An Old Tiger's Last Roar

When Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in Baltimore in 1992, it sparked a boom of stadium development projects in major league baseball (and other sports). In the past 17 years, new baseball parks have been constructed in Arlington (TX), Atlanta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The culmination of this explosion, of course, was the dual opening of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field in New York earlier this year. Some of these new stadiums are spectacular venues for baseball, with my personal favorite being Pittsburgh's PNC Park. As I've noted before, there is aesthetic pleasure to be found in baseball architecture, even if the price tags for these ballparks has grown increasingly excessive (see here or here).

But this is not about the high cost of stadium construction or the politics of urban development. It is about the politics of preservation. For in the wake of the ballpark building boom, many of the aforementioned cities have also demolished old and, in many cases, unattractive stadiums. Using Pittsburgh as an example again, there weren't many efforts to save Three Rivers Stadium when it was blown up in 2001 (thanks to SteelersFever.com for the image). By contrast, there has been a decades-long struggle to save Tiger Stadium in Detroit. A struggle, it appears, that is about to come to an end.

Earlier this week, the Detroit Economic Development Corporation voted to demolish what remains of the venerable old park. Originally named Navin Field, Tiger Stadium opened in 1912 and hosted baseball games until 1999. Throughout those eight decades, the Detroit Tigers were a largely successful franchise (4 World Series wins ain't the Yankees, but to this Cubs fan it sounds like a lot). After the newly built Comerica Park opened in 2000, part of the old stadium was destroyed, leaving only the structure from dugout to dugout to remain. Several groups--most notably The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy--have tried to save what is left from demolition. But a lack of funds has led to the decision that the time has come for Tiger Stadium to fall.

I'm not in favor of saving the old park just for the sake of it (though I do like the idea, favored by broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell, of using the existing structure for multiple commercial purposes). But perhaps it's that I now live in this region that has been so devastated by the decline of our industrial economy that I am saddened by this news. Detroit, and Michigan more broadly, has been ravaged by the economic downturn, and thus it is appropriate, I think, to consider the loss of Tiger Stadium as a metaphor for the city's general condition (much more appropriate than the superficiality of the Michigan State Spartans Final Four run as a metaphor of hope).

With that idea in mind, I invite you to consider this photo essay from the Detroit Free Press. The opening image, shown here, juxtaposes the decaying structure in the background with the human anguish in the foreground. I find it heartbreaking. The subsequent images are equally sobering, for they each provide a glimpse of greatness once possessed. With the imminent destruction of Tiger Stadium, it appears those days really are gone for good.