Detroit, MI

Mitch Albom: Detroit Opening Day tradition embraces the local perfectly

Published

4 days ago

April 5, 2026

Mitch Albom: Detroit Opening Day tradition embraces the local perfectly

To many people, it makes no sense. Here was the seventh game of a 162-game baseball season, the Detroit Tigers had lost four of the six already played, yet seemingly the entire city converged on downtown Friday, April 3, to get into the stadium, or sit outside the stadium, or just hang around the stadium.

They stuffed bars and restaurants. They drank beer despite the early hour. They wore orange or blue clothing and caps with an Old English “D.” There is no way to count how many total people swarmed the streets, or how many of them had called in sick to their jobs to be here.

We call it Opening Day, and in Detroit it is virtually a holiday. Not elsewhere. Other cities don’t make this fuss. To many of them, going wild for the seventh game of the season makes no sense.

And that’s OK.

In fact, it’s perfect.

Far from the only nonstandard tradition

Opening Day made me think about how many things we do around these parts that are uniquely ours, traditions that we cherish but which don’t necessarily travel.

The Dream Cruise. It began as a charity event, and is now is a fixture on the August calendar. But if you tell someone in Boston or San Diego that thousands of people sit in lawn chairs along a busy boulevard to watch old cars drive past, you’ll get laughed out of the room.

The Independence Day Fireworks. Yes, other cities have them. No, they don’t have them in late June. We do. Supposedly we do this because of our proximity to Canada, which celebrates on a different schedule. Of course, Canada Day is July 1, and America’s holiday is July 4, so someone should explain how June got in there.

But, hey, maybe they shouldn’t. It’s our tradition. And that’s what’s important.

Sweetest Day. Hate to break this to area lovers, but that’s not really a thing in the most of the country.

Paczki Day – yes, it’s a way to celebrate Fat Tuesday, but it’s much bigger here in the Midwest than in other regions.

The Charity Preview at the Detroit Auto Show. That’s like the Motor City’s Met Gala, but it doesn’t exist elsewhere. And auto shows in general are not the must-see events they are in our town.

Traditions like throwing octopi at hockey games, singing “born and raised in South Detroit!” chanting “Onward Down the Field” when the Lions score or yelling “DEEE-TROIT BAS-KET-BALLLLLL!” are things you will not witness anywhere else.

And it may be a hot dog everywhere else, but it’s a coney here.

If all of this makes us quirky, well, quirky we should be. Because in a world of increasing homogenization, local traditions are in peril.

A taste for tradition

Consider what the internet and multinational corporations desire. Everyone on the same page at the same time.

Apple wants the whole world to line up at a given hour for the new iPhone. Taylor Swift wants the whole world hanging on her latest release. Local coffee shops get swallowed by chains. Local eateries surrender to fast food.

As someone who travels for work, I can tell you, decades ago when you went to the South, you heard different music on the radio. You went out West, you saw different retail outlets. You felt like an outsider. You felt like you were someplace new and wondrous.

Today, Nashville looks like Austin looks like Raleigh looks like Phoenix. There’s your P.F. Chang’s next to your Cheesecake Factory. There’s your Best Buy alongside your Costco. The goal of global economies is scale, big numbers, national – even international – audiences. Everyone wants to be the Super Bowl.

But what of the joy of regional customs? Local traditions? The food you can only get here, the music you can only hear there. As the internet shrinks our distance, it also fades our individuality.

When I was a kid in Philadelphia, they had a parade every New Year’s Day, where string bands marched and people wore these crazy costumes, painted their faces, and competed in different categories. It was called the Mummers Parade, and in my youthful naivete, I thought every city did this. Later I realized it was unique to Philly, and in fact, many outsiders found it silly.

Well, as Paul McCartney sang, it isn’t silly at all. Local color shades who we are. Local activities give us a sense of identity. Local traditions bind us to our hometowns, and our shared memories with neighbors.

So we can ask “Did you go to Opening Day?” around here and people know what we mean. There’s something precious about that. In an age of everyone buying from Amazon and eating at McDonald’s, we should fiercely protect what makes us unique.

So yeah, wearing a “Trammell” jersey or telling your friends, “I’ll meet you at Mario’s before the game for the lobster buffet” may make no sense to outsiders. Good. It’s not supposed to.

Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.

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Detroit, MI

K-9 sniffs out undeclared fruit trees in arriving luggage at Detroit Metro Airport

Published

9 hours ago

April 8, 2026

Press Room

K-9 sniffs out undeclared fruit trees in arriving luggage at Detroit Metro Airport

A K-9 assigned to work at Detroit Metro Airport with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists was credited with two recent instances of detecting undeclared trees among incoming luggage.

One of those circumstances involved an undeclared, suspected fruit tree from Moldova.

The CBP Director of Field Operations Marty C. Raybon shared a video of K-9 Baylee, wearing a CBP identification vest, sniffing out the small, undeclared tree on March 3 while checking arriving luggage at the airport.

“Trees like this can carry exotic plant pests and plant pathogens. Please leave the trees behind and don’t pack a pest!” the agency said in a social media video shared Monday on Instagram.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Detroit Field Office K-9 Baylee has been finding undeclared small trees amid arriving luggage at Detroit Metro Airport.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Detroit Field Office

The same K-9 also found small, undeclared plum trees inside luggage that had arrived with a passenger from Albania on Feb. 20.

“These trees could have carried plum pox virus, a serious disease that harms stone fruit,” Raybon said in that social media post shared Sunday on Instagram. “The U.S. recently got rid of this virus, so it’s important to keep it out.”

A list of prohibited and restricted items for airline travel into the U.S. can be found on the CBP website.

Previous reports of unwelcome agricultural pests intercepted at Detroit Metro have included a medfly amid damaged fruit with a passenger from Albania, caper fruit fly larvae amid fresh flowers from Italy, and remains of an invasive khapra beetle found amid luggage arriving from Lebanon.

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Detroit, MI

Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” replacing Colbert’s “Late Show”

Published

21 hours ago

April 8, 2026

Press Room

Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” replacing Colbert’s “Late Show” – CBS Detroit

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Detroit native Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” is set to replace Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” time slot.

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Detroit, MI

Secret Cinematheque launching Thursday with mystery Michigan movie

Published

1 day ago

April 7, 2026

Press Room

Secret Cinematheque launching Thursday with mystery Michigan movie

The surprise selection will be unveiled when the lights go down at Motor City Cinematheque’s new public program.

A movie with very strong Michigan connections will play Thursday night at the Farmington Civic Theater.

There’s only one hitch: Viewers won’t know what it is until the lights go down and the movie starts.

The evening will act as the kickoff of Secret Cinematheque, a new mystery movie program from Motor City Cinematheque, a nonprofit organization launched in 2025 that is dedicated to enriching film culture in Metro Detroit.

Motor City Cinematheque was founded by Kevin Maher, a veteran of several Hollywood studios who has been involved with nonprofit film exhibition for around a decade, and John Monaghan, a former Detroit Free Press film and theater critic and a former programmer at Detroit’s Redford Theatre.

The Secret Cinematheque programming, which will be held at the Farmington Civic the second Thursday of every month, is one of several film-related initiatives being launched by MCC.

Other programs include an exhibition of experimental 16mm short films at Detroit’s Galerie Camille on May 7; September’s Noir City Detroit festival at the Redford Theatre; an ongoing partnership with the Black Canon, Ali J. Wheeler and Alima Wheeler Trapp’s vast archive of important and influential films representing decades of Black culture; and a new twice-monthly podcast, “One Film Leads to Another,” which is centered on tracing contemporary film’s roots in classic cinema.

“For us, it’s all about getting people into a theater and watching a movie together, and then talking about it in a group setting,” says Maher. “Watching something communally adds another dimension to the experience, even if you’ve seen the movie before.”

That community aspect is at the heart of the Motor City Cinematheque’s mission. Maher compares it to church; there’s the service, and then there’s the greeting line afterward. “That’s the part that builds community,” he says, of the post-ceremony ritual. “And without that interaction, it’s not complete.”

Maher says his film preferences tend to run more populist, and Monaghan’s more toward the obscure. The melding of their tastes will result in a unique blend of programming, he says. The Secret Cinematheque series will also draw guest contributors from area film personalities.

As for this week’s Detroit-themed Secret Cinematheque offering — clues have been offered up on the Motor City Cinematheque and the Farmington Civic’s Instagram pages — “it’s one of those films that’s worth celebrating about Detroit,” Maher says.

No spoilers. See you at the movies.

agraham@detroitnews.com