DETROIT -- Tiger Stadium is falling to the ground for good, and I for one am thankful.
There's not much to defend in the City of Detroit's infrastructure of government and politics. Detroit has been the runaway train of choice for corrupt, morally-bankrupt vultures for almost four decades. The city's ruins and southeast Michigan's regional depression are due to policy leaders, business tycoons and elected officials who've largely ignored the obvious socio-economic problems plaguing the city since the 1950s. However, the decision to raze the ballpark is exempt from this deserved ire.
I'm a life-long Tiger fan. No matter where I live and no matter what I'm doing, I'll be a Tiger fan. I never go to bed without knowing how the Tigers did that night. My father listened to the replays of the 1968 World Series broadcast on Armed Forces Radio in the dead of the night during his first of two tours in Vietnam. By comparison, I'm a passionate Red Wings fan but I'm OK with the morning radio report or internet check for the Wings. The Tigers will always be my first love, and Tiger Stadium was the one place in the world I always wanted to be on every given day as a child.
I'm thrilled to see it finally fall.
The long, ungraceful demise of the old ballpark is an ugly reminder of the inept city leadership that follows Detroit like dust and dirt follows PigPen from the Peanuts. The chipping paint, overgrown weeds, rusting light standards and accumulated trash left the ballpark a hulking ruin of mold, pollen and weeds. And it's not like this is the first classic piece of stadia to be allowed to rot in 'The D'. The fabled Olympia Stadium, one of the original cathedrals of hockey, sat vacant at Grand River & McGraw, shadowing Detroit's Northwestern High, from 1979 until the summer of 1986 when the city finally saw fit to demolish the 'Old Red Barn'.
If you think the ballpark was a hallowed house -- and it was -- the Olympia was every bit as charmed as Tiger Stadium, maybe more. It's where the Michigan High School Athletic Association first hosted all four classes of the annual boys' basketball title games. Olympia hosted Elvis Presley and The Beatles. The fortress at 5920 Grand River hosted rock n' roll's greatest band, Led Zeppelin, on three different occasions and every Hall-Of-Fame hockey player to play in the NHL until her last game on 15 December, 1979. Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, Terry Sawchuk, the list is literally endless. The building played host to the Pistons and Harlem Globetrotters, and hosted the 1947 city championship prep game, one that drew an amazing 16,041 fans to watch Will Robinson's Detroit Miller Trojans defeat Detroit St. Joesph.
As a thank you for all this amazing history, the city of Detroit, in it's infinite wisdom, let the red-bricked lady fall into near-decrepit condition over seven years before letting the Olympia go with an ungraceful goodbye.
Nearly 25 years after Olympia fell and 10 years after the Tigers threw their last pitch at the park, Tiger Stadium will thankfully fall into memory. The park didn't deserve this goodbye anymore than the Olympia did. Shame on the city, the Tigers and the fans of the park for not having a better plan, better funding and more dignity than this drawn-out, publicly-financed feud between a few thousand stadium zealots and the vision-less city government charged with ensuring the stadium's legacy.
So I say goodbye, Tiger Stadium. Thanks for the great times with my father, mother, even my ill-mannered sister, too. Thanks for the Opening Days with family and friends. Thanks for that echo from the public address system that filled the double-decked labyrinth. Thanks for ultra-crisp crack of the bat. Thanks for batting practice and the sound of the ball crashing into the seats or into the facade known as the short porch in rightfield. Thanks for the ramps, the posts and the roar of the crowd. Thanks for the ovations a visiting player received when he made a great catch, or the standing O a Tiger outfielder was showered with when he returned to the field after hitting a home run.
But most of all, thanks for giving me enough great memories that I won't have to remember the stadium for her final days of destruction. I don't trust the City of Detroit's leadership, Tiger Stadium closed long ago, and goodbyes were never meant to stand in the way of the future.
Farewell.
~T.C. Cameron attended his first game at Tiger Stadium on July 28, 1980, when the California Angels bested Detroit 3-2. Richie Hebner flew out to left to end the game. Cameron went to every Tigers' Opening Day from 1981 until 2009, when health concerns snapped the streak. The Tigers remain a daily ritual of summertime for Cameron and millions of Tiger fans nationwide.
(Photo courtesy of former Tiger pitcher C.J. Nitkowski, who generously shared this gallery with the author in 2007)
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