Stadium memories can't be torn down

Every sport is about anticipation, and none more than baseball. But it's gone, leaving all of us who ever bought a ticket or a hot dog hanging with an uncertain fate.

We don't know what it will be like next year, at a park with a corporate name and a Ferris wheel.

We know it won't be the same.

Rick Freeman

We're afraid it will be like the Brown Jug - a promise of tradition until one night you come back to find bright lights and techno music.

We're afraid those who control the future of baseball in Detroit will be like the fan in the lower left-field seats, craning to get a better view of the JumboTron, and wishing for screens on the other side of the park, too. Somewhere deep down we're afraid the keepers of our dreams might miss the point that badly.

That's why we want to take home something tangible, to remind us that this wasn't a dream that started the first time we saw a green field in the sun. I have dirt from Wrigley, and Fenway; from Jacobs Field and Safeco Field. Dirt from the oldest and the newest. From a place like Tiger Stadium, I have more. I'll take no dirt, no urinal, no seat, nothing. The things I want to keep from here are the things I remember. The scent of the peppers and onions on the grill. The chill deep inside the place on a warm summer day.

Freeman of the pressPlaces like Tiger Stadium don't just come along every 88 years. These are places meant for memory-making. No one's upset that an 88-year old structure is closing. No one's upset that the Tigers are trying to make more money to field a better team.

Last night was sad because people who came here for the first time 40 years ago and people whose first visit was last year let this place get into their hearts for another reason.

For some, it was Kirk Gibson's homer in Game 5 of the 1984 World Series. For some, it was just the people they came with. Or one person. And for everyone, part of that was the possibility that they could come back.

More memories could be made, but on the same canvas as the others. People can take home the warning-track dirt, a seat, a paint chip and look at it and know that it bore mute witness to the memories of millions of others - including theirs.

As materialistic as we are, we think we need a piece of the place to affirm our memories. We don't trust our minds to keep them.

But if you never took home that seat, that armrest, or that urinal, don't worry. There's more than enough regret in this world. Having a piece of the place you loved doesn't mean you like it more.

It doesn't mean you'll remember it better. And it doesn't mean you took home something you didn't bring when you came, because we all did that. Every time we came, we left with a new feeling. We saw a game that never existed before. Or we saw how thick the paint really was on those railings.

Either way, we left changed by an experience uniquely our own and shared with history at the same time. An intersection more profound than even Michigan and Trumbull.

We saw a chunk of land where the profession of baseball has been practiced for 104 years.

We saw the dugout that Lou Gehrig left with the lineup card to end his consecutive-games streak. We saw the centerfield where Ty Cobb traded quips with fans.

And then very few of us saw the man who hung on the railing in the overhang above the visitors bullpen. Hours after the final game ended, he sat on the edge of an orange seat, absorbing the emptied stadium and field. His arms rested atop the railing, his head was beneath them. He looked out at a wide expanse of green and history. What he saw, millions upon millions of others had already seen, but the memory he was creating in his mind and the feeling in his heart would be uniquely his own.

- Rick Freeman can be reached via e-mail at rickfree@umich.edu.

09-28-99