The whimsical features of the park and its baseball elements won't interfere with each other, said Mike Ilitch's daughter, Denise Ilitch, executive vice-president of Ilitch Ventures. It has a very traditional configuration in the seating area so the purist can walk straight to their seats and ignore everything going on outside the concourse. You will feel like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams . The success of the park ultimately will be measured by how much fans come to embrace it as their own and as a symbol of their city, Ilitch said. If fans brag about their ball field the way fans in Baltimore adore Camden Yards or Denver fans beam over Coors, then Comerica Park's experiment will be a success.
Early reviews are encouraging.
They've kept the purity of the baseball park, the idea of an intimate environment being part of an intimate area the way parks used to be. They seemed to be just part of the neighborhood. They designed it so that fans are closer to the action, almost part of the action. The Tigers took care to prevent the playing field from destroying the symmetry of city streets, by designing an outlay of surrounding, brick office buildings that square with the roads. It's absolutely outstanding.