The lines around Comerica Park formed early Wednesday morning in anticipation of the biggest baseball game in Detroit in the last decade.
And at 1 p.m., the gates finally opened to a sea of old English "D" hats and jerseys, ready for the Detroit Tigers' first home playoff game since 2014: Game 3 of the ALDS against the Cleveland Guardians.
"It's thrilling," season-ticket holder Jim Graves, 61, told the Free Press. "We've been without playoff baseball here for a lot of years, so it is nice they put this hot streak together to give the city something to be excited about. And now the excitement isn't just with the Lions."
Graves and his wife became full-time season-ticket holders for the 2024 season and watched the interest in the Tigers grow exponentially in the last two months as they started clicking and put together an improbable run in August and September to sneak into MLB's playoffs.
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Like the rest of the Tiger fanbase, Graves was just hoping for a strong finish to the season. He expects the atmosphere to be ratcheted up from the regular-season finales that were sellouts.
"It's been good for the last month and a half or so," Graves said. "As good as it was throughout September and as good as it was when they clinched against the White Sox, I expect (the atmosphere) to be 10 times that today."
That excitement extends to everyone who spent their summer working at Comerica Park. 35-year-old beer vendor Darryl Gray was ready for a "beautiful" day in the ballpark and believes in the Tigers' chances to keep the run alive.
"I've been here for the whole season, the turnaround, everything," Gray said. "I think they got a good chance to go to the 'ship."
Others are coming back to the ballpark after the run pulled them back into their Tigers' diehard fandom. Dave Reece, 74, didn't watch much of this season after canceling his cable but he followed the scores and became engrossed again.
Reece, a fan since the 1960s, has attended Tigers playoff games going back to the 1984 World Series run and said he's ready for the "unexpected" to break out Wednesday.
"Lots of chaos," Reece told the Free Press. "Lots of exciting chaos. The fans are going to be great. Players are going to be all charged up. (They are) so young and exciting. I am looking forward to it all."
Reece wasn't wrong in his assessment of how the players were feeling about their first home playoff game. The young Tigers core did not hide their excitement about playing in front of a sellout crowd. The Tigers came into the ballpark Wednesday morning eager to see the scene themselves.
"An electric atmosphere," rookie Parker Meadows said of his expectations. "I'm probably going to be having chills throughout the whole game. I remember it happened when (Jackson) Jobe made his debut, it was a sellout crowd, so looking forward to it."
Riley Greene said he experienced far more traffic than normal in his commute into Comerica and figured he was sharing the roads with the hordes of fans coming later.
"We’re all super excited to be back home and we’re hearing all the stuff about how its going to be a packed house tonight so we are super excited to get going," Greene said.
Through four playoff games, the Tigers have only had to deal with playing in front of opposing crowds. Manager A.J. Hinch said having the crowd behind them will be the new factor to deal with. And he could tell that was the case five hours before the first pitch as he and the team arrived.
"The coolness of the air means it's not the middle of the summer and from pitch one, this group of fans here in Detroit are going to be rowdy and on our side," Hinch said pregame. "Our players are looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to it because there’s a different element to wearing the (old) English 'D,' the white uniform — we are playing at home.
"We have 40,000 plus fans that are screaming their heads off for us to do something positive. I mean, it's October, can you get any better than that?"
The game is a moment the Tigers have been building towards for a decade since the last playoff run in 2014. And now, the team is excited to share that moment with the fanbase.
"The city deserves it," Meadows said. "It's been a long time and they've had our back all year and we've been through adversity but fans continue to show out. It's loyalty."
"It's exciting for me to finally get to see playoff baseball here again," Graves said. "The city deserves it, the team deserves it. They played hard for a month and a half and they deserve it too."
Jared Ramsey is a sports reporter for the Detroit Free Press covering the city's professional teams, the state's two flagship universities and more. Follow Jared on X @jared_ramsey22 , and email him at jramsey@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers fans and players equally excited for first home playoff game in a decade
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