Demolition has begun at Tiger Stadium

According to Detroit News.com



After Sunday's Game, I went by the stadium; After someone told me demolition starts Monday, I went to the Marathon Gas Station across the street and bought a disposable camera.


If my pictures come out, I will post them



And that's if can do that!

I wonder how much of it will be gone before the next homestand?

I'll be there next week; they couldn't have waited?!!

Nope!



Glad I talked with that security guard; I figured it be there for a few more weeks.


Hopefully the camera I bought worked



I have a few pictures left; Gonna take some of my animals then take it to the CVS down the street and have em developed

So who's going to start a candlelight vigil?

Kwame was full of hot air....as usual.

Tiger Stadium starts to come down
By JOHN GALLAGHER • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER • June 30, 2008


The dismantling of historic Tiger Stadium has begun.

Wrecking crews punched a garage-door-sized hole in the north wall of the ballpark today, and at mid-afternoon a bulldozer and hard-hatted workers were visible inside the wall, pulling away railings and other parts of the structure, while a Dumpster and other equipment was parked nearby.

Outside a security fence erected over the past several days, Rich Curbelo, a freelance radio journalist from Bloomfield Hills, said he was there as a fan first.

“This is my friend,” he said, gesturing toward the stadium. “My friend is leaving me. A punch in the wall is like a punch in the heart.”

As the demolition work proceeds this summer, Hall of Fame baseball announcer Ernie Harwell and other members of the nonprofit Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy are racing against an Aug. 1 deadline set by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to raise money to save one corner of the ballpark as a community center and museum.

Contact JOHN GALLAGHER at 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=C4&Date=20080624&Category=SPORTS02&ArtNo=806240808&Ref=PH

for pics

At least Kwame extended the deadline


But I got a feeling that won't raise the money.


Will be left with nothing but a vacant lot than in 10 years will be filled with trees and weeds and homeless bums

Like a good portion of Detroit is now!

Sad state of affairs when a city can't even see fit to keep baseball memories alive in some way....

Or tear down buildings that are worse than Tiger Stadium first

Like the Train Depot;


Looks like it was hit by a missle

Now that's sad.

But it is true!


So many run down buildings in Detroit; but we gotta tear down Tiger Stadium.

Be one thing if someone wanted to develop the site; but it will sit vacant for years to come


In ten years, there will be so many trees and weeds; no one will even know a ballpark once stood there

gs78 wrote:

At least Kwame extended the deadline


But I got a feeling that won't raise the money.


Will be left with nothing but a vacant lot than in 10 years will be filled with trees and weeds and homeless bums

A vacant lot is better than a burnt-out, gutted, rotting building.....

"Once there was a ballpark......right here"

(sniff)

Not really Tigersaint; Not if they let trees and weeds spread out over it.



Even the sidewalks on Cochrane have weeds 7-8 inches high poking through the cracks.


How hard is it to weedwack?

Trees and weeds are much better than rotting crackhouses.....sorry.

I am sure there will be some bums smoking crack there!

When a ballpark like Tiger Stadium dies, part of us does, too
BY MITCH ALBOM • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • July 6, 2008

I took a drive last week to say good-bye to an old friend. I came off the highway, turned down a familiar street and there she was, right in front of me.

She did not look good. She was pale and broken down. Even the work she'd had done a few years ago now had decayed. She was spilling out, peeling, her fabrics were torn, and she looked none too steady on her feet. The summer sky was gray and she seemed to have a cloud affixed permanently over her head -- along with cranes, tractors and trucks by her sides.

There was a small hole in her body. But she will break and crumble much more in the weeks to come. She was born in 1912. Death is inevitable now.

Her name is Tiger Stadium.

They are knocking her down.

For the love of the game
I parked beyond some orange cones by a fence that had been constructed to keep scavengers from getting too close. A security man wearing a wool cap jogged over and said no one was allowed in, but when I told him I only wanted a last look at a place where I'd spent so many years, he relented. He looked to be in his 20s. I asked if he'd seen the Tigers play here. His face lit up. "Oh, yeah," he said, "my dad took me back in the day."

Of course, back in the day we didn't say "back in the day." But at that moment, smiling widely, the guy was not a security guard, he was an excited kid with a glove, certain the next foul ball would be his.

Somewhere inside us, aren't we all?

There are few romances like the ones with a ballpark. Unlike lovers, you don't mind sharing them. Unlike boyfriends or girlfriends, they do not fade with the crush. And unlike most summer flings, you get to renew your love every year.

It is Fourth of July weekend, a time when fireworks flew over this ballpark.

There are no fireworks left.

Her name is Tiger Stadium.

They are knocking her down.

The legends of Motown
I glanced at the fading logo on her wall, a tiger crawling out through an Old English D. I remembered how her hallways smelled of sausage grease and her dim tunnel lighting was out of a Bela Lugosi movie. But this was a place where you could walk with the players on the way to their cars, a place where you crawled up into a hanging pinecone of a broadcast booth to say hi to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey, a place where sitting behind a pole was part of the charm, because if you leaned to the side of that pole, you might see Ty Cobb getting his 4,000th hit, or Hank Greenberg, just back from the Army, hitting a home run. You might see Mark Fidrych chatting with a baseball, or Jack Morris glaring down a hitter before striking him out.

My first assignment for this newspaper was here. I interviewed Lou Whitaker. We talked for a few minutes, and it would be my longest interview with him ever. I saw Frank Tanana here nearly lose his chewing gum in celebrating a final, playoff-clinching out. I saw Cecil Fielder clock monster home runs into the night sky. I saw a tireless, elderly, über-fan called The Brow charge up and down the aisles, urging people to cheer even when there was nothing to cheer about.

Tiger Stadium was mine and it was yours and it was anyone's who lived in this area over the last century. It belonged to your grandfather and your barber and your neighbor's aunt. It belonged to Cobb and Greenberg and Al Kaline and Kirk Gibson and Sparky Anderson and Frank Navin and the Briggs family and Tom Monaghan and Mike Ilitch.

It belonged to the earth it sat upon.

And soon, that is where it will return.

You don't save a building for the building's sake. Tiger Stadium has been empty for nine years, rotting and crumbling while people wrangled over plans. In the end, as with certain medicines, the plans could not save the patient.

She deserves a dignified end.

I rarely have taken a photograph of a workplace. But I raised my camera and snapped one before I left. It is not her best look, but with old friends, you gotta take the whole picture.

That Sinatra song goes, "And the air was such a wonder, from the hot dogs and the beer. Yes, there used to be a ballpark, right here."

Her name is Tiger Stadium. They are knocking her down.

Say good-bye if you get the chance.

She'd like that.

Click here for a video.

07/09/2008 8:48 PM ET
Demolition continues at Tiger Stadium
Conservation group trying to beat deadline to preserve relics
By Jason Beck / MLB.com

DETROIT -- The final farewell for Tiger Stadium might have begun as a conservancy group tries to save at least part of the old ballpark.

After years of legal wrangling, business plans, redevelopment ideas, upkeep and a project that goes on as supporters try to salvage a plan to preserve part of the historic structure, the stadium is now facing demolition. Workers began tearing down the stadium last week, a process that continued on Wednesday as excavators began taking down parts of the walls.

Photos taken Wednesday showed a large hole in the perimeter of the stadium beyond center field. Excavators went through walls from the outside and into the inner workings of the ballpark that opened in 1912 and served as the home of the Detroit Tigers through 1999.

The demolition is part of a plan approved by the city last year and awarded to a contractor this spring. Many of the seats and other memorabilia were auctioned off last fall, with more seats remaining.

While parts of the stadium come down, the nonprofit Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy Group is fighting to meet an Aug. 1 deadline to raise funds that would help pay to preserve the diamond, dugouts and a limited number of seats. The project would develop those into a museum that would include the artifact collection of Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell, who is a supporter of the preservation plan.

The group is looking for private donations and has a Web site for supporters, but the best hope for preservation hinges at least in part on money from loans or through the federal government. The stadium is on the National Register of Historic Places.

If those plans fall short, the entire structure would be demolished, with some remaining parts auctioned off and others sold for scrap. From there, the city of Detroit would look for proposals on redeveloping the site in the city's Corktown neighborhood, just west of downtown.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

DETROIT (AP) - Demolition crews smashed the historic walls of Tiger Stadium on Wednesday, punching through to the interior of the ballpark that stood for decades.

Outfield walls cleared by baseball great Mickey Mantle as well as Detroit Tiger sluggers Norm Cash and Cecil Fielder began to come down as contractors intensified their efforts to bring down the venerable park.
Backhoes and excavators, sometimes hard to see through dust and spraying water, whizzed around the site, picking up debris and dumping it in oversized bins. During one flurry on Wednesday, an excavator smashed through the exterior wall beyond left field, throwing support girders to the side.

The scene was tough to take for longtime Tigers fan Chas Matreal and his 23-year-old son, Ryan.

"All beautiful memories," Chas Matreal said. "It is something beautiful that we're destroying, and it's history."

The 49-year-old bricklayer from Milford said he attended 400 to 500 games at Tiger Stadium, many with his own father, starting in 1966.

"Demolition means progress," declared signs on a construction vehicle at the site. But Matreal disagreed, saying priceless memories are being lost.

"It's a natural museum of a hundred years that they're destroying," he said.

The ballpark opened in 1912 as Navin Field and hosted thousands of Tigers games, Babe Ruth's 700th career home run in 1934 and a speech by South Africa President Nelson Mandela in 1990. The final major league game was played there on Sept. 27, 1999.

The Tigers moved into Comerica Park in 2000.

Demolition of the ballpark began last week, and the contractors expect to make an estimated $1 million (?640,000) by selling scrap from the park.

City officials say an Aug. 1 deadline still stands for a nonprofit group to raise enough funds to preserve the field and part of the stadium between first and third base.

That first pic was what we saw as we approached CoPa. Sad...and I never went to a game there!

Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tiger Stadium field, foul poles to be saved
Associated Press

DETROIT -- Tiger Stadium may be coming down, but the City of Detroit says the historic ballpark's field will be saved.

Fred Rottach (RO-tash), who oversees the stadium property for the city, says the playing field will remain intact after the park's demolition.

He says the foul poles and flagpole also will be preserved. The flagpole will remain in place, and the foul poles will be taken down and remounted after the demolition.

Two Detroit-area contractors began demolition of the ballpark last week and spent Wednesday tearing into the outfield walls.

An Aug. 1 deadline has been set for a nonprofit group to raise enough money to preserve part of the stadium.

The ballpark opened in 1912 as Navin Field, and the final major league game was played on Sept. 27, 1999.

Onlookers gather to watch Tiger Stadium demolition --07/09/2008

http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=2473