Every Wednesday, The Athletic’s MLB writers will be looking at a key what-if scenario from a different team’s history. This week: The Detroit Tigers.
The demolition started on June 30, 2008, when cranes dug into the sides of Tiger Stadium, when its facade was ripped apart, when the center-field bleachers finally collapsed. The old ballpark fought to stay alive, through stops and starts, delays and politics. But by Sept. 21, 2009, the teardown was finally complete, a once-proud ballpark now nothing but rubble.
For nearly two decades, fans and activists struggled to save Tiger Stadium. First, they hoped to renovate the ballpark and block the construction of a new venue. Later, they sought to turn the stadium into a commercial building, with an operating field for youth and amateur leagues. By the end, they were simply trying to preserve the hardened remains of what used to be the playing field.
The afterlife of Tiger Stadium is a saga all its own, but once upon a time, there was a plan to restore Tiger Stadium, to keep it operational, to keep the Tigers playing there well into the 21st century. Maybe it was a pipe dream, founded on the ideals of lifelong Detroiters and those hungry for baseball nostalgia. Or could it have been something more, a practical solution that didn’t use taxpayer dollars, a project that would have kept one of baseball’s gems alive and roaring?
It is an argument Detroit purists love. And though it is already long buried in history, sometimes it is fun to wonder … what if Tiger Stadium could have been saved? What if the Tigers still played at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Trumbull?
The debate
It’s tough to pinpoint when exactly the debate started. Before its future was truly in jeopardy, Tiger Stadium had long been vulnerable. Its greatest strengths — a double-deck construction, with the second deck practically hovering over the playing field — was also a result of its tragic flaw, the support beams that obstructed views throughout the ballpark.
In 1971, the Detroit Free Press ran an article decrying Tiger Stadium’s sightlines and lack of creature comforts. “Tiger Stadium is outmoded, obsolete and uncomfortable,” the story read.
Then the article noted: “But there are those who love it.”
In the mid-1970s, there was a rejected proposal to build a new stadium on the Detroit riverfront. From 1977-84, Tiger Stadium underwent a series of cosmetic renovations: vinyl siding added to the exterior, a new scoreboard in center field, the wooden, green seats replaced with blue and orange plastic. The stadium was painted. The lighting received an upgrade. The ballpark was sold to the city for $1. The city had the money for the renovations, and the Tigers signed a 30-year lease, a way of ensuring the team would stay in Detroit for generations to come.
But by 1988, Tigers owner Tom Monaghan and Detroit mayor Coleman Young were again talking about a new ballpark.
“We’re rebuilding a new city, and there comes a time when we need a new stadium,” Young said in 1988. “Nobody in their wildest dreams expects that stadium to last beyond 10 years. Most people say it will fall down in five.”
In 1988, Sports Illustrated chronicled baseball’s endangered cathedrals. Fenway Park (built in 1912), Comiskey Park (1910), Wrigley Field (1914) and Tiger Stadium (1912) were the last remaining “classic structures,” and three of them were in danger of destruction. The article noted Young’s more blunt comments on Tiger Stadium: “It’s obvious the damned thing is falling down.”
In response, Detroit Monthly magazine paid Lev Zetlin — a leading structural engineer at the time — $2,000 to conduct a visual inspection of Tiger Stadium.
The magazine noted maintenance costs at the ballpark had ranged between $700,000 and $1 million annually, and also noted it could need up to $2 million in special repairs to bolster “salt-damaged foundations” in the four lower-deck seating sections.
Zetlin, though, concluded the stadium was ultimately structurally sound.
“You will never be able to prove that (Tiger Stadium) has to be taken down from an engineering standpoint,” Zetlin said in a 1988 Associated Press report.
In a subsequent Los Angeles Times story, the mayor’s office questioned Zetlin’s findings, comparing them to “going into the doctor and having him take a quick look without X-rays or blood pressure tests to tell you that you need open-heart surgery.”
The City of Detroit then hired two engineering firms to investigate and provide estimates on two competing ideas: the feasibility of renovating Tiger Stadium, and the cost of building a new ballpark.
When Monaghan — a collector of Frank Lloyd Wright furniture and antique cars — bought the Tigers in 1983, he pledged they would never play in a new stadium under his watch.
“I’d enjoy fixing (Tiger Stadium) up, giving it some tender loving care and nursing it back to health,” Monaghan said in 1987, per the Los Angeles Times. “Personally, I don’t like domes and artificial grass.”
For as much as Monaghan might have loved Tiger Stadium, he was still a businessman, and his team merely served as tenants in a city-owned ballpark. Monaghan noted Coleman Young preferred a new stadium, perhaps a multipurpose venue with a retractable dome. As the 1980s neared an end, Monaghan’s stance on the stadium had started to change.
“I’m going to go along with it as long as the rent doesn’t go up,” Monaghan said.
The Cochrane Plan
Over its many years in Detroit, Tiger Stadium became more than a ballpark. It was a gathering place, a rallying point, a symbol for a way of life.
So with the stadium’s future in jeopardy, fans and activists sought their own solution. The Tiger Stadium Fan Club began a grassroots campaign to save the park.
In 1988, the group orchestrated a “Stadium Hug,” in which 1,200 people gathered at the stadium on the 76th anniversary of its founding, encircling the ballpark in a show of support. Thanks to efforts from the Fan Club, Tiger Stadium was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, although that designation later proved more symbolic than safeguard.
Also in 1989, members of the Fan Club began devising an even more elaborate solution: The Cochrane Plan.
Named after Tigers catcher and manager Mickey Cochrane — who led the Tigers to the 1935 World Series — the plan was the brainchild of fans and architects John and Judy Davids. While an architectural student at the University of Michigan, John Davids had formed a relationship with Tom Monaghan and even redesigned Monaghan’s private box at Tiger Stadium.
Now, the Davids had studied and formulated a plan to preserve the historic character and distinctive features of Tiger Stadium while also adapting the stadium to meet modern needs. The Cochrane Plan might have been rooted in dreamy ideals, but it was more than just a fun bunch of sketches.
The plan’s main change was the removal of about 40 percent of support columns from the upper deck, with the remaining columns replaced by more sturdy support beams. The Cochrane Plan would have constructed a third deck filled with luxury suites and updated press facilities.
Overall, the Cochrane Plan included:
- The construction of 73 luxury suites to accommodate up to 1,200 people
- Additions on Cochrane Street and Michigan Avenue, allowing for new concessions, restrooms and expanded clubhouses, offices and storage.
- An addition at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, allowing for an expanded administrative and ticket-selling area.
- An “infill building” on Michigan Avenue housing a team hall of fame and other marketing operations, connected to the Cochrane addition with a pedestrian bridge and a ground-level plaza.
The Tiger Stadium Fan Club estimated the cost at $26 million, a fraction of what it would cost to build a new ballpark. The Cochrane Plan was also legitimized with the support of several architectural organizations, including the American Institute of Architects.
The “Cochrane Plan” would have renovated Tiger Stadium by putting suites on the roof, eliminated half of the view obstructing support columns, and widened the concourse at half the cost of Comerica Park. A huge influence on my own dream ballpark concept (pics 2 & 3). #Tigers
— MLB Cathedrals ⚾️ (@MLBcathedrals) September 4, 2018
Implementing such a plan, however, was another battle. Early pleas to the Tigers and Tom Monaghan, Tiger Stadium Fan Club members said at the time, went ignored.
“The structural engineers who looked at the ballpark, to a person, said that this ballpark is overbuilt, the structure is overbuilt,” Frank Rashid, a founding member of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club, told The Athletic last summer. “It can last as long as there’s the will to preserve it. So the battle began as people who were interested in baseball and interested in sports but also interested in historic preservation. It became much more of a public policy issue as we got into it.”
By 1991, in one of the oddest chapters in franchise history, former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler became the Tigers’ team president. At an infamous speech to Detroit’s Economic Club on April 22, 1991, Schembechler spoke of Tiger Stadium’s structural deficiencies and blamed much of the franchise’s struggles on the ballpark.
“It’s unfair for you to think you can shackle us to a rusted girder in Tiger Stadium and win, because it’s not going to work,” Schembechler said.
Also in 1991, the Detroit firm BEI Associates, Inc., reviewed the Cochrane Plan at the city’s request. The BEI analysis concluded the Cochrane Plan had “major deficiencies,” would actually cost closer to $50 million and would still leave too many seats with obstructed views.
Fan Club leaders claimed the cost analysis was inflated because the BEI analysis accounted for 100 suites rather than 73, and also criticized the firm’s involvement with the city in prospects for a new stadium. Basically, they felt the game was rigged.
“It didn’t have to happen,” Rashid said. “The renovation option for Tiger Stadium as the home of the Tigers, it accounted for almost everything that the Tigers wanted in the new stadium at a fraction of the cost. What the Davids did … showed that you don’t have to tear this place down. Basically, they recommended in advance what Fenway Park did and what Wrigley had already started to do and continued to do.
“You can maintain your great venue for baseball, and the team can get the extra revenue that it wants, and it will be distinctive.”
But though there was great love for Tiger Stadium, there was not always universal support in keeping the Tigers at the ballpark. Talk to anyone who attended a Tigers game in the ’90s, and you will hear stories of flooded bathrooms, ripped awnings, crowded confines and an overall crumbling ballpark. Even Ernie Harwell, the team’s beloved broadcaster, told the Detroit Free Press in 1993, “I could live with seeing Tiger Stadium stay up, but I don’t know if it is feasible. It has great ambiance, no question about that. But I am perfectly willing to accept a new stadium.
“The people who play there and work there would be better served by a new ballpark.”
The Birkerts-O’Neal Plan
The Cochrane Plan is remembered with strong emotions among Detroit nostalgists. But there was another plan, too — perhaps one that would have more closely resembled what a renovation of Tiger Stadium would have needed to look like.
The plan was devised by architect Gunnar Birkerts and contractor Joe O’Neal. BEI president Christopher Kittides initially called the plan a “promising type of solution.”
O’Neal received permission to crawl around Tiger Stadium, where he measured every beam and investigated every nook and cranny. He took his ideas to structural engineer Bob Darvas, and they then met with Birkerts. Upon first seeing the plan, Birkerts warned: This isn’t going to be an engineering problem or a sports problem. It’s going to be a political problem.
This plan would have put a “girdle” of reinforced concrete around the stadium — essentially building a new shell around the old ballpark and thus removing the infamous support pillars. It could be done, the designers said, by raising the upper deck 11 feet and moving it 20 feet from the playing field.
Although the sight lines would not quite be the same, the designers thought they could remove the beams and provide widened concourses while still keeping fans — and now suite holders — closer to the action than in any other major-league stadium.
The plan would have preserved the center-field bleachers and right-field overhang. It would also leave the playing field and much of the lower deck untouched. Still, “75 percent” of the stadium would still be new, including the entire upper deck and roof, which would accommodate 198 luxury suites. The plan was estimated to cost $60 million to $90 million, still far less than a new ballpark.
While the Cochrane Plan was a modern touch of makeup, this plan was a major facelift.
“What we’ve got to evaluate is does it make sense to spend $80 million to save 20 percent of the stadium?” Michael Duggan, now Detroit’s mayor, told the Free Press in 1991. ‘Those are the kinds of things we’re looking at.”
By June 1991, the Birkerts-O’Neal plan was already on its way to being dismissed. A BEI analysis concluded renovation of Tiger Stadium was “impractical.”
“Even with the renovation, you still have the old concrete and the old steel still there,” Kittides told the Free Press. “You are still dealing with an old stadium.”
What happened
By 1992, Monaghan sold the club to Mike Ilitch, the founder of Little Caesars Pizza. A former player in the Tigers’ farm system, Ilitch’s ownership was initially considered a major victory for the Tiger Stadium Fan Club.
Yet by the dawn of the 1993 season, the Ilitch family made clear their views on the stadium debate were driven less by emotions and more by financials.
“If I had my way, I’d buy every one of the Victorian homes here,” Marian Ilitch, Mike’s wife, said in the Detroit Free Press. “It’s difficult to see the waste. The stadium? It’d be wonderful if we could preserve it, but you have to look at it realistically. We’ll give it a shot, that’s for sure.”
Said Mike Ilitch: “We’ll assess the stadium and see if it’s capable of supporting the salaries. I’ll use my creativity and ingenuity to see if that’s possible, and I’ll go from there. But I’ll say this: A lot of teams are putting up new stadiums, and I think we’ll know 30 days after the season opens where we’re at. I’ll say, ‘I’ve made these changes, and this is what happened. Now what else can I do to support the salaries?'”
Ilitch’s positions never so much rebuked the feasibility of renovating Tiger Stadium as they did promote the economic opportunity of a new ballpark.
Early on, Ilitch made upgrades to the stadium, replacing a parking lot and adding a plaza, food court and souvenir center. Despite the romanticism of Tiger Stadium, attendance in the 1990s was also meager, ranking 11th or worst in the American League for nine straight seasons, hardly a way to drive up the franchise’s value.
Ilitch soon began showing interest in a new stadium. He visited the sites of new parks in Baltimore and Cleveland. Dennis Archer, who became Detroit’s mayor in 1993, flew to Wrigley Field at the Tiger Stadium Fan Club’s expense. The Fan Club hoped to show the type of renovation that could be possible in Detroit — beginning in the 1980s Wrigley Field received lights, parking, suites and upgrades to the concourse and other facilities for about $34 million.
The previous year, five members of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club spent 90 minutes pitching the Cochrane Plan to Mike Ilitch, who reportedly “asked several questions and showed deep knowledge of the stadium.”
“It was a great day,” Judy Davids said in the Free Press. “We could hardly believe it was happening.”
As time went on, though, Ilitch’s interest in any such plan seemed to dissolve. He targeted the construction of a ballpark near the Fox Theatre, which Ilitch purchased and renovated beginning in 1987.
Ilitch eventually gained support for obtaining a state grant to aid in financing a new ballpark, and political battles ensued over the use of public funds to construct a sporting venue. Joe O’Neal of the Birkerts-O’Neal Plan published a newspaper editorial, reminding people of his seemingly forgotten plan to renovate Tiger Stadium.
Ilitch and the City of Detroit, though, promoted a new ballpark under promises it would also lead to increased safety, businesses and jobs, a public relations battle they eventually won.
On Oct. 27, 1995, the Tigers and Archer formally announced plans for a new $235 million stadium. The plan did not take money from the city’s general fund but did use public dollars in the form of $55 million from the state Strategic Fund and $40 million from Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority. Final financial data can vary, but $185 million in ballpark costs came from Ilitch funds, per Reuters.
“This deal will be the model for financing future stadium construction projects well into the 21st century,” Archer said at the time. “Together, Mr. Ilitch and the city have shown just how well government and business can work to achieve common goals.″
In 1999, the Tigers played their final season at Tiger Stadium and held a grand sendoff for the old ballpark. In 2000, they began to play at Comerica Park, after Comerica Bank bought the naming rights for $66 million.
The new ballpark was built with a carousel, a Ferris wheel and a plethora of suites and other luxury seating. After opening, average game attendance surged. The franchise Ilitch bought for an estimated $85 million in 1992 appreciated by more than 1,000 percent, worth more than $1.25 billion today, per Forbes.
Rashid, however, calls the construction of Comerica Park “subsidizing billionaires” and “corporate welfare.”
“What I was witnessing was not just the death of history or the death of an important landmark, but the loss of public resources,” Rashid said.
The what ifs
We can’t fully grasp all that would be different if the Tigers still played in Tiger Stadium. For one, they would play at a cherished ballpark, one that would be mentioned with Fenway Park and Wrigley Field as must-see sites, landmarks in baseball history.
“Look where people want to go to see a ballgame,” Rashid said. “You want to go to Comerica? Or do you want to go to Wrigley? Do you want to go to Comerica or Fenway?”
But there would be issues, too. Parking was a discussion that was merely broached in renovation talks and could have presented a major obstacle. And though the construction of Comerica Park hasn’t exactly been a sole restorer for promise in Detroit, it is hard to imagine today’s downtown landscape without the entertainment district buoyed by the Fox Theatre. The city’s entire slow build to resurgence would look different. It is also possible Little Caesars Arena, the other Ilitch stadium initiative and one with even more complication and controversy, would exist elsewhere. What would that mean for the Pistons, who moved from Auburn Hills back into Detroit to play at LCA? The further civic impacts of all this — from tax dollars to sports teams — are remarkably wide-ranging.
At the site of what was once Tiger Stadium, there is now a turf field for the Detroit Police Athletic League. Although it is hardly recognizable, the ghost of Tiger Stadium lingers. The idea of a rambunctious stadium in the center of today’s Corktown is fun to envision.
Although a renovated Tiger Stadium could surely have been profitable, it’s possible it might not have been quite the money-making machine Comerica Park turned out to be. Would that, in turn, have hurt the Tigers’ chances of being competitive? Or could they indeed spend and win in an old ballpark, just like the Cubs and Red Sox?
Although the Tigers are rebuilding now as a caveat of all the years Mike Ilitch spent spending, the Tigers acquired the likes of Pudge Rodriguez, Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, David Price and others in more than a decade spent chasing a World Series crown. The Tigers never won that World Series — their last title was in 1984, when the team played at Tiger Stadium — but they did make World Series appearances in 2006 and 2012.
Alan Trammell, the Tigers’ Hall of Fame shortstop and now a special adviser for the team, no longer has a residence in Detroit. When he comes to the city, he’s often put up in the Ilitch-owned MotorCity Casino Hotel, which sits less than a mile north of where Tiger Stadium once was.
Trammell usually stays up high, on the south side of MotorCity. From his hotel room, he can look out over the Corktown neighborhood. He can see the patch of land where he spent all 20 years of his major-league career. Sometimes he thinks of the first time he saw Tiger Stadium. From California, he was used to stadiums with sprawling parking lots. Sometimes now, gazing toward the south, he marvels at how small the site is, how they fit a ballpark and 50,000 fans in such a limited area.
“Even though Tiger Stadium isn’t there,” he said, “the memories are still in my mind, and they can’t take those away.”
(Top photo: Brad Geller / MLB via Getty Images)
