Home Base

The Detroit Tigers played baseball on these grounds at the corner of Michigan and Turnbull for the first time in 1896 and continued through 104 subsequent seasons and 4 World Series wins. It began with patrons sitting in wooden stands and parts of the outfield marked by rope, and eventually grew to accomodate over 53,000 fans with steel and concrete bleechers and an extended double-upper-deck.
The Tigers moved to freshly built Comerica Park in the new millenium, and the following 7 years saw the old MLB stadium essentially unused-- costing the city over a half million a year to maintain. After much debate, the historic stadium was partially demolished in 2008, leaving an ache in the hearts of many longtime fans.
The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy was established with the hopes of raising enough money to take ownership of the field and remaining grandstand, and restore it to be used as a museum and functional sporting complex. When OTSC failed to raise enough money (though not for lack of trying-- have you met Detroit sports fans?), Michigan Senator Carl Levin stepped up and slipped a provision into a massive 2009 omnibus spending bill, allocating $3.8 million "for preservation and redevelopment of a public park and related business activities in the Corktown Neighborhood."-- AKA Tiger Stadium.
Given Detroit's current economic situation, one might prefer that money be channeled into any number of other starving budgets, but a city this thick with nostalgia might just benefit from witnessing the restoration of a page of its ravaged history, and hopefully create a few new jobs in the process.
For now: Here it sits, waiting to come back to life.

UPDATE: $30 million was apparently not enough to save the stadium. The remaining grandstands are being torn down as we speak.