bit of a snoozer to at least one 108er.

Sleeping, not dead

The game was fairly uneventful for a while, as the Sox were getting blanked, in fact the biggest moments through early in the game were……..

1) The fans loved the Tropics jerseys, someone yelled “Corndogs Jackie, Corndogs!” at BeefLoaf…..and another fan accosted Biguns and asked for a pic with the group.  Lots of thumbs up and yelling, let’s just say that the team jerseys were a hit.

The 108 getting Tropical

2) The 108ers were espousing their love for Daniel Palka throughout all 3 games, lets just say that he was probably a bit embarrassed and possibly even might considered filing for a restraining order against us, but midway through this game, we were yelling for Palka (whilst he and TA7 were on deck before the start of an inning) and Tim Anderson turned around to us (remember, the 108ers are in like the 10th row behind home plate) and yells….”HEY, WHAT ABOUT ME!?!?!”  We got a big laugh out of that and screamed a bit at Timmy before the inning started.   You all know how this ended…..the #WhiteSox started a big rally in the 8th and came back to beat the Tigers.  The Tigers fans really didn’t enjoy us very much during that rally as we stood and yelled for each big hit.  Some fans behind us yelled “sit down” at us after one of the big hits……I won’t say what ensued, but let’s just say, we didn’t sit down and they ended up leaving.  A great win for the White Sox and a great start to our 2nd evening in Detroit.   After the game we headed back to Detroit Sport and Social to have a few drinks and decide the course of the night.  The wait staff there was super cool and were pouring random drinks from behind the bar for various members of the 108 crew.  

The crew finally decided that it was once again time to hit the MGM for some gamblings.  Most of us got dumped on….but as the night was coming to an end our guy The_Slumpbuster was sitting at a roulette table with a big stack of chips on the “MJ Square” 23 and BANG! It hit!  Winner winner Chicken Dinner!!  Actually, both Biguns and Slumpbuster ended up with decent nights, while the rest of us looked like this.  

We finally leave casino.  If we have one complaint about Detroit Rock City, it is the lack of late night food options downtown.  There is literally one spot, and there were like 10,000 people there at 2:30am tryna get some food.  When we arrived, it was a 45 minute wait for the 108ers (which is unacceptable, we once ate BBQ in KC in 105 degree heat outside because there was no wait, as to forgo the 90 minute wait to sit in air conditioning….we ain’t waiting).  While standing around we got much more love for the Flint Tropics jerseys (by folks that might have been previously incarcerated) and then jetted.  

SIDE NOTE: Chorizy and Beef walked back to their hotel, there is nothing like a middle of the night 1 mile walk through an area you scarcely know to allow you to enjoy the simple things in life.  This only occurred after Chorizy, while complaining about the lack of ubers, looked up and said “oh shit, that’s our hotel right there.”  

Saturday  

On Friday night, we made plans with Sport and Social to have the Bears preseason game on for us at 1pm.  They made good on their plans and the 108ers primarily made good on them as well, with only the Slumpbuster lagging behind to catch most of the game.  

SIDE NOTE: These are long benders, and if a member of the crew wants to sleep in till 2 or 3 to ensure they’re at peak #108ing level for the next evening, then goddamnit this a free country, they should do it.   The Bears played good…..albeit with backups, but we still enjoyed the game.  Afterwards we realized we should probably try and hit at least one more spot before the game….on to Cheli’s and the rooftop, which was hella cool.  

Once we get inside the ballpark, the White Sox re-start their domination from the 8th inning of the night before.  A few notes….we ran into a bunch of White Sox fans.  We also made acquaintances of new folks, which leads to this…..  

Look kids, if you learn anything from Wally$, it is that you ALWAYS talk to STRANGERS!!   Seriously, the best thing about Wally$ getting into the booth is that he posed for the ID picture that Ron Jeremy probably had back in 1996.  

The game is going on swimmingly…..the White Sox are crushing, with Gio knifing through the Tigers….and then our phones start blowing up.  What. Could. This. Be?   If you haven’t seen this yet, well, here it is.  

The carnage from this video show out in different directions…..  

Beefloaf part 1

That isn’t the video we wanted, it is the video we deserved.  Honestly, I think we look pretty damn good for the amount of beer, booze, and fried food we ingested in the 60 hrs previous to that vid.  Friends, this is the 108 in all of its gorgeousness and gorgeousity. After the game, the 108ers headed back to Sport and Social, which pretty much was our postgame home base, we had a couple of drinks, a couple of shots and it looked like we were going to call it a night, since we had a drive in them morning and such…but you know what?  FUCK THAT!!  We goin’ out.  Since the beginning of the trip, Beef & Biguns (which actually sounds like it could be a pretty cool buddy-cop show) wanted to check out Greektown, particularly the Casino in Greektown, so as any good crew would do, we did another shot and left for Greektown.   If there is one regret of this trip, its that we didn’t spend MORE TIME in Greektown.  Fucking place was jumpin’ when we got there at 11pm or whatever time it was.  We all descended upon the casino, but in true crew fashion we split up.  Biguns, Beef and Chorizy ended up at the same table.  Although the game we were playing was blackjack, the real event was watching Chorizy-E entertain the table, messing with the dealers, the other players, people off of the the table.  The guy is a master when he’s perfectly alcoholically enhanced.  WHEN.  At some point though, it ends and he’s vehemently signaling to the dealer that he would like to stand on 9.  Luckily, this coincided with LAST CALL, so we could easily quit……ON TO THE NEXT ONE!  

SIDE NOTE: Chorizy-E claims his poor blackjack play was because he was star struck from meeting Conway Twitty.  What actually happened was that there was a guy who had the unfortunate hair and open shirt of a young Conway, and when he was not paying attention for his turn Chorizy shouted “Hey Conway Twitty, let’s go!”  The dealer had to stop the game because she was laughing too hard.  Then Chorizy had 10 more Maker’s on the rocks and stood on 9.   Conclusion….another successful trip by the crew, maybe one of these years, we’ll get MySoxSummer out here to go on a tree day (this is Bridgeport) bender with the fellas, but until then, like Dirk Diggler says “I’m just gonna keep rockin’ and rollin'”  

– BeefLoaf & Chorizy-E