If they were the New York Tigers, the Boston Tigers, the Chicago Tigers, even the St Louis Tigers or the LA Tigers, this would not be an issue. We Chicagoans know that it would take a hurricane born off the shores of Lake Michigan to tear down Wrigley Field. And Cubs fans would rally. They would emerge from their flooded Lakeview condos and run to Wrigley. With their bare hands they would rebuild that stadium in the exact image of the original; view impairing pillars, crumbling concourse and all. Chicago celebrities would hold a Wrigley-Aid. John Belushi would rise from the dead to help raise money for the project.
But they are the Detroit Tigers. Though Tiger Stadium was built in 1912, on the exact same day as Fenway opened, no one seems to care about its place in baseball history. When Comerica Park opened in 2000 the Tigers quietly moved, nothing like the sendoff old Yankee Stadium got last year.
Detroit doesn’t know how to help itself. Since the Tigers moved, the city hasn’t known what to do with the stadium. It has been used as a backdrop for a few films and baseball specials, hosted a few events, including the celebration of Detroit’s 300th birthday. Plans for the spot, including bringing a minor league team to Detroit, turning the site into a museum and Detroit cultural center, and even turning it into condos, were all rejected. As a dying city it should be looking for ways to preserve its culture and history, but while the citizens of Detroit form their exit strategy, city government isn’t giving them much of a reason to stay.
So the home of Ty Cobb, Al Kaline, Willie Horton, Hank Greenberg, Mark Fidrych, Kirk Gibson, and Alan Trammell is being slowly demolished, and has been for a year. The Detroit Lions played in the same stadium until 1974. Babe Ruth hit his 700th home run there. Lou Gehrig played his last game there.
What is Left
I’ve been reading articles about this since Detroit gave the ok to rip it down. Most of them include stories about people stopped on the side of the highway, taking a look at what is left of it. How when his dad came back from World War II with no job he spent his days at the stadium. About how her first memories are sitting on her dad’s lap at games during that 1968 World Series season. He flew in for a business meeting, hasn’t been to Detroit since moving in 1998, had to say goodbye. Most of them end with, ‘I’m just glad my dad isn’t alive to see this.’
I make this point a lot, but I’m a girl. I’m a 25 year old girl who’s memories do not include a world series win, but that 2003 season where they lost 119 games, the third worst record in baseball history. (The Cleveland Spiders 1899 season takes the cake, if you were wondering, with 134 losses) I hate the Tigers as much as I love them. But I know that this is a mistake. Detroit is failing, all of Michigan is failing. People are fleeing and no one knows what to do about it. There are no jobs, there is no hope of there being more jobs, despite what Obama says. And then you tear down the most historic building in that decrepit, shit hole of a city. You tear down a place that could bring tourism, that has been bringing the film industry, that could produce jobs, that could show people, ‘hey, we don’t suck as much as you think we do. Look at this piece of baseball history. Whoever your favorite baseball player is, he played here.’ Why don’t you outlaw The Supremes while you are at it?
Toledo, another shit hole, built a minor league stadium in the middle of that city to get people to go down there, take in a baseball game, spend some money, and they did. If you build it…
If I were Angelina Jolie famous I would grab Operah and chain myself naked to what is left of that stadium. People from all over would come to look at my boobs and Operah would be there collecting a viewing fee while gathering the women of Detroit to rally, too. We would raise the $33.4 million needed to preserve that stadium, hire Detroiters fix it up, call Billy Crystal and have him shoot some movies there, using a Detroit crew. I’d hire more Detroiters to work in the museum, work the concessions at the minor league Detroit Saviors games. JENNIFER GRANHOLM ARE YOU LISTENING?
Demolition started yesterday morning, and it stopped last night. They are fighting, but without a naked Angelina Jolie type intervention I think it is a lost cause. And Tiger Stadium will be gone. And Detroit will be gone. And Michigan will turn into a huge ski resort where no real people live. Tom Cruse will trade an autographed copy of Vanilla Sky for Traverse City.
And I will have to watch as fewer and fewer people go to Comerica Park, as the owners have no choice but to move the Tigers to somewhere really depressing. And they become the Omaha Tigers. The El Paso Tigers. Or, maybe even worse than that, they just disappear. I will have no team. I will feel like a fake for the rest of my life, following whatever team played in the city I lived, whatever team the boy I was sleeping with at the time liked. I will turn into a senile old woman screaming at kids from her porch about how the Detroit Tigers, my Detroit Tigers, could have saved Detroit if only Angelina Jolie would have chained herself naked to that empty dugout. If only people would wake up and see what they had, already half destroyed, just waiting to employ, to teach, to celebrate American history. Just sitting there. Waiting.
