When my family immigrated to America from Italy they went to three places- Newark, NJ, Chicago, IL and Detroit, Michigan. The result of these movements were that we were divided in our Baseball loyalties. Some of us loved the Dodgers (Then Mets), Yankees, Tigers or White Sox.
So these teams were always real to me because of family get togethers. We liked to rib each other and rarely were my White Sox on top and so I had to sit and listen to the others. My Detroit relatives always talked about the Tigers. Willie Horton, Al Kaline, Sparky Anderson, Alan Trammell and all the rest. Hell they even had Denny Mc Clain who was a South Sider but played in Detroit. Detroit was rough when I was a kid. Nothing like Chicago or New York which still pulsed. But there was something about the Tigers- that I hated and still do to this day.
Today, Tigers Stadium, at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull is being torn down. Along with her sisters Comiskey Park, Cleveland Memorial Stadium, Forbes Field, and Ebbets Field she represented something that has been lost amid our iPods and blogs- Depth. Some people want to put Wrigley and Fenway in that category but they have always been and remain parks for the Gentry.
There was a time in America when solid people made solid things. These were the kind of people who filled Tigers Stadium, Comiskey Park and the rest. They were not corporate and they were not office workers and this made their collective souls different from other places. The end of Tigers Stadium is the last link from that America to ours and it is sad to think that it moves into history.
America has become like Phoenix- everything is new and clean and antiseptic. You are more apt to find an office with a Zen Fountain then you are to find a person who is the member of an industrial union or works with his or her hands. As we watch Tigers Stadium fall to the wrecker's ball we look at General Motors and by analogy an America that is gone forever.
The reason that no one cares about General Motors dieing is because so few of us know anyone who make things.
General Motors, Tigers Stadium demolished....
1 comment:
I was born and raised in Michigan (have known many GM employees) and have lived in the Phoenix-Metro area now for 15+ years. I was followin' along until you got to "America has become like Phoenix-everything is new and clean and antiseptic" part. In Phoenix, you're more likely to see a transient covered in dust sleeping under an overpass or mesquite tree than you are to see a Zen fountain, whatever that is. But I did see someone's building a new church over on Northern Avenue that looks like a Buddhist temple. I try to avoid downtown Phoenix. Only masochists go there. Same with the freeways.
I went to Detroit stadium exactly once as a kid. Sports ain't my thing. (Though I think my grandma has probably listened to or watched (tv) every Tiger game she could. Whenever I hear a sports announcer, I think of her. That's sports' only redeeming quality as far as I can tell.) The new stadiums here are in Glendale, not that far from where I live. They can tear 'em both down, and it won't hurt my feelings. The one looks like a giant silver spacecraft landed in the middle of the desert. Very odd.
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