Tiger Stadium Nears Demolition
Detroit Sports Landmark to be Razed This Summer
Detroit baseball fans have 100 years of memories to preserve the ballpark they grew up loving.
The seats where you ate those steamed Ballpark franks are already gone. The field where Cobb, Kaline, Gibby and Cecil played has been faded for years. And in short time, the walls, stadium lights, dugouts and all the rest will be a memory.
The longtime home of Detroit's Boys of Summer, Tiger Stadium, it appears, will soon be home to the Noise of Summer.
The demolition of Tiger Stadium is set to begin in June after City of Detroit officials reportedly agreed with two area contractors to tear down the famed ballpark. MCM Management Corp. of Bloomfield Hills and The Farrow Group of Detroit have reportedly been signed on to take apart the stadium at no cost, and make money from the project by selling the scraps, estimated to be worth at least $1 million.
Meanwhile, at least one neighborhood group hoping to keep Tiger Stadium's presence prominent in the Corktown district is fighting to generate enough funds to preserve the corner of the ballpark from first to third base and restore it as a community center and museum. The Detroit Economic Development Corp. has given the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy until June 1 to come up with $369,000 to cover the cost of securing and maintaining any preserved portion of the ballpark for six months. Without that money secured, MCM and Farrow will begin demolition of the entire stadium.
The Conservancy's website is still under construction, so it's difficult to imagine that a grassroots effort to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars will get rolling quickly enough. More likely, the Save Tiger Stadium effort will rely on an individual investor to step forward with the funds. Whether that person emerges or not, one thing is certain: by the end of this summer, the corner of Michigan and Trumbull will never be the same, even if a portion of the stadium remains.
Every Tigers fan - the one fighting to save his beloved stadium from the wrecking ball, and the one who understands why, in today's Detroit, this day has come - has a favorite stadium memory. The short porch in right. The burst of green field seen through the tunnels. The championship run of 1968 that some insist helped Detroit heal. Whitaker and Trammel turning another double play.
The seats are already gone. Soon, the stadium that millions of people grew up loving is going away.
More than 100 years of memories, though, nobody can take those.
Tiger Stadium Timline
1895: Tigers owner George Vanderbeck built Bennett Park, featuring a wooden grandstand in the outfield and bleachers surrounding the infeld.
1911: New Tigers owner Frank Navin built Navin Field, a 23,000-seat stadium built of steel and concrete. It opened on April 20, 1912, the same day as Boston's Fenway Park.
1935: New Tigers owner Walter Briggs saw the stadium expand to 36,000, extending the upper-deck to the foul poles.
1938: Further expansion increased the stadium capacity to 53,000. The ballpark is now called Briggs Stadium. The Detroit Lions also began playing home games at Tiger Stadium, eventually winning the franchise's only championship in 1957. Though ownership changed hands and relatively minor renovations were made over the next four decades before the Tigers moved to Comerica Park in 2000, Tiger Stadium remained largely as it was following the 1938 renovations.
1961: New Tigers owner John Fetzer gives the field its final name: Tiger Stadium.
1999: The Tigers played their final home game on Sept. 27, 1999. Robert Fick's grand slam off the roof in rightfield highlighted an 8-2 win over the Kansas City Royals.
