DETROIT -- There's nothing like Opening Day for Detroit Tigers fans.
Except this year's game at Comerica Park might have had even more sizzle than usual.
A star-studded lineup and high expectations have fired up faithful fanatics like Traverse City's Bart Wilhelm, who likened the first game of the baseball season to "a religious holiday."
"Everyone I talk to just expects the Tigers to be great," said Wilhelm, who paid a ticket broker $300 in January for a pair of seats so that he and his 11-year-old son, Jonathan, could watch Monday's game, a 5-4 extra-innings loss to the Kansas City Royals. "It seems like if they don't win the World Series, everybody is going to be disappointed."
Traverse City's John Lamb agreed. He and friend Adam Young coughed up more than $200 to attend the season opener, which was Lamb's first.
"This is by far the most excited that I can remember people being about a season," said Lamb, 29. "I wasn't very old in '84 (the last year the Tigers won a world championship), but I imagine it was a lot like it is this year.
"On paper, the Tigers might have the best team since the 1920s or '30s," he said. "If everyone does their job, we could see some amazing stuff this year." Jay Harrington is erring on the side of caution.
"It's more than, 'Yeah, we have this great lineup and we're going to win.' The difference is that everybody thinks it's going to happen, which means it probably won't," said the 37-year-old Traverse City resident. "So I'm not making any predictions."
Unlike Lamb, who was attending his first Opening Day, Acme's Bernie Macek and Kalkaska's Bruce and Sandy Parker have made the trip a tradition.
Macek watched his 31st opener on Monday, joining a group of friends in Section 149 in left field, just 13 rows behind Lamb and Young.
"My first opener was in 1968, when I was 18, and only because I couldn't get in the park in '67," Macek said with a laugh. "I love Opening Day. It's the only game I go to anymore.
"Even if I couldn't get in, I'd still come down here. It's just like opening day for hunters. You just don't want to miss it."
The Parkers, who attended their sixth consecutive opener, considered skipping this year. Well, Bruce did anyway.
"She's the reason I'm here. She's a bigger fan than I am," Bruce said of his wife. "Tickets were going for so much that I was ready to let it slide this year, but she wouldn't let that happen."
The Parkers did benefit by waiting, however. They scored two upper deck seats for $60. They also have tickets to Saturday's game against the White Sox.
"We're going to Las Vegas, so we thought we'd see a game before we flew out," Bruce said.
Wilhelm, 34, equaled the Parkers by attending his sixth Tigers opener Monday. But he's experienced other teams' first games, as well.
"I've been to Chicago for the Cubs' opener and to Cincinnati," said Wilhelm, who visited all 30 major league ballparks last summer. "And I'm going to see the Pirates' opener in Pittsburgh on April 7 on my way to Boston to watch the Tigers."
Lamb had attended only one other game at Comerica Park before Monday, and he admits his timing wasn't so great that time around.
"I went once in 2003," he said. "That's the year they won only 43 games (while losing a near-record 119)."
Judging by the lofty expectations, this year's Tigers might have 43 wins by the end of May. But the northwest Michigan fans who attended Monday's game expressed the same fear about 2008 -- that the team's suspect bullpen could derail a powerful lineup that includes hitters like Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield, Carlos Guillen, Placido Polanco, Pudge Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson (when healthy) and newcomers Miguel Cabrera, Edgar Renteria and Jacques Jones.
"Obviously, their lineup is devastating," said Harrington, a student at the University of Toledo and a freelance writer who is working on a book about the Tigers. "They could put up 15 runs a game. But the bullpen's a problem. They're really going to have to step it up."
Harrington said he continues to be impressed, however, by the loyalty of Tigers fans and the special "magic" the team seems to find in seasons like 2006, when Detroit came out of nowhere to win the American League championship.
"There are Yankees fans and Red Sox fans, but Tiger fans are a whole different animal," Harrington said. "The real fans never left, even in the worst of times. And they believe not so much that the Tigers are going to win, but that they're going to always give their best. That's why, win or lose, we'll always love 'em.
"And whatever magic they seem to find, that's what's going to make it happen. If they win, it will be because of that. There's no logic to it, it just is."
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