I'll Remember Remembering You Fondly

I saw a Ford Escort parked at Michigan and Trumbull with a magnetic "security" sign on its roof last week. Tiger Stadium will be falling soon, demolition began June 30. I went back to see the stadium today, now with a gaping hole in the left field wall. All the backhoes and bulldozers seemed like a whole lot of wasted energy, precisely because it's fallen into disuse since '99.


I'm not exactly kicking myself for failing to get a pocket full of dirt from the infield, and I've never grappled in the stands for a home run ball. I don't even much enjoy baseball.

But as I walked over the pedestrian bridge and back to my car, I felt an uncontrollable reverence, near mourning, for the passing of a great Detroit ruin. I hear it all the time in reference to assorted buildings that have long since lost their initial purpose: "knock it down," and in reference to the city itself "just flatten the thing."

There's a value, sometimes tragic, to these relics when they gain new life by conversion. But they also serve a purpose by merely sitting dormant. Nostalgia fills many yawning voids throughout the city. Why should we destroy the markers of bygone greatness? Detroit, the old man on the examining table, proud and naked, exhibits its estrangement from vitality like no other.

I wish the marble floors of Michigan Central Station still clapped with traffic. But I'd prefer a slow crumbling to the wrecking ball. After all, there's no shortage of space around here.

Most fans have memories of games with Pops, but I mostly remember craning from the backseat to catch a glimpse of the orange Tiger growling through the big blue D on our drive along 75 to the east side. The stadium hovered close to the highway, like a white aluminum battleship merging into traffic.

I had no choice but to cheer for the Tigers after their prime, despite an auspicious beginning. The week after I was born, they won the '84 series. I watched and waited through the nineties for it to happen again, but the Tigers brought up the rear for the bulk of my youth, showing an uncanny knack for failure.


So I set about memorizing the happy days and the entertaining 1984 roster as if it were my own Detroit squad. At the helm, Sparky Anderson, directing an all-star cast including Kirk Gibson, Trammell, Chet Lemon, "Sweet Lou" Whitaker, and Rusty Kuntz.



I only went inside once when I was nine (I took my glove to catch foul balls more often at Toledo's Ned Skeldon stadium, former home of the scrappy AAA-feeder Mud Hens). My aunt Shelly took me and my cousins for "run the bases" night in Detroit, where everyone under four foot five got to trot around the diamond, basking in their moment under the big lights. I slid into home, it was great. Let the kids in again.