June 16, 2006

Tiger Stadium to be razed for condos?

A verdict on the fate of Detroit's Tiger Stadium is expected in the next few days, and, as promised by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, it looks to involve a cigarette and a blindfold. Kilpatrick told the Detroit Free Press yesterday that he's endorsing a plan to demolish the 94-year-old ballpark as early as this fall, and replace it with low-rise condos and retail shops. "The future of the Michigan and Trumbull site will honor and preserve the memory of Tiger Stadium," declared the mayor.

Not hardly, say others, who note that while the playing field will be preserved (in altered form), the actual building won't be - though there's talk of keeping a few relics like the locker rooms, press box, or a single row of seats - and that Detroit is lousy with already-vacant lots where condos could be built without knocking down a national landmark. "To totally tear it down and just save the grass, you've really lost the opportunity to market a historic site that could be a tourist attraction," Bill Dow of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club told WWJ radio yesterday (listen to the interview here). "People are going to drive by and basically see a minimall with apartments on top."

To add insult to injury, while the condos would be privately funded, Detroit taxpayers would pay the razing the stadium, which is estimated to run between $3 million and $6 million. Sharp-eyed readers will recall that a Tigers ticket tax was supposed to go towards both upkeep and demolition costs of the old park, but that money is now gone, and no one's sure what Tigers owner Mike Ilitch did with it.

If this truly is the end for Tiger Stadium - and as several locals have pointed out, development plans in Detroit tend to move at glacial pace when they move at all - then baseball will lose one of its most underrated, spectacular places to watch a ballgame. Opened in 1912 and expanded over the ensuing decades, Tiger Stadium is a throwback to the days when every fan, from the field level to the cheap seats, was close to the action: sportswriter Thomas Boswell once wrote of how it was watching Jack Morris pitch from the upper deck at Tiger Stadium that taught him the true meaning of a pitcher keeping hitters off-balance by changing speeds. As onetime Tigers employee (and current Friends of Yankee Stadium proprietor) David Gratt wrote on the third anniversary of the old ballpark's final game:

On the one hand, as former Tiger Frank Tanana noted when asked his feelings about Tiger Stadium, "It's just a building." But buildings are important because they help shape our experiences of the world around us. And now, after three years, the reality finally starts to sink in. It isn't really noticeable at first. Other things take precedence, so it's easy not to think about it for a while. But then something will trigger the reminiscence. It could be the sizzle of sausages frying up, or the smell of freshly cut grass, or the color of the clouds at twilight. It could be a trip to a place like Shea Stadium, soulless and circular, surrounded by a sea of parking, with upper deck seats so far from the field that the action becomes almost inconsequential. It could be a winter conversation about the upcoming season, or watching kids play catch in the spring. And the memories come flooding in: sitting in the upper deck with friends on a warm summer night with the open sky above; the hiss of the ball as the relief pitchers warm up next the stands in another lost game; a beleaguered outfielder running behind the flagpole, trying unsuccessfully to corral a triple; a jam-packed park, late in the season, klieg lights reflecting off the players' helmets, crisp white uniforms contrasted against black caps and the murky chiaroscuro of the upper deck, deep in shadow.

And you want to go back. But now you can't.