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  Sports PUBLISHED:
Like a lot of you, I would love to see an appropriate memorial, a tribute to Tiger Stadium and all that it meant to this town, erected at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. I think the city of Detroit and the ballclub owe a century's worth of faithful Tiger fans that much. Tiger Stadium brought joy to countless millions, sometimes when they were desperate for a reason to cheer. It helped ease the pain of the Great Depression and heal the wounds of racial strife -- both of which hit Detroit particularly hard. It deserves to be remembered. And it will be. Barring a last-second intervention by venerable Ernie Harwell and his friends, the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, where people went to relax and have fun for 140 years beginning as a public picnic grounds back in the mid-19th century, will soon become just another city intersection. Another abandoned vacant lot in a city that already has far too many. However, long after the dump trucks have hauled away the last of the rubble that once housed a century of glorious roars -- for Cobb and Cochrane, for Greenberg and Gehringer, for Kaline and Horton, for Fidrych and Gibson -- Tiger Stadium will continue to occupy a special place in our hearts. Personally, I will remember the night Denny McLain returned from his half-season in exile in 1970. I won $135 in a press box pool that evening by correctly and precisely predicting that McLain would last 5 1/3 innings in his ballyhooed debut. Actually, the truth be told, I drew that particular number out of a hat. I will remember those frenzied nights at The Corner in the summer of '76 when Mark Fidrych pitched and packed the place. In fact, I wrote a book about them. We sold 75,000 copies in one month. I will remember the day Billy Martin was fired, delaying my plans to join my family at the State Fair after the game. For several years, Billy blamed me for his getting fired, by the way. I will remember the night in the dugout when Sparky Anderson introduced himself as Chief Walking Feathers. "I'm so full of bull I can't fly," Sparky explained. And he was. He was also the winningest manager the Tigers have ever employed. I will remember Kirk Gibson's home runs in the '84 World Series -- and the carnage on the streets outside the ballpark afterward. No wrecking ball, no bulldozer can ever take those memories away from me. Furthermore, lest we forget:
Later it became the site of a haymarket, then a lumber mill, and finally a dog pound, before, in 1896, George Vanderbeck built Bennett Park, partially out of the lumber from the trees that were cleared to make room for the ballyard. A few trees were actually left standing in the outfield until 1900, just to make life more interesting for the outfielders. Underneath a thin layer of dirt, cobblestones left over from the abandoned haymarket made ground balls hazardous for the best of infielders.
Instead, he insisted that his partner, bookkeeper Frank Navin, a friend of singer and actor Al Jolson, put his name and reputation on the line.
Home plate was moved from what became right field at Tiger Stadium so that batters would no longer have to stare into the late afternoon sun while hitting.
In addition, enough showers were included in the locker rooms so that the visiting players no longer to return to their hotel, still in their sweaty uniforms, to bathe after the game.
The new seats in Navin Field were painted yellow -- not the traditional Cork Town green for which both Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium would later become famous. Ballgames at Bennett Park began at 3:30 p.m. However, with the opening of Navin Field, that starting time was moved to three o'clock, "to allow fans to reach home before supper gets cold, thus avoiding much domestic commotion and lightening the work load of domestic courts."
Bennett had lost parts of both legs in a 1894 train accident, and remained a popular figure in Detroit, where he operated a cigar shop. Each spring, on Opening Day, Bennett would hobble out to home plate with his cane and two artificial limbs, to catch the ceremonial first pitch.
In Navin's mind, Fridays, like cross-eyed people, were synonymous with bad luck. Navin always put his left shoe on first. And, according to Joanna Navin-Monahan, the granddaughter of Navin's older brother, Thomas, "When the Tigers were winning, Frank Navin wouldn't change his hat." Rather than christen the new stadium on a Friday, Navin claimed the field was still too wet for baseball and postponed the opener until Saturday, April 20.
However, that historic victory was overshadowed in the next morning's newspapers -- by belated stories of the sinking of the Titanic. Jim Hawkins is the baseball writer and a sports columnist for The Oakland Press. E-mail him at jim.hawkins@oakpress.com and read his blog at Blog Central at theoaklandpress.com. |
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