I took a drive last week to say goodbye to an old friend. I came off the highway, turned down a familiar street and there she was, right in front of me.
She did not look good. She was pale and broken down. Even the work she'd had done a few years ago now had decayed. She was spilling out, peeling, her fabrics were torn, and she looked none too steady on her feet. The sky was gray and she seemed to have a cloud affixed permanently over her head — along with cranes, tractors and trucks by her flanks.
There was a small hole in her body. But she will break and crumble much more in the weeks to come. She was born in 1912. Death is inevitable now.
Her name is Tiger Stadium.
They are knocking her down.
THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE
I parked beyond some orange cones by a fence that had been constructed to keep fans and scavengers from getting too close. A security man wearing a wool cap jogged over and said no one was allowed in, but when I told him I only wanted a last look at a place where I'd spent many years writing about baseball games, he relented. His name, he said, was Dan, and he looked to be in his 20s. When I asked whether he'd seen the Tigers play here his face lit up and he said, "Oh, yeah, my dad took me back in the day."
Of course, back in those days we didn't say "back in the day." But at that moment, smiling widely, the guy was not a security guard, he was a kid with a glove out in leftfield, certain the next ball would come his way.
There are few romances like the ones you have with a ballpark. Unlike lovers, you don't mind sharing them. Unlike boyfriends or girlfriends, they do not fade with the crush. Unlike spouses, you don't find yourself arguing or sighing. And unlike most summer flings, you get to renew your love each year when the weather gets warm.
It is Fourth of July weekend, a time when fireworks flew over this ballpark.
There are no fireworks left.
Her name is Tiger Stadium.
They are knocking her down.
THE MAGIC MOMENTS
I glanced at the fading logo on her side, a tiger crawling out through an olde English D. I remembered how her hallways smelled of sausage grease and her tunnel lighting was out of a Bela Lugosi movie. But this was a place where you could walk with the players on their way to get their cars, a place where you crawled up into a hanging pinecone of a broadcast booth to say hello to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey, a place where sitting behind a pole was part of the charm, because if you leaned to the side of that pole, you might see Ty Cobb getting his 4,000th hit, or Hank Greenburg, just back from the Army, hitting a home run in his first game. You might see Mark Fidrych chatting with a baseball, or Jack Morris glaring down a hitter before striking him out.
My first assignment for the Detroit Free Press was there. I interviewed Lou Whitaker, the second baseman. We talked for a few minutes, and it would be my longest interview with him ever. I saw Frank Tanana in Tiger Stadium nearly lose his chewing gum in celebrating a final, playoff-clinching out. I saw Cecil Fielder clock monster home runs into the night sky. I saw a tireless, elderly Uberfan called "The Brow" charge up and down the aisles, urging people to cheer even when there was nothing to cheer about.
Tiger Stadium was mine and it was yours and it was anyone's who lived in this area over the last century. It belonged to your grandfather and your barber and your neighbor's aunt. It belonged to Cobb and Greenberg and Al Kaline and Kirk Gibson and Sparky Anderson and Frank Navin and the Briggs family and Tom Monaghan and Mike Ilitch.
It belonged to the earth it sat upon.
And soon, that is where it will return.
You don't save a building for the building's sake. Tiger Stadium has been empty for nine years, rotting and crumbling while people wrangled over plans. In the end, as with certain X-rays, the plans held no hope.
She deserves a dignified end.
I rarely have taken a photograph of a place I worked, but I took a camera and snapped one before I left last week. It is not her best look, but with old friends, you gotta take the whole picture. That Sinatra song goes, "And the air was such a wonder, from the hot dogs and the beer. Yes, there used a ballpark, right here."
Her name is Tiger Stadium. They are knocking her down.
Say good-bye if you get the chance.
She'd like that.
