Goodbye Tiger Stadium

Tiger Stadium (pictured taken in April by Dem)

The stadium is currently being demolished. While it maybe necessary it's still sad to see the old stadium go. Not so much even because of the sports history that it holds, but because of personal memories. For me it was the place me and my dad (plus other family members and friends sometimes) went once a year to see a Tiger's game. My memories are filled with peanuts, my first sight of a prostitute, learning why you should stick with the crowd after games, walking up those famous ramps, getting on the news for heckling the team (I feel a little bad since I was harassing the Tigers), getting tons of free food from fast food places late at night (it would be late and they would just want to get rid of food), driving home really late at night, wishing that I could catch a baseball, and watching the game. Thanks dad for taking me.

Tiger Stadium seats seen threw the demolished exterior of the stadium.
(RASHAUN RUCKER / Detroit Free Press)

Old Glory Days

In the digitizing of the family videos I've finally got to my sports television debut. At that point in my life baseball was the best sport in my mind and played all the time. I also sported some pretty sweet Tigers wrist bands and a Tigers t-shirt (I believe that shirt is now a rag somewhere). In the video I struggled with the starting pitcher (mom), but when the relief pitcher (dad) came in to the finish the game I had more success.

However in the closing moments of the game a similar play occurred, but this time dad made a heroic effort and got me out at the plate...though I did make a strong case that the tie goes to the runner.

I've also begun work on some of my sports tapes. They are actually in much worse shape then the family home video and probably will lose some of the videos. However today I managed to capture a couple highlights from our big game with Reese my senior year. The video below captures my best offense-to-defense sequence (at least that is on tape).

Also from that same game I was able to get the biggest assist of my basketball "career" (I'm using the term career here very loosely...typically career's result in the making of money). Basically the team we were playing was ranked in the top 5 in the state and we weren't ranked at the time. We had been down by like 10 points with about 5 minutes left in the game before we went on a scoring run. If I recall write at the point of this play we were down by one point and after it we never let Reese score again...oh good memories (I'll choose to forget that this same team later breaks our 17 game winning streak).