Wednesday, July 9, 2008

And The Walls Came Down

As a companion piece to the previous post, I'll note that the destruction of Tiger Stadium, hinted at last week, has begun in earnest this morning:

But today, the dismantling of the park where Cobb, Greenberg, Kaline and Purn Goldy played is truly, noisily, sadly, under way.

Ferocious-looking stadium-demolishing machines are ripping apart the wall and everything behind it on the north side of the stadium, near the Fisher Freeway service drive, along what used to be called Kaline Drive . . .

. . . You can look into the fortress-like stadium now for the first time since the outfield upper deck went up before World War II. You can see the orange and blue seats at the other end of the park, along the right-field line.

You can also see the machines grinding up the stadium’s innards: Orange doors are hanging at odd angles at the third-floor level, and the white tiles of rest rooms are visible for a few minutes, until the teeth of the machines move in for another bite.

You can even smell the stadium, as its dust scatters in the morning breeze.
This is brutal. Why couldn't they have imploded the place like they did so many other stadiums?

5 comments:

Dre said...

I feel like we should be attending a candle light vigil.

James said...

It would have been great if the Wings/Blackhawks hockey game was going to be held here instead of Wrigley.

Jason said...

JRL -- totally! How dope would that have been? One last hurrah for the old girl.

It's funny that here in Detroit we're in such a rush to tear down the stadium, yet thousands of vacant houses are okay. I don't see many people selling crack from the corner of Michigan and Trumbell.

Maybe I'll text the mayor and tell him that.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't they implode it?

Last I heard, there's still an effort to save the stadium from 3rd base to 1st base, along with the field. Some group still needs to come up with $15M to do so...

I'm not sure what I like better, keeping only part of the stadium, or just letting it all go away quietly.

Anonymous said...

I'll always remember 1984. Tiger Stadium. A packed house doing the wave...all the way around the place. Trammell and Whittaker up the middle. I just wish I didn't have to watch it all on TV.