Down on the Corner

Exterior of Tiger Stadium, Jul-1999.

The view from center field, near the flag pole.

Managers and umpires exchange lineup cards prior to a 1992 game.

• Location: Michigan and Trumbull avenues, Detroit, Mich.
• Opened: 1912 as Navin Field
• Additional names: Briggs Stadium (1930), Tiger Stadium (1960)
• Closed: 1999
• Home team: Detroit Tigers, American League (1912-99)
• Capacity: 46,945

Rating: 4 baseballs

It was a game between two teams treading water well under .500 at the bottom of a division dominated by the Cleveland Indians. Yet it was a special day, one saturated in nostalgia for baseball at “The Corner”.

Since 1896, they’ve been playing baseball on the same site in the Corktown section of Detroit. First, it was Bennett Park. Home plate there was back on Cherry Street. Later, in 1912, they opened Navin Field, moving the plate to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, where it has remained for 88 seasons. The park expanded several times, becoming known as Briggs Stadium in the 1930s and Tiger Stadium in 1960.

Its final configuration, in which I watched five games during the 1990s, featured an upper deck that even in its top rows put the fan closer to the action than in any other upper deck in baseball. In right field, the upper deck actually extended beyond the lower deck, turning otherwise catchable pop-ups into home runs. The flagpole, just left of center field, was in play, and balls occasionally bounced off it or ricocheted behind it, nearly 440 feet from the plate.

But for all its charm, the park was showing its age. In 1979, part of the jerry-built press box collapsed; in 1999, sections of the grandstand were closed after a similar incident following a thunderstorm. Perhaps the fans didn’t demand better, but the players did. As a result, despite fan-based efforts to preserve it, the Tigers management went ahead with plans for a new downtown park to open in April 2000. Team owner Mike Ilitch originally announced that the new facility would be called “Tiger Stadium”, to loud applause; however, the corporate bug bit and it’s now called “Comerica Park” after a local bank.

As a result, professional baseball at “The Corner” has come to an end. There is talk of putting housing projects up on and around the site. In the meantime, producer Billy Crystal used the stadium to shoot a film called “61*” for HBO during the summer of 2000, depicting the 1961 home-run race between New York Yankees Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. According to Crystal, the park was one of the few places left where he could get an old-time major-league field feeling.

This fan hopes that, even if the stadium is demolished, the field can be left intact, so neighborhood kids can still come down and preserve the tradition. May they play baseball at “The Corner” for many years to come.