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ALL-STAR GAMES: 1941, 1951, 1971 LIGHTS: 1948
BEEN THERE: I walked around Tiger Stadium just prior to a Tigers game at Comerica Park in August 2004.
Tiger Stadium was not the prettiest ballpark ever built, but it had a lot of unique features and loads of "character." Originally called "Navin Field," it was built on the same plot of land that had been occupied by Bennett Park, a wooden stadium that was built in 1896 and became the original home of the Tigers when the American League was founded in 1901. At first, Navin Field had just a single deck grandstand reaching to the right and left field corners, and a bleacher section in right-center field.
In 1923, an upper deck was added to the main part of the grandstand, from just beyond third base to just beyond first base. From that point until 1926, Navin Field was fairly similar in overall configuration to Sportsman's Park. In 1934, as the Tigers won the American League pennant for the first time since 1909 (the Ty Cobb era), an enormous (though temporary) bleacher section was built along the left field fence, on top of Cherry Street. It was removed after two years. In 1936 the grandstand was extended around the right field corner almost all the way to center field, and The stadium became totally enclosed in 1938, as the grandstand was extended out to left center field, with two decks of bleachers, a unique feature. The bleacher sections extended further to the left side in the upper deck (where the roof ended) and further to the right side in the lower deck. Meanwhile, the ballpark was renamed "Briggs Stadium" after the new franchise owner Walter Briggs III, and very little changed for the rest of its long life.
There are a few minor anomalies that make this stadium interesting. For example, the diamond is angled about four degrees counter-clockwise relative to the grandstand, which is why the outlines of the quasi-rectangular stadium are not parallel to the foul lines. Whether the field was originally laid out that way, or whether the diamond was rotated in the 1920s, is uncertain. Another anomaly is that the upper deck in right field that was built in 1936 extended ten feet over the outfield field, reflecting the lack of real estate. (This overhang situation also existed in the Polo Grounds.) The upper deck of Tiger Stadium was stacked right on top of the lower deck, with the front edge recessed only about 20 feet toward the back, giving the upper-deck fans an unusually close-up view of the field. In 1955, several rows of seats in the right field corner in foul territory were removed after their star outfielder Al Kaline* ran into the sharp corner that used to exist there. This resulted in another (much smaller) area where the second deck hung out over the field. The center field fence was brought in to 415 feet in 1954 and then moved part of the way back (to 425 feet) in 1955, but the old 440 distance marker they put back on the center field fence was misleading, hence the red border on the "440" marker in the diagram above.
CINEMA: Briggs Stadium (as it was then known) was featured in the classic movie Pride of the Yankees (1942), starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth as himself. Tiger Stadium "played the role" of Yankee Stadium -- using some special effects -- in the movie 61* (2001), and (by implication) Wrigley Field in the movie Hardball, starring Keanu Reeves and Diane Lane.
The Tigers often challenged the Yankees for supremacy from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, but for the next two decades thereafter achieved relatively little. In 1960, Briggs Stadium was renamed Tiger Stadium, and the new name took hold. The close-in upper decks in the outfield always provided a tempting target for sluggers. Mickey Mantle once knocked a homer over the right-field stands, as did Reggie Jackson in the 1971 All Star game; Harmon Killebrew, Frank Howard, Cecil Fielder, and Mark McGwire all hit the ball on or over the left-field roof. Even as the city of Detroit was smoldering from rioting, the Tigers won the World Series in 1968, thanks largely to Al Kaline's hitting and Denny McClain's pitching. In spite of economic depression suffered by the entire Rust Belt, they did so again in 1984, giving folks in Detroit something to be proud of.
Over the decades, Tiger Stadium deteriorated, as did the neighborhood. As early as the 1960s there were proposals to build a new stadium, but fans (and taxpayers) objected. During the 1990s, as many other cities built stadiums to replace ones half Tiger Stadiums's age, the pressure became unstoppable. As with Fenway Park, there was a citizen movement to save Tiger Stadium, but it tragically failed. In 2000 the Tigers abandoned one of the last three original classic stadiums still in use and moved into Comerica Park. I had thought it would be a good idea to play a game or two here every year as a way to draw heritage-conscious baseball fans from across the country. Unless a miracles happens soon, the city of Detroit plans to demolish the structure and put up an upscale retail-residential complex.
The Detroit Lions played football in Tiger Stadium from 1938 until the end of 1974, after which they moved into the Silverdome in Pontiac, a suburb over 30 miles away. For a while the Tigers contemplated moving into the Silverdome, which would have been just awful.
SOURCES: Lowry (2006), Pastier (2006), Gershman (1993), USA Today / Fodor's (1996), Ken Burns' Baseball TV documentary series
WEB LINKS: Friends of Tiger Stadium, DetroitYES.com (photos by Lowell Boileau), Preserve Tiger Stadium, by Peter Comstock Riley, of Michigan & Trumbull, LLC; Michigan History magazine Sports Illustrated-CNN.com (virtual reality, panoramic view; requires QuickTime software, free from Apple.
FAN TIPS: Bruce Orser
