As many know, opening day for the Tigers is a holiday here in Downtown Detroit. The city fills up with people of all ages wearing their orange and blue proudly. The lot across the street from my place fills up with cars of all kinds, and people arrive from the metro area in large groups.

I was not here this year for opening day – I was visiting friends in Las Vegas. I got home at 6AM the day after opening day and was sadly greeted by mounds of trash all over the city. Bottles, cans, paper, food – you name it, it was thrown around the city as if Detroit was a giant garbage can in a bar on a Saturday night. This reminded me instantly of my first week in Detroit. We were working with a cute urban garden, Lafayette Greens, located right downtown, and one of the fellows asked if the garden that had experienced any acts of vandalism. The response we got shocked me. Our guide said that the only time they have ever had problems was during opening day, when thousands of people make their way to downtown. Some of these people have little attachment to the city and feel like it is beyond being fixed; as a result, they treat it as if it is a landfill.

With that, I am here to say that, though everyone is welcome to visit this beautiful city, please treat it with the respect that you would treat your own home. This city deserves visitors of all kind, and the Tigers deserve to be cheered on by the best fans in the country, but remember people live here. People love this city and spend a lot of time and energy to keep it up. So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE respect this city, because without Detroit, the state of Michigan – and the world, for that matter – would be an entirely different place. The future of our communities depends on everyone working together to make great things happen.