Great read by Bob Wojnowski of the Detroit News. It's a sad time, many memories for many people at the old ballpark. Going to Tiger Stadium was like going to heaven for many. With a tear in my eye I say goodbye old friend, I'll see you again!
DETROIT -- The pilgrimage continues, day after day, carload after carload. They come at all hours, from the Bloomfields and the Grosse Pointes, from Detroit's east and west sides, old and young, black and white, dry-eyed and misty-eyed, all connected by an old building that's empty and falling, but in many ways, forever full.
It's mostly a somber processional, marked by the occasional shout of dismay from an on-looker as a mechanical claw takes another bite. Tiger Stadium has been crumbling for a while, since the last game there on Sept. 27, 1999, but now it's officially dying, and it can be agonizing to watch.
But they watch, we watch, in growing numbers, stopping on the I-75 service drive, standing on car hoods and straining to see over the fence, to see what's left, to remember what used to be. Is it gawking? Not really. It's reminiscing, which means the occasional tear is allowed to escape.
Tiger Stadium has stood, in various forms under various names, at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull since 1912, and soon it will be gone. It's disheartening that another of Detroit's one-time treasures will be reduced to trash, that a story of baseball and tradition and family will end with another vacant lot, with no clear plan for development.
Ernie Harwell and the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy are trying desperately to raise money to preserve some element of the ballpark, and it's absolutely a worthy cause. If you have the means and harbor the memories, you should help. If you're ambivalent about saving any of her, I suggest you swing by the lot that's rapidly becoming a plot and gaze at the hole where the center field bleachers once stood, where the flagpole still stands, flying the colors.
From the freeway at dusk, Tiger Stadium looks like some grotesque road kill, spilling twisted metal and frayed aluminum, as clouds hover and the machines gnaw. If you have the time, if you believe that paying last respects serves the mourner as well as the mourned, come spend one more night at the Old Ballpark.
• • •
Larry Whitfield was running errands on Saturday night when the lure became too great. He turned and headed toward his favorite corner, got out of his car and just stared.
"The more I look, the more I talk about it, the more emotional I get," he said. "I've been coming here since the '60s. My grandmother used to bring me here for bat day. Remember bat day? Oh my God, bat day was great."
Whitfield, 53, from Detroit, blinked through his frameless glasses. He still has the sod from 1968, when he ran on the field after the Tigers won the American League pennant. He still has the memories of sitting in the frigid stadium with his dad, sipping hot chocolate, watching the Lions.
It all returns now, as the big crane swings and another chunk tumbles.
"I've been wanting to come by for the longest time," he said. "It's kind of sad, but I like Comerica Park. I just wish they could've done something with this, renovate it or something. It's part of our history, part of my family's history. Now it just looks spooky."
For a moment, there's a flash of annoyance.
"Why do they have to put up that plastic to block people's view? Isn't the fence good enough?"
Through the opening, you can see the distant blue and orange seats. You can see the light tower on the right field roof, where Reggie Jackson hit a ball during the 1971 All-Star Game. You can see once-forgotten games and fathers and mothers sitting with sons and daughters.
"Fond memories, man, fond memories," Whitfield said. "It's like you're losing somebody, you know?"
. . .
Jim Reno drove over from Grosse Pointe Woods with his wife and two sons, and they came not to mourn, but to reminisce. This is how it is during the final nights at the ballpark, like it is at funerals. You tell stories, you smile.
"My first job was right here, as a seat wiper," Reno, 51, said. "Well, I was an usher, but all we did was wipe seats. Most I ever made in tips was 50 cents."
His sons, James, 25, and Marc, 19, laughed. They joked about Tiger Stadium's famously daunting bathrooms with the massive urinals, where as kids they were lifted up for the first time by their dad.
It's funny what you remember at the end. It's funny too, while spending four hours over three nights outside Tiger Stadium, I heard only warm stories, nothing about the losing seasons or the obstructed views or the dark, narrow concourses.
In the dying light, all is bright.
"My dad saw Babe Ruth play here, right on this field," Reno said. "It's sad to see it come down, piece by piece. Couldn't they just do one big boom?"
His family nodded. More cars pulled up. More people wandered over.
"It's really shocking to look at," Reno said, "like a decaying corpse."
It's unfortunate Tiger Stadium never garnered the national appeal of Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, but it was every bit as wonderfully distinctive, from the right-field overhang to the closeness of the seats to the field. There was an intimacy about it, despite its size. It was completely enclosed, a placid scene in the middle of a rugged city, a world suddenly, obscenely opened to the outside now, as the walls fall.
• • •
The security guard didn't want to give his name. He patrolled the sidewalk, reminding people not to climb on the chain-link fence, not to tear away the plastic. He says he's had to call the police a few times but they've stopped coming. Since the demolition began a couple weeks ago, he has caught two people inside. One was a young lady he handcuffed to a post. When he returned, she was gone, leaving the bloody cuffs behind.
The guard shook his head.
"The more they tear down, the worse it gets," he said. "I get grown men crying, begging me to let 'em get a chunk of grass or a brick. These people really love this place. It's making them sad, so just tear it down already."
The guard, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, admitted he didn't quite get it. He went to a few games there and he loves sports, but not enough to weep over a relic.
As the cars kept coming and the pleas grew more insistent, he understood a bit more.
"I wish I could open it up for people, but I can't," he said. "I got a job to do."
• • •
Scott Sitner, 43, clicked away, poking his camera over the fence to take random photos. They came out amazingly sharp, the grass amazingly green inside.
He wasn't sure he wanted to come because he had driven past many times and the old stadium saddened him. But he knew he had to see.
"As I pulled up, I was thinking it's time for the place to come down," said Sitner, from Birmingham. "But then you walk up and you get that feeling in your stomach and you see the hole and it's just the finality of it. It's jarring."
Joe Grutza and his friend, Val MacIsaac, stood nearby. They drove up from Trenton, and like many, felt compelled to visit.
"I don't feel sad, because right now, all the good times I had here are flooding back," Grutza said. "It would've been nice if they could've saved it, but it's time."
No tears?
"Nah, we paid our respects at the last game in '99," he said. "Only two events in my life I cried at -- when Yzerman raised the Cup and the closing of Tiger Stadium. I said my good-byes then, and I don't mind saying, I cried like a baby."
• • •
For the most part, there aren't tears, at least not yet, with one corner of the stadium knocked down. But the crowds will increase in the coming weeks and people will discover what many already have found.
The lump in the throat returns, no matter how long it's been gone.
"When I saw that hole in the wall, it was like somebody punched me in the gut," said Dan Centers, 32, of Taylor, who drove over with a couple buddies, one sporting an Olde English D tattoo on his right forearm. "I remember seeing Cecil Fielder, sitting in the bleachers with my friends. I remember just the smell of it, you know what I mean?"
Everyone knows what he means. It was the smell of old cigars and fresh grass and grilling hot dogs and musty bathrooms. It was the smell of tradition passed through the ages, of generations connected.
"I was gonna watch the All-Star Game (Tuesday night), but then I heard them talking about the nostalgia of Yankee Stadium and I said the hell with that, I'm going down to Tiger Stadium," said Ric Vivyan, 39. "This is killing me."
The Tigers won four World Series here -- 1935, 1945, 1968 and 1984 -- and the Lions won their last championship here in 1957, when it was known as Briggs Stadium.
But it's not just about the games. It never really was.
"I'm feeling a lot of hurt right now," said Edward Lee, 60, of Detroit. "I probably spent 50 years of my life down here. One of my father's last requests was to see a game here and we did, back in '97, just before he died."
Lee's gaze never left the old building. He stood next to his car, the door open, but couldn't leave, not yet.
"I can't think of one bad thing about this place," he said. "Remember the hot dogs? Oh man, I don't even eat hot dogs, but when I came here, I had two or three, right off the grill, mustard only of course."
He laughed good and hard. And then he stopped.
"I'll never, ever forget this place. I know it's outdated, but how come in Europe, they save all their old buildings and here we tear 'em down and put in parking lots?"
He didn't expect an answer, and there isn't a simple one. Some tried to save Tiger Stadium but there wasn't enough money, or solid-enough plans, or enough motivation from the city or from the Tigers. And eventually, there wasn't enough time, even after a decade of dormancy.
On this night, the crane tore into the white aluminum and as each layer peeled away, it revealed an older layer. The mechanical claw clutched a steel beam and battered away at the siding, literally using pieces of Tiger Stadium to beat itself to death.
"Aw man, that's terrible, like they're making it suffer," Lee said, wincing, staring, shaking his head slowly.
In the fading light, the old building was succumbing, its guts spilling out. Amid the loud crunch of metal, you could hear the soft click of cameras. In the growing crowd, nothing was said, and no one turned away
