During Saturday’s long rain delay at soggy and foggy Comerica Park, the big scoreboard in left field showed glimpses of the Michigan Wolverines down the road in misty Ann Arbor, defending their national college football championship.
Despite that visual stimulation, the baseball fans chanted “Let’s go, Tigers!” although the tarp remained on the field and the team had clinched its improbable playoff berth the night before. Some boisterous voices in the grandstands sounded still groggy from the celebration.
Across the street, on downtown’s near east side, Ford Field awaited Monday night’s nationally televised match between Seattle and the Lions, Super Bowl contenders who astonished the National Football League, the Motor City, and maybe even themselves last season by nearly reaching the title game.
Just up nearby Woodward Avenue at Little Caesars Arena, the Red Wings are about to start their season after giving local puck nuts a tingle last spring by almost reaching the postseason tournament for the first time since 2016.
And the Pistons? Following the worst season in franchise history and one of the worst ever in professional sports, they have yet another management team and hope for an upward bounce. After finishing 14-68, there is great need, much expectation, and, perhaps, peer pressure from fellow franchises, for improvement.
Overall — after roughly a decade of decay for its four pro teams — Motown fans finally have at least some teams over which to brag and swagger. At least for now, they hold their heads high in Comerica’s low-hanging clouds. And this romantic fling has not yet reached the honeymoon stage.
For a bedrock sports community with more than a century of joy and heartbreak, love and loss, this feels more like a first crush, a flirtation that might bloom into something more for a new generation of fans who either live here or in the national diaspora of the Great Lakes State.
Therefore, what’s old is new again in a town that derives a disproportionate percentage of its self-esteem from its sports teams. The current mood feels a little like Christmas morning with most of the presents still under the tree, still wrapped.
And what could possibly go wrong? Two recent Lions’ developments suggest that success sometimes brings problems not present when all four teams took turns occupying last place in their respective divisions, occasionally at the same time.
Overall — after roughly a decade of decay for its four pro teams — Motown fans finally have at least some teams over which to brag and swagger.
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For instance: It was reported that Lions’ coach Dan Campbell had to move his family to a new neighborhood because overzealous fans learned his home address and felt free to stop by for conversation and advice.
At the last Lions’ home game, a fist-fight at a post-game tailgate in Eastern Market escalated into a gun battle that left two men dead. For that reason, tailgating was forbidden in the market before Monday’s game. Sports excitement can draw mobs with violence on the fringes.
And success could increase the sale, consumption and spillage of alcoholic beverages among both fans and athletes. In Friday’s beer-and-Champagne celebration in the clubhouse — televised by Bally Sports Detroit — the young Tigers whooped it up like college kids at the first frat party of the fall semester.
Imagine if they win the three-game first round, the five-game second round, the seven-game third round, and, finally, the seven-game World Series. That would mean a total of five alcohol showers. These scenes used to occur only after the World Series with the winning team.
Now, with a 12-team October tournament and celebration even for clinching a berth, all this has become a bit excessive. But we must cut some slack for these young Tigers. Like the mid-1960s teams and the early 1980s teams, the core is a young group that came up together.
As Detroiters of a certain age will well remember, those groups won the World Series in 1968 and again in 1984, the last one 40 years ago, which is a long time to wait for another championship, despite two finals appearances earlier this century.
Compared to some cities, Detroit fans tend to be patient, less demanding toward ownership and management, and willing to tolerate one “rebuild” after another. They do take the long view. Not that this should matter much to this season’s bunch of guys in the “D” shirts.
They finished with a torrid fourth quarter behind the imaginative management of A.J. Hinch, the pitching of Tarik Skubal (and a cast of thousands), and the inspiration of the multi-talented Riley Greene, who hits, fields, and runs with aplomb and baseball smarts.
They are a team of dirty uniforms from daring base-running and head-first slides and near-collisions among aggressive infielders and outfielders, who need to learn to call louder for the ball before bigger, louder crowds. In many ways, this type of team brings out the cliches.
For instance:
They’re playing with house money; everything from now on is just gravy; they’re so inexperienced they don’t know enough to be nervous. Cliches get to be that way because they are rooted in truth. That’s what is happening here.
So let’s forewarn these young Tigers what winning leads to around here. That core ’68 group — Horton, Freehan, Stanley, Northrup, McLain, Lolich that grew up together — they are treated as secular saints of the city. Same goes for ’84 and Gibson, Petry, Rozema, Morris, Trammel, Parrish, and Whitaker.
From other sports, we elected as mayor the basketball star, Dave Bing. Across the Detroit River, builders are finishing a major, international bridge to Canada named after a Red Wings’ star, Gordie Howe. Across from City Hall is a giant “Fist” monument to the boxer, Joe Louis.
Down through the decades, tales of the Bad Boy Pistons and the Hockeytown Red Wings are passed from grandparents to parents to children.
Speaking of such things, one personal memory. When Detroit hosted the Super Bowl in 2006, one of my assignments was a historical story so I interviewed by telephone Joe Schmidt, the former Lions’ captain and linebacker who recently died.
Schmidt also coached the team. He is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Schmidt led the Lions in the 1950s, when they won three NFL championships in six seasons and the city of Detroit prospered among America’s top five populations.
In the youth of the Baby Boomers, Detroit had a trinity of sports heroes: Joe Schmidt of the Lions, Al Kaline of the Tigers, and Gordie Howe of the Red Wings.
At the end of our conversation, Schmidt said “Thanks for remembering me.”
I almost choked up. What would I say in response, “You’re welcome?” Of course I remembered Joe Schmidt! No Detroit sports fan in my generation will ever forget the great Joe Schmidt. But there is always a new generation.
So now you know, all you up-and-coming Tigers, Lions, Wings, and Pistons. Should you succeed even a little bit in your era, you will be treated as princes of the city while here. And if you ever win a championship, your name and legend will live on forever, even when you’re gone.
