http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080710/COL27/807100372/&imw=Y BILL MCGRAW Good-bye, Tiger Stadium BY BILL McGRAW • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • July 10, 2008 Amid the dust and bulldozers and roving bands of middle-aged men with cameras on the first real day of demolition at Tiger Stadium on Wednesday, it emerged that the city is planning to save three of the stadium's historic elements -- the flagpole and both foul poles. Advertisement The flagpole, all 125 feet of it, will remain standing during and after demolition, said Fred Rottach, manager of the City of Detroit's property management department. "They're working around it," Rottach said. "Unequivocally, the flagpole will remain intact." The pole sits in deep centerfield -- in fair territory. It is one of the rare objects unrelated to the game to be located between the white lines in any major league stadium. The other two objects also are tall: The yellow foul poles located in the corners of right and left field. Rottach said the poles likely will be taken down and stored until it can determined how they'll be reused. Those objects are among the rare metal objects inside the stadium receiving a reprieve because the city is paying nothing to the companies doing the demolition, so they will make all of their profit by recycling everything else of value -- steel, plastic, copper, even the rebar in the concrete. The price of metals has been high for a couple of years, and has risen further in the past several months. "Remember those pillars that got in the way? That's really high-end steel that goes for top dollar," Rottach said. In all, at least 90% of the stadium will be recycled, Rottach said, and officials believe the project will be the "largest green demolition" in the United States. That means no bags of rubble will be sold, as the St. Louis Cardinals did when they demolished Busch Stadium in 2005. Bricks became a treasured souvenir when the Olympia, former home of the Red Wings, was torn down in the mid-1980s. But officials say Tiger Stadium, constructed largely of cement and ceramic blocks, has relatively few bricks and they are located largely behind home plate. That portion is in the area that won't be demolished until at least Aug. 1, the deadline Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has given the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy to raise money to preserve at least some of the park between the dugouts as a memorial, museum and community center. One prominent member of the group is former longtime Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell. The area around home plate is among the oldest parts of the ballpark, which evolved in stages from the late 1890s to 1999, when the Tigers played their last game before moving to Comerica Park. The parts attacked first by the workers and machines Wednesday were the exterior wall and innards where the centerfield bleachers meet the leftfield seats, mainly in the lower deck, along the Fisher Freeway service drive. The many older male fans with cameras looked at the twisted concrete and shards of siding and remembered the first time they walked into the stadium and how the grass seemed to be made of sparkling emeralds. One younger person was Evan Major, 25, of Hamtramck. He recalled working in a Corktown parking lot as a teenager on game nights. "I hope that it's not completely demolished," he said. The demolition revealed ceramic tile that appeared to be from restrooms, orange doors and dirty old windows whose frames are painted green, the stadium's dominant color scheme before a makeover in the 1970s. The leftfield roof was the hardest for hitters to clear. Only four managed the feat after the stadium attained its current form in 1938. Who were they? See answer to the right.* Contact BILL MCGRAW at bmcgraw@freepress.com.
