My Tiger Stadium Throne

The chair arrived in the mail in a large cardboard box. It was my one frivolous online purchase in the name of history and nostalgia. It weighs 21 pounds and dates back to 1912 when it was first installed. It’s green and made completely of metal. I wonder how many times it’s been repainted. I wonder what the people who used it have seen; the games, the triumphs, the heartbreaks. The chair came from Tiger Stadium in Detroit, my baseball home as a child and teen. The stadium is now gone, but I have the chair. It’s my own personal time-machine.

I’m certain it’s the chair I used 1974 at my first Tiger game. Reggie Jackson of the Oakland A’s hit a home run that day. When he stepped to the plate for his next at-bat, my father yelled, “Move the fences back!” I didn’t know the fences were moveable, I remember thinking.

The chair looked across the field at the centerfield bleachers where I spent dozens of high school evenings with my friends. We would drive down the Lodge Freeway and avoid the parking lots by finding a spot in the neighborhood near the cross streets of Cochrane and Pine. Elementary-aged children would ride up on their bikes and for a buck or two they’d offer to watch our car for us.

I loved how Tiger Stadium wasn’t surrounded by acres of parking lots that are guarded by ticket booths trying to siphon every dollar from its visitors. Except for the light towers on the roof, Tiger Stadium looked more like a warehouse or a factory that was capable of rolling out Mustangs and Cameros.

Once inside, the stadium was dark and cramped. Barren concrete ramps crisscrossed to carry us to the upper deck. From there we’d have to cross to the bleachers over a gangplank-like bridge. During day games, we’d walk the plank toward the bright light of the outside world that was nothing short of heavenly.

The chair was there when I sat in those bleachers with my dad in 1986 for an Opening-Day game against the Redsox. He had won two tickets by correctly answering a radio-station trivia question. Kirk Gibson slugged two home runs, both to the upper deck in right field, the second of which gave the Tigers the lead for good.

In 1999, I sat in almost the same spot for the stadium’s final game. The Tigers defeated the Royals, Rob Fick hit a grand slam for the ballpark’s last home run, and radio broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell led us in our goodbyes to the stadium.

I wanted to find a souvenir that night, a brick, a sign, something to keep forever. But defacing the stadium would have been sacrilegious. My memories would have to be enough. There was the game in 1977 when after Mark Fidrych beat the Redsox my dad sent me over to get an autograph from Carl Yastrzemski. There are memories of the game in which Hal McRae of the Royals hit an inside-the-park-homer. I remember sitting in the lower deck centerfield bleachers on the night the Tigers won their 35^th game in 40 tries to start the 1984 season. And I’ll never forget driving in from Grand Rapids on a rainy Friday in 1987 to see the Tigers win the first of three must-win games to steal the division title from the Blue Jays.

The Tigers have a new stadium now. It’s fancy, spacious, and well-lit. For years the city haggled over what to do with the empty Tiger Stadium. But nothing happened and slowly the abandoned ballpark became a symbol of the decaying city that surrounds it. I went back to Detroit in 2009 and made one more trip to the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull. I had heard that the demolition process had begun. I wasn’t sure, but I was certain that the ballpark had been flattened. To my shock, as I approached it from behind, I saw light towers reaching into the sky. I saw the familiar white tiles of the walls. The stadium was still standing.

However, I drove around the corner to see that only one section remained. It was just the part behind home plate and down the first base side. I felt like Charlton Heston stumbling upon the wrecked Statue of Liberty in the Planet of the Apes. The stadium stood in ruins. It looked like a building partially destroyed by a bomb or an earthquake. Tiger stadium was now baseball’s Parthenon, still standing, but a shell of its former self. The little gem of a ballpark had become a junked car sitting on blocks in a back alley. Only Detroit can screw up tearing down a stadium.

At home, I went to eBay to see if I could locate a souvenir. That’s when I found the chair. Baseball awoke from its hibernation on Thursday. I look forward to watching as many games as possible. And for the first time I see the Tigers on TV, I might just pull up the chair for old time’s sake.