Last month was out in Detroit for a couple of nights. I played hardball singles at the Detroit Racquet Club. My partner, Thomas Howe, and I used old wooden racquets for the first couple of games (they have stacks of them on the walls). The courts are good, but quirky: one slopes a little and back walls that end just at the line, so balls sometimes fly out into the gallery. Albert Kahn designed the club, and he made the courts so that the weight is born from above rather than from below.
With the Post clan, I later played doubles and softball single at the Birmingham Athletic Club, the home of the Motor City Open. More good fun. I overheard talk in the locker room about Hashim Khan. Hashim moved from Detroit thirty-nine years ago, but he is still a legend there.
And I went to the Detroit Athletic Club. Tonight, with Detroit hosting its first World Series game since 2006, many people are hanging out at the DAC. A few squash clubs have unique locations, but I don’t know of another that is literally adjacent to a major sports stadium. You can see the field from the club—there are partial views from the basketball court and many of the hotel rooms upstairs. Being so close to Comerica Park (and Ford Field next door) has been a boon for the DAC, with members parking at the club and stopping in for a drink before or after Tigers or Lions games.
We did both the parking and the pre and apres drinking. We also put in a half dozen innings at Comerica, Tigers v. the A’s, watching Justin Verlander pitch and Miguel Cabrera launch his 41st homer, a rocket that nearly hit the DAC.