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WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK. By Bull Allen. July 20, 2008: This has been a sad week for baseball fans. Two events became public this week. After nine years, Detroit’s Economic Growth Corporation has greenlighted the tearing down of Tiger Stadium where Ty Cobb played.
So Long Tiger Stadium.
Photo: Rashaun Rucker, Detroit Free Press
In an obituary today, I read also about the death of the first African-American sportscaster, Sherman Jocko Maxwell. It was the first I had heard of him – who according to reports broadcast scores and did interviews of the players in the old Negro Leagues covering the Newark Eagles.
The two events have two different legacies and say much about America and what’s wrong with it.
In a few months the old Yankee Stadium will be torn down in favor of building a new Yankee Stadium, now rising. I am not going to miss Yankee Stadium that much because the real Yankee Stadium disappeared in 1973 when they removed the façade, shrank the outfield, eliminated the auxiliary scoreboards, removed the bullpens and put in the hideous scoreboard they have today. It has never seemed like the Big Ball Park (as Red Barber used to call it), since.
Still, you would think that the stadium could be preserved for play by local teams, and the stands and interior could have been turned into a New York Baseball Museum. A sort of “Met” or “Museum of Natural History for baseball. A natural destination for tourists to visit after visiting the new Yankee Stadium next door.
But, no. They are going to tear it down – removing the place where Babe Ruth played. Where Don Larsen pitched a perfect game (my all-time Yankee Stadium moment), Where Grover Cleveland Alexander fanned Lazzeri in the 7th in the 1926 Seventh Game. Where I saw Whitey Ford pitch. Where Johnny Podres pitched Brooklyn to its only World Championship. You may as well put up condominiums overlooking The Peach Orchard in Gettysburg.
But do the Tigers or the Yankees who got millions in tax breaks doing anything to preserve either Tiger Stadium or the House That Ruth Built. No. Of course not.
So they are tearing down Tiger Stadium.
Because Detroit could not figure out what to do with it.
And they still don’t know what they are going to do with the empty lot once it is done. Tiger Stadium was where Cobb stole his way into the Hall of Fame. Where Hank Greenburg, Schoolboy Rowe, The great Mickey Cochrane played. Where the Dean Brothers beat the Bengals in 1934. Where Hal Newhouser pitched. The home of Mickey Lolich. Stormin Norman. Kaline. Charlie Gehringer. Goose Goslin. The Bird. Denny McLain. Jim Northrup. Gates Brown. Frank Lary. Paul Foytack. George Kell. Allan Trammel, Lou Whittaker. It had the celebrated overhanging upper deck in right field. It was a magical place where things happened.
Tiger Stadium, 1999. The Associated Press
Tiger Stadium was the place we’d see back East on Thanksgiving Day on Channel 2 at noon at Grandma’s house, with Van Patrick at the microphone calling the Detroit Lions (they were Lions then), and the Green Bay Packers in football, with those funny stripped goal posts and often magical snow drifting down on the game. The Lions of Bobby Layne, Yale Larry, Hopalong Cassidy, Night Train Lane and Joe Schmidt.
Where do the Tigers play now? Comerica Field, where the upper decks like so many of the new modern “improved” parks are set so far back you’re miles away from the action. In Tiger Stadium with its posts and steep upper deck rake you were on top of the action. It was like a gallery with echo, the pop of beer cups being popped, and you never missed a play. The centerfield bleachers were miles away and the centerfield was way deep – 440 straightaway. You had to have good centerfielders in Detroit.
Now it is going down. No one in Detroit had the foresight to make it a Detroit Baseball Hall of Fame and museum where kids could play on the old diamond. They are trying to save the lower deck between 3rd and 1st for a museum and the playing surface, but only have until August 1 to come up with the money. It does not look good for the old lady.
Heck, that field could accommodate two soccer fields, too.
Right field Today. Empty of seats. Just Ghosts of Baseball’s Past Remain.
Tearing down The Corner at Michigan and Trumbull is like tearing down the Roman Coliseum. Tiger Stadium, Cleveland Stadium, League Park, Braves Field, Forbes Field, Comiskey Park, Shibe Park, Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Sportsmans Park all felt like ballparks. The fields were bigger than life. And so green. The diamond exploded before you in those parks because you were so close. Now you are so far away from it in the new parks, that there is no intimacy.
Old Comiskey Park, 1975. Note steep rake of the upper deck.
Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are all that are left of the old ballparks. Wrigley is perhaps the most overrated of the lot. It’s nice, but it does not have the character old Comiskey Park on the South Side had. Fenway has been wrecked by the Red Sox sticking bleachers on the left field wall, bleachers on the roof of the Fens and electronic scoreboards. But you are at least still on top of the field.
Upper Deck Puts You on top of the action at Wrigley Field, 1975. Pete Rose at the plate.
Meanwhile, it is interesting to note the Yankees will sell pieces of the old Yankee Stadium for millions.
My feeling is, we destroy the past in America. We do not revere it. Those ballparks, the old buildings, they are living things that were once part of us. When they go, the ghosts go with them.
When we tear them down, we throw out our traditions, our feelings, our values those edifaces once instilled in us.
Jocko Maxwell.
When I read about this first black man to ever do sports on the radio out of WNJR in Newark and WHOM in Newark, it got me thinking about the message this man sends to the youth of today.
He wanted to do sports on the radio. He did sports scores, wrote up old Negro League games, preserved the history of great Negro League baseball. He did not get paid to do it. He did it because he felt he had to and because he loved it. He died at age 100 this week. He said visiting the Hall of Fame at age 93 was the happiest day of his life.
When I was growing up there were no black sportscasters until Art Rust Jr. came on WABC Radio.
Then Bill White joined the Yankee broadcast team, the second really good athlete turned sportscaster. Previously Phil Rizzuto had set the mold as a player turned broadcaster. But Bill White brought a candor and presence and honesty to play by play that was refreshing amongst the Yankee professional announcers, quiet dignified confidence and great dignity that reined in Phil on many a night.
Frank Messer, Dwayne Stats, Joe Garagiola, etc., who filled the vast play-by-play wasteland in the Yankee booth since Mel Allen’s departure were competent professionals. But Bill White shared the game with you, articulately, with class. Yankee play-by-play is still a wasteland today, where you never know what is going on.
You have to give the Yankees a lot of credit for hiring Bill White at the time. White, I believe to this day was and still is the only black regular play-by-play man for a major league team. I may be wrong on this. But, frankly there are too few. Ken Singleton continues to handle Yankee Games on YES. The Yankees have done their part. The Yankees even have the only woman sportscaster, Suzyn Waldman, whom I wish would do more play-by-play, and we Yankee fans would know what is going on.
in the late 60s. Greg Gumbel then Bryant Gumbel came on the networks. Fred Hickman and Nick Charles were the first black sportscasters I had ever seen on CNN in the 70s. I do not feel studio hosting by blacks is the same as the play-by-play niches. We need more play-by-play men and women of color. Of course, there are the Spanish play-by-play sportscasters in key markets: New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Arizona — but that is of necessity.
The point being, I had never heard of Sherman Jocko Maxwell until his death. A horrible thing I as a ball fan did not know of him.
Yet, Mr. Maxwell pursued his love of baseball…he broadcast real good for free – he felt he had a mission to publicize the exploits of the black ballplayers of the 40s and 50s before the color line was ended.
The lesson of today for you young fans out there is to pursue your dream. Do what you want to do, what makes you feel good. If something tells you you must pay attention to it, well do it. You will never know how important it is until you can no longer do it.
Jocko Maxwell did.
