"Let It Go"

 

Tiger Stadium, Detroit

I belong to a bunch of groups on the evil site known as Facebook.

I just got invited into the "official" Paul McCartney fan page, which is apparently run by Sir Paul's MPL, which is his publishing company.

Of course, I'm a moderator in the Play-by-Play group (accept no substitutes!).

Plus I'm in several baseball and sports groups where people -- each one knows more than the other! -- moan, complain, and try to outdo each other with their knowledge.

Look, I realize I have a lot of useless info in my brain and sometimes I get to share that knowledge. But there comes a point where it goes from simply being useful to playing trivial to being a know-it-all jackwagon.

I digress.

So I'm looking at one of the groups this morning as I was working when I saw a meme dedicated to old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The facility, also known as times as Navin Field and Briggs Stadium, last hosted the Detroit Tigers baseball team in 1999. After being used for other events, including filming for the movie 61*, the stadium was torn down beginning in 2008.

To the credit of the people who cared about it, the site has been preserved, initially as a baseball field by a group called The Navin Field Grounds Crew. It has since been taken over by the Detroit Police Athletic League (PAL), which has built headquarters, installed a turf field, and turned it into a very small stadium called The Corner Ballpark. 

The site -- at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, hence the nickname -- is sacred to those who loved it. It holds a special place in the history of Detroit.

Thus, the meme. And, thus, a comment from a know-it-all with too much to say whose last line of his thought was "let it go." You know, the stadium is gone. Get over it.

This is where there is another line. It's the line between living in the past and missing something that was so special while recognizing progress.

There are those who think Tiger Stadium could have been renovated and saved, a la Fenway Park and Wrigley Field.

You can obviously see where this is going: the corner of E. 161st Street and River Ave. in The Bronx. Post number one here back in 2006 was on the groundbreaking for the new Yankee Stadium.

Home

While I don't hate the new stadium and appreciate the many amenities it's just simply not the same. I don't think it's the "cold and sterile mall" that it is described as. It replaced an iconic venue. It replaced something that I felt was "home" to me.

I got to see the 1923 stadium as a very little boy and spent many nights in the refurbished 1976 building. I loved them both. I hold them both sacred. I wish we still had that.

While a shiny new building stands across E. 161st St, a soulless patch of land sits with a couple of baseball fields and small acknowledgments to arguably the most famous building in sports.

The tearing down of old Yankee Stadium was the very definition of greed. People begged for the City of New York to leave one gate up, which was the 1923 architecture.

So, no, I won't "let it go" and I don't think it's up to this guy (or anyone else) to tell me that. The key is to not obsess over it. I get that it's very much in the past but the doesn't mean I or anyone else should have to stop telling the stories and evoking the memories that stand so strongly in our own personal halls of fame.

I saw two games with my father in the original Yankee Stadium. I saw my favorite player there. I saw my favorite broadcaster there. I saw Jim Abbott pitch a no-hitter and Tino Martinez hit a World Series grand slam and Scott Brosius cap a Series rally and a title be won. All there. All on that site, be it the original or the refurbished.

I took my own son to his first game there. I laughed with family and friends as we cheered the Bombers on. I made lifelong friends there.

I sat through rain delays and a power outage. I also got to be a reporter there, walking on the famed field and visiting the clubhouse. 

Let it go? No. Not at all.

It's too important to me.

This occupies the site of Tiger Stadium

Where The Corner of Michigan and Trumbull has something organized and, apparently, nice, the old site of Yankee Stadium isn't exactly heaven. With a little care, the hurt of many could have been abated slightly. At one time, there was talk of leaving a small shell of the old stadium standing so that it, too, could be a PAL type of ballpark. That didn't happen.

I realize there are politics and lots of red tape embedded within this but I'd like to believe there could be some way to put some pride back into the land.

Alas, I'm supposed to, you know, let it go, amirite?

No.

There are those who, of course, still hold tightly to Ebbets Field and even Shea Stadium. Outside of New York, there are myriad other examples, from Crosley Stadium in Cincinnati to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and the Boston Garden. The reasons are tinged with nostalgia and progress be damned.

The shiny new place doesn't always work out. I can speak lovingly of the 2009 Yankee Stadium but it doesn't remotely hold sound the way to old building did. Twenty thousand could roar and that sound would reverberate to be heard anywhere. The new stadium simply isn't like that.

We move forward. Yes. We honor the past. Both can be true.

So comes the meme about Tiger Stadium. The simplest thing for the commenter du jour is simply, well, let it go. Like, don't comment on it. Ignore it. I'm a pro at that!

I get eye-rolling at beating the dead horse. I see it every day.

Every.

Freaking. 

Day.

But I ignore it or I send it mockingly to someone else, thus allowing me to have my say without looking like a know-it-all saying "let it go."

Leave that to Elsa from Frozen.