Duggan warns fans without tickets to avoid downtown on Tigers Opening Day

DETROIT (FOX 2) - We're just a few days from Tigers Opening Day but Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has a message for fans without tickets - to stay home.

"If you don't have a ticket to the game, please do not come into the city," Duggan said.

That means no tailgating outside Comerica Park, because not only are we in the midst of a pandemic, new COVID-19 cases have doubled in Detroit in the time past 10 days.

Now health officials say more young people are being hospitalized.

"If you think it's going to be one of those Opening Days where everybody fills up the bars and restaurants and nobody enforces it, you're wrong," the mayor said. "We will shut them down, the bars and restaurants, we will fine them and they could have their licenses suspended."

There will be some lucky fans who do get to watch the game from the stands but only at 20 percent capacity allowing plenty of social distancing between seats.

"Next year I'm very hopeful we will be back to a traditional Opening Day,  it's a holiday in this town," Duggan said. "But this year, given that Covid is rising, we are going to be enforcing the rules."

Duggan said the city does not want police to write tickets to tailgaters but they will if they have to.