The fight to save Tiger Stadium

From staff reports
September is just around the corner, and for the second year in a row, our beloved Detroit Tigers are eyeing the playoffs, and if the pitching holds up, another trip to the World Series (they haven’t done that since 1934-35!). But while baseball’s all the rage downtown at stylish Comerica Park, her predecessor, old Tiger Stadium may be on its deathbed.
Photo courtesy of Larry Bock at Flickr.com, circa 1987
The 95-year-old park, which was recognized as an endangered historic place in 1991 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, birthed a lifetime of memories for countless Michigan sports fans, yet hasn’t hosted Major League Baseball since 1999 (or any baseball since 2000 when Billy Crystal’s movie “61*” about Roger Maris’ chase of Babe Ruth’s single-season homerun record was filmed there) and could face the wrecking ball soon. The Detroit City Council voted 5-4 in late July to demolish the stadium, keep the playing field for youth baseball and use the rest of the land for low-rise housing and stores, according to The Detroit News.

Enter 89-year-old Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell, the voice of the Tigers from 1960-2002, who is lobbying Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to redevelop the site and save the old “house by the side of the road” from oblivion. Harwell and his attorney are seeking funding to keep Tiger Stadium alive. In the spirit of historic preservation, and baseball memories, we hope Harwell succeeds.
Here are a couple stories about the old ballpark to put you in a nostalgic mood:
Play Ball
By Jack Lessenberry
From Michigan Radio, August 1
Tiger Stadium didn’t get as much press coverage as the owners would have liked when it first opened. Seems the front pages were dominated that week by the sinking of some boat called the Titanic. Still, the opening of what was then a magnificent state of the art baseball palace in Detroit caused quite a stir 95 years ago.
The year before, a rickety wooden structure known as Bennett Park stood in the same spot, on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.
But in 1912 that vanished in place of a new concrete wonder, first called Navin Field. It was named after the Detroit Tigers principal owner, shrewd, penny-pinching old Frank Navin, a man who loved to gamble, but who would fight a player for months over a thousand-dollar raise.
Stadium financing was rather simple in those days. Navin wanted a new field, so he paid for one. After he died, the next owner finished enclosing the ballpark and renamed it Briggs Stadium after himself. Not till 1961 would it officially become Tiger Stadium.
Now, all indications are that it is about to become rubble. Ever since the Tigers played their last game there in September 1999, there have been countless schemes for redeveloping it.
Photos by Sarah Schenck, The Michigan Daily
I never thought any of them would become reality, for a number of reasons. The people talking about turning the ballyard into luxury condos or boutiques had everything they needed except financing.
And men with money don’t commonly invest it in that part of Detroit. One who does have money and is willing to invest it is Mike Ilitch, the current owner of both the Tigers and the Detroit Red Wings, The Little Caesar’s pizza baron has poured millions into Detroit.
Check out more of Jack Lessenberry’s columns from Michigan Radio at www.jackshow.blogs.com
Last Hurrah at the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
This story originally ran in the Glen Arbor Sun in the fall of 1999.
DETROIT — Baseball immortal Kirk Gibson stood in the red dirt behind home plate at Tiger Stadium on the last weekend of the season, toeing the ground where he’s walked many times before slugging a ball into the upper deck.
Yet the retired outfielder, whose gritty style of play epitomized the city in which he began and finished his career, wore tan, shiny loafers and a sport coat – looking more like he was attending a funeral than a baseball game.
There was talk of death in the family two weekends ago at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, and the mourners showed up in the tens of thousands to say good-bye to a staple figure in their lives. The Tigers abandoned their beloved park after the season’s last home game on September 27th.
“Sparky used to tell us, ‘The Babe is buried but baseball lives on’,” said Gibson, referring to longtime manager Sparky Anderson — the last skipper to guide Detroit to a World Series championship, in 1984.
Nostalgia also was in the air as some of the greatest Tigers in history were named to the All-Time Team before the second-to-the-last game. There were Gibson, Jack Morris and Alan Trammell: household names on the 1984 championship team. There were Al Kaline, Bill Freehan and Mickey Lolich from the 1968 championship team. Relatives of Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, Hal Newhouser and even the infamous Ty Cobb — the man who once screamed racial slurs at baby-faced Babe Ruth from an opposing dugout — showed up to honor their names on the all-century lineup card.
Tiger players in the ballpark’s final game wore the All-Time Team’s jersey numbers, according to their positions in the field, with the exception of number-less Gabe Kapler who took Ty Cobb’s old spot in spacious centerfield. Cobb played in the days before teams wore numbers on their backs.
The final game hinged upon strikes, balls and outs. Like any other summer day, managers called for stolen bases and sacrifice bunts to push runners into scoring position. But in the course of three hours, those players, executives and fans who paid homage to this ancient ballpark reflected on entire lifetimes of composite summer afternoons. It inevitably brought some to tears.
“We have nostalgic feelings,” said Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell, who’s described nearly every play to many devoted Tigers fans with his soothing, grandfather-like voice. “I’ve spent more time at this park than I have at home. But you have to go on with your job.
“As fans, we’re going to miss the feeling of being right down by the players. The number one characteristic at Tiger Stadium is the double decks all the way around the park.”
But Harwell, who has been in the announcing business since 1948, is excited about the move to Comerica Park next year.
“I like these new stadiums,” he said, referring to similar new models in Texas, Baltimore and Cleveland. “They’re throwbacks to the old era with limited seating capacity, not ‘cookie-cutters’ like the stadiums in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.”
The current Tigers team also is enthusiastic about moving to the new ballpark, and it played like it the last weekend at The Corner. With an 8-2 victory in the last game and 6-1 and 11-3 shellings of Kansas City the two previous days, the Tigers looked like an inspired team playing in the heart of the pennant race — not the dismal team that lost more than 90 games and narrowly avoided the American League Central Division’s cellar this year.
“The atmosphere was like 1984,” said Tigers manager Larry Parrish. “It meant a lot to play well here this week with all the fans.”
The demise of Tiger Stadium drew 45,000 to the last game and more than 41,000 fans to the other games during the last series — an incredible contrast to earlier in the season when the team played poorly and fans saw little reason to visit the ancient shrine.
“The biggest thing for us is having people in the stands and consequently we’ve been playing some pretty decent baseball,” said Tony Clark, the team’s power-hitting first baseman. “That’s something we don’t have a lot because of how the ball’s been bouncing for us.”
The Tigers out-slugged and out-pitched the Royals in each of the last three games, behind two homers on Saturday and three home runs on Sunday and Monday.
In the season’s home finale, Mike Moehler held Kansas City to two runs as Luis Polonia, Karim Garcia and Robert Fick hit longballs. Fick, recently called up from the minor leagues, hit a grandslam onto the roof that would be the last hit ever at Tiger Stadium.
But more important than the three victories, the Tigers also hustled on every play, even when the games were all but put away. When Dean Palmer climbed onto the Tigers dugout and dived into the stands after a foul ball, in the eighth inning on Saturday, he wasn’t trying to catapult the Tigers into the playoffs. He was paying homage to the kind of baseball that blue-collar Detroit has relished for decades.