With the coming of spring and beginning of the baseball season thoughts of baseball stadiums of yesteryear enter my subconscious. One of the stadiums that does this most often is old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The stadium stood just before the western edge of the downtown and was designed in the classic jewel-box style.

Many stadiums were built using this style, as space was at a premium and stadiums were located in dense urban areas. Teams built parks that worked around the surrounding area instead of buying everything around and leveling it. Tiger Stadium formerly known as Navin Field, Bennett Park, Briggs Stadium was no different. The architecture utilized a double cantilever style that made use of poles and support beams throughout. This meant that the second deck was incredibly close to the field, unlike modern parks. It also meant the entire stadium was fully enclosed without an open back drop of the city behind it.

The intersection of Michigan and Trumbull is a somewhat quiet place now, but for ninety-odd years (1910-1999), it may have been the loudest patch of dirt in Detroit. Tiger Stadium didn't ask for affection; it earned it through a stubborn, industrial utility and nostalgia. It was a place made of steel rivets, dark concourses, and a field that looked impossibly green by midsummer.

As a kid, I was always fascinated by the stadium and liked the look of it in pictures. I always planned to attend a game there. When it was announced that 1999 was the last year the stadium would be in use I knew I had to get to a game. Mid-way through the summer it was now or never. I bought two tickets for a game the last week it was open. This happened to be the final week of September.

Tiger Stadium near twilight. Property of the Detroit Free-Press

My plan was to drive the five hours to arrive at game time, and drive back after the game was over. I was 19 years and one day old and had never been to Detroit, nor made a roadtrip of this distance before. I arrived to the Corktown neighborhood about 30 min before game time. I parked about five or six blocks west near the massive and then abandoned Michigan Central Station. I didn't know then that it was formerly a train station but it was the first thing I saw getting out of the car. I said to the person I went to the game with “that building doesn’t have a window in it.”

Detroit seemed like another world. One I knew very little about and might as well have been the moon. Some 27 years later that night still seems like a dream in my mind. Walking through the then crumbling neighborhood and seeing the stadium that only previously existed to me in pictures was surreal. The late summer golden hour light and the beautifully aged stadium seemed like a Time Machine to baseball’s past.

Thinking back on it now, the stadium and the century were both running on fumes. As was my youth, I look back on all three fondly now.