List the order that you miss Tiger Stadium, JLA, Silverdome, Palace of Auburn Hills
In honor of the remains of the Palace being imploded on Saturday, which of the 4 defunct sports facilities (or 5 if you’re old enough to remember the Olympia) Detroit do you miss most.
My order from most to least:
1. Palace: Died way too young. House where the Pistons took down the likes of Jordan, Bird, Magic, Shaq, Kobe, and should have been Tim Duncan (way to leave Horry wide open, Sheed). Revolution arena that Bill Davidson built to show his commitment to the franchise. First class facility in every respect unlike LCA which, IMHO, is a poorly designed, uninspired, obnoxious and tacky place whose sole function is to wring every every nickel out of the fan.
2. Tiger Stadium: Oozed character and history. Walking in and seeing the green field, blue and orange seats and the majestic light towers never stopped being moving. It’s a complete shame how Illitch just let it rot away at the end to increase his leverage for a new park. Could have invested in updating/renovating like the Red Sox and Cubs did but he wanted his park in Fox Town. Comerica Park is a nice enough venue to see a game at. Nothing I absolutely adore about the place, but nothing I find offensive about it.
3. Silverdome: Ford Field is clearly a superior facility in many ways and the best of the current Detroit sports places IMHO. The one thing it can’t beat the Silverdome on though is sheer jaw dropping scale. Outside and inside it was a place of massive proportions and I never stopped being awed by the size of it, especially with a crowd of 80,000 packed in. Would have been amazing to see and hear the place if the Lions had ever built a Super Bowl caliber team.
4.Joe Louis Arena: Never made it to the Olympia, sadly. Wasn’t originally a fan of JLA, but eventually it grew on me and developed a gritty charm and personality I came to admire. Seating was unparalleled in terms of putting you on top of the action and the energy of the crowd gave the Red Wings a huge home ice advantage (as the Avalanche found out the hard way). Was also a great place to watch college hockey. Even with the cramped seating, crowded concourse and ridiculous likes for concessions and restrooms, I’d still take it in a heartbeat over LCA.
RIP to the big four arena/stadiums: Isiah, Dumars, Laimbeer, Chauncey, Rip, Stevie Y, Lidstrom, Probert, Barry, Morris, Tram and Lou, the Bad Boys, Going to Work, the Roar of 84, the Brawl at the Joe, Malice at the Palace, Barry’s 2000 yard season, 4 World Series titles, 3 NBA titles, 4 Stanley Cup titles, and, well, the Lions........It was an amazing and exciting run.
In order:
1. Tiger Stadium
2. Tiger Stadium
3. Tiger Stadium
4. Joe Louis Arena
This right here, except replace your 4 with....
4. Tiger Stadium
5. Michigan & Trumbull
#6 Olympia
Pretty much how I feel too. Never liked the Silverdome, and the Palace was OK. Parking and traffic was a pain in the ass.
Tiger Stadium, JLA, Palace, Silverdome.
Tiger Stadium had that "Field of Dreams" atmosphere with all of the historical players that played there. (Just like Olympia.)
Silverdome was just a box. The residents of the Silverdome did not do anything to enhance the atmosphere.
1. Tiger Stadium
2. Tiger Stadium
3. Tiger Stadium
4. Tiger Stadium
Oops. Beat me to it.
The Silverdome was trash. Everything about it was deplorable. However, I'll never make such amazing memories with my dad and uncles again as I did in that giant parking lot of drunks. It will always hold a special place in my heart.
Honestly, I think all three current buildings are great.
I loved Tiger Stadium but Comerica is a great ballpark.
Joe Louis was a dump. It may of been our dump, but it was so so bad. If you are above 6 feet tall, you expected pain.
The Palace was great but the location was a joke. LCA is better based on location alone.
Silverdome has the same issue as the Palace, while not having the amenities.
Comerica a great ballpark? Ah, no. Camden Yards or whatever they are calling the park in San Francisco these days, those are great ballparks.
I do not miss JLA one bit. It lost its charm for me when guys were pissing in the sinks because there were not enough urinals.
Pittsburgh’s ballpark is also amazing.
Nats Park in DC is a very nice place to watch a game, as well... The new breed of baseball stadiums are generally nailing it! Camden Yards led the design charge, and it a great model.
Having been to (Oriole Park at) Camden Yards I get it that its nice, not sure what makes it heads and shoulders above CoPa. Other than the warehouse in right field, Oriole Park as a stadium feels a lot like the other turn of the century and later builds. I didn't leave that place feeling any different than I do after Tigers games. You could say the bar scene is probably more fun in the immediate vicinity. IDK, definitely a fun debate, though.
Out of the 11 parks I've been to, Seattle's was probably the coolest. Haven't been to Pitt or SF, though, but they seem great.
SF is magnificent. Even tough it doesn’t bother me personally, the main drawback is it does get very windy and cold during night games.
Sitting in the seats with a view of the bay, eating a plate of garlic fries, while watching the sun set is one of the most transcendent experiences I’ve ever had at a sports venue.
Current top echelon stadiums must include San Diego's Petco Park, if for no other reason than the 80+ craft beer selections. House pours include Elysian Space Dust. Enough said.
I feel like I'm having a picnic with friends at Comerica, and there just happens to be a baseball game being played nearby.
The place is just too expansive, the sightlines are awful in a number of sections due to the slow rise. Tiger stadium wasn't perfect, but it's like they decided to take what was great about tiger stadium and do the exact opposite with Comerica.
Counterpoint: LCA is garbage.
It was supposed to be this crowning achievement in sports arena design and it’s one of the most uninspired and tacky arenas I’ve ever been in, and I’ve seen quite a few.
Not only that, but it’s poorly designed. The lower concourse is nice, but the upper deck concourse is terrible. The upper deck seats are small and the sight lines are garbage and the whole place has all the ambiance of an airplane hangar. Even with the occasional full house they’ve had there, the crowd noise and energy is only a fraction of the Palace or JLA.
Plus it’s expensive garbage. It was a facility clearly designed to reward the big spenders and gives the lesser fans a vastly inferior experience, while still costing them an arm and a leg for it.
Not to mention the shitload of promises Illitch made to Detroit to use it as a hub to revitalize the area in exchange for sweet tax and land breaks. And all the family has done is keep the area around it as empty lots for parking
The fact that “It’s in Detroit” doesn’t make up for all of its shortcomings as a place to go to watch a game.
Being 6’ 3” was enough to drive me crazy at Joe Louis (and at the Big House for that matter). Joe Louis is impressive because it was horribly constructed and a dump from opening to close. I cannot recall another stadium that had you go up so many stairs to enter a building only for most customers to turnaround and go right back down more stairs to get to their seats.
Comerica sucks. The entire upper deck is a mile away from the action and a big chunk of the lower deck is blinded by the sun.
At Tiger Stadium you were much closer to the action, had a roof over your head and no sun issue. The only issue was that you might have one pole in your field of vision (and only if your seat was in the back half of your section).
Tiger Stadium was also more distinctive. No other stadium looked like it. It was like a big blue fortress. When I collected baseball cards, I could tell if the photo had been taken there. Comerica looks like every other ballpark built in the last 30 years - green seats, no upper deck in the outfield, view of the skyline, blah blah blah.
I'm like you, I don't miss any of them. I like shiny new things.
1 - Tiger Stadium
2 - The Palace
3 - Being hit by a car
4 - Pontiac Silverdome
5 - Hanging with Sparty
6 - JLA.
1) Tiger Stadium - Unparalleled. (And nothing else needs to be said.)
2) JLA - It's a legend across the entire hockey world...
3) Hazel Park - It was a friggen dump by any imagination, but the memories I have spending time there with my dad put it high on the list. Saw many a good race, and won/lost some memorable purses...
4) Silverdome - Walking in before the T-Day game against the Chiefs in 1981, one of the TV reporters had an armful of papers just outside one of the banks of main entrance doors. He was talking to the big NBC camera when someone behind him opened a door. Positive pressure... All of the papers blew out of his hands and he flailed to catch them while continuing to speak! One of the funniest random moments I've ever witnessed!
5) Whatever else...
The wind at the Silverdome! Insane!
I was at a Seahawks @ Lions game in 1996. The game that was ultimately Wayne Fontes' last win as Detroit head coach.
Anyway, Seattle's down 1, driving at the end. They're going to go for a last-minute field goal. The Lions call a time-out to freeze John Kasey. Many fans head toward the exits, and you could FEEL the wind gusting in the stadium.
So, the field goal. It looks good at first! But it takes a bizarre hook to the right and misses. Lions win!
I legitimately attribute that win to the Silverdome wind.
--------------
And, I found the video on YouTube!
Big Buck riding to victory on the shoulders of... Don Majikowski!
LOL - when I watched the video, my exact reaction was "THAT is a name I haven't heard for 20 years! I even forgot he was a Lion!"
My reaction? Barry!?
My other reaction? William Clay Ford ?
The Barry run in the video is a GREAT run ..... with him though, stuff like that was commonplace. Such a talent.
If there was a YouTube channel that showed nothing but 1990s-era PrimeTime clips, I might watch that 24/7.
Berman became a clown as the years moved on, but he and Tom Jackson are at the top of their game in that clip. In less than 2 minutes, he told the entire story of the game (Lamar Smith replacing Warren, Barry leading the Lions 2nd half comeback, replacement QBs for both teams, Wayne Fontes on the hot seat, nip-and-tuck game that went down to a last-second field goal), worked in 4 player nicknames, and did his "fumble fumble" bit.
And that was one of the garbage, low-profile games on that particular NFL Sunday. He did all that for a dozen games a week.
I was at this game. Was sitting lower bowl corner of end zone where that kick missed. From our seats we couldn’t quite tell by sight but the roar of the crowd gave it away quickly.
Other side note. Pregame in the parking lot there were people selling bootleg “Wayne Must Go” tshirts. They were white with cheap iron on big letters in black. Yep I bought one. Had it for a few years. Wish I still had it. Ahhh. Those were the days.
Getting blown out of the revolving doors was one of my Silverdome highlights as a kid.
I saw The Who at the Silverdome. 75 or 76ish. Only good thing I can say about it. Only time I was there though, to be fair.
Tiger Stadium
Joe
Silverdome
Palace
I wish we could normalize keeping venues around for more than thirty years. Stop getting fatter people! Or start building places with bleachers again.
But the irony is the Palace actually had BIGGER seats than LCA. The ones there, especially in the upper deck, are very cramped.
Tiger Stadium, JLA, Palace, Silverdome.
JLA was a bit "dumpy", but it did have very good sight lines. Appreciated that as a fan.
SIlverome was "dumpy", but by the end it was a dump in ALL ways.
Tiger Stadium
Joe Louis
Don't care about the Palace or the Silverdome. They were the locations of my first in person pro football and b-ball games. But they were a huge pain in the ass to get to from where I lived.
This. Tiger stadium was iconic and had so much history. The Joe, in all honesty, wasn’t that great. 1995-2008 made that arena great ... and having been to LCA a number of times, I wish they would have taken the money they spent on LCA and just massively upgraded The Joe. Saw Chili Peppers at The Joe right before it closed. It was awesome.
Never cared much for the Silverdome or the Palace, though those Pistons teams were great to watch.
Your order is good, except I'd flip JLA and the Silverdome, as JLA was at least very good for concerts while the Sliverdome was pretty bad (both from a getting there/leaving there standpoint, and from a concert experience standpoint, e.g., terrible acoustics).
I enjoyed Tiger Stadium (esp the views of the field), but it was a dump and need the Wrigley / Fenway treatment of getting $200-million plus in investment in order to be a reasonable facility from a fan enjoyment standpoint. The Palace was modern in every way when it closed; the only thing that sucked was geting there/getting home (infuriated me to no end that the entrace to I-75 S was always blocked off after games / concerts and you had to wind around on side roads for about 5 miles until you got onto Square Lake Rd).
I’ll always resent Illitch for not even considering a plan to do a renovation/modernization like they did with Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. Both of which have been smashing successes.
Not only that, but the way he just let the place rot away as a negotiation tactic for his precious Fox Town park, so much so that the last couple of seasons in Tiger Stadium were some of the worst conditions I’ve ever seen in a major sports facility, was total chickenshit and turned me off to the Tigers for years.
Can you describe a little more in detail about it being some of the worst conditions for a major sports facility? (I am asking as I am generally curious as I was just a little kid during Tiger Stadium's last year so I don't remember much from the few times I was there)
Clearly the guy has never been to the "Coliseum" in Oakland.
The last couple of years at Tiger Stadium it definitely felt like they were skimping on repairs/cleaning. The paint on the walls would be chipping off, there'd be burned-out lightbulbs in the concourses, that kind of thing. Once I sat in a seat that was only partially bolted into the ground, so it swiveled!
The concourses were very dirty and hot as hell. There had been some fans there before for air circulation, but most of them mysteriously disappeared around the mid 90s
Seats were not cleaned regularly and would often carry a residue of beer, food and whatever else had been spilled on them from previous games.
Far fewer ushers and security staff in its last few years. So much so that I stopped buying tickets for the bleachers because of the rise in fan behavior incidents where no ballpark personnel seemed to be around to intervene.
The lines for the concessions took forever, even when they weren’t that long, because of how understaffed they were.
The bathrooms routinely ran out of paper towels and toilet paper.
You could see paint flaking everywhere.
The girders that supported the upper deck were allowed to visibly turn to rust.
Lighting in the concourses and around the stadium at night was extremely poor with visible burned out bulbs that hadn’t been replaced.
There are other things I’m sure I’m forgetting.
Even though the city of Detroit owned the stadium, it was Illitch, when he felt like things weren’t moving quickly enough for his new Fox Town park, who threw around his weight to make Tiger Stadium seem like it was a filthy death trap that was going to collapse at any moment. It was a disgusting thing to do and is a huge black mark against him in my book.
I remember going to a game at TS is the late 90s and then a few days later going to Wrigley Field for the first time and the difference couldn’t have been more stark in terms of how they were run and maintained. And that was BEFORE Wrigley got $200 millions in renovations and updates.
You're talking about the Wrigley Field where concrete fell from the upper deck onto the seats below? The Wrigley Field that had black mold in concession areas?
I love Wrigley. Went to my first baseball games there with my father in the 60's. Us and a couple thousand others. But before the renovations It. Was. A. Dump.
And it was STILL a much nicer place to watch a game than Tiger Stadium was at the end.
At the very least the concourses were clean and well lit and the seats didn’t have crap all over them from weeks of prior games. Which was more than you could say for the last 4-5 seasons at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. That’s how far they let TS fall.
And, no, I’m not exaggerating. There have been journalists who have written pieces documenting how it was all a ploy by Mike Illitch and the city to deliberately neglect Tiger Stadium, to give it the appearance as a unsafe facility that desperately needed to be replaced, to help speed the new park’s plans along.
Stadium conditions turned you off from being a fan? That’s a new one.
So a thread where absolutely everyone is sharing their memories, experiences and memories in a fun and interesting fashion with no sniping or name calling, and you STILL have to go out of the way to be a snarky dick to me because you just can’t get me out of your head....Wow.
You know, you could try NOT being an obsessed asshole for one single day. You might find you like it.
I get what he's saying. We think of Ilitch in hindsight as a great owner but his first decade of ownership of the Tigers was rough. He wasn't spending much on the team, and definitely wasn't trying to keep up the stadium. Meanwhile, he was spending top dollar on the Wings. People were wondering why he bought the Tigers at all. Fortunately that changed later on.
Not entirely accurate. His ownership of the Wings took 7-8 years getting off the ground. Remember Head Coach Brad Park? Or singing five free agents one off season (Ray Stazak anyone?), having only Adam Oates work out and then trading Oates and his subsequent hall of fame career for a washed up Bernie Federko. And he did spend money on the Tigers. He signed Cecil Fielder to a $35 mil extension when that was a huge contract. Or Damian Easley (!) to a $26 million deal.
Tiger Stadium way more than the rest, and JLA only because fans would actually occupy their seats. As far as the Red Wings go, I miss Olympia much more than JLA. The old barn was a great, if not worn out, place to see hockey.
Back to Tiger Stadium, though: any time I drive to Detroit and go to Comerica or anywhere near Michigan and Trumbull, I make a pilgrimage to the former location of Tiger Stadium. Several years ago, I even grabbed a half-dozen bricks left from the rubble after demolition; they were inside the security fence out of arms-length but I found a discarded wood stake within reach and used it to pull the bricks closer where I could grab them.
Tiger Stadium is cherished for another more personal reason, though: I lost a long-term close friend back in 1990 who slid off the road one morning in Manitou Springs Colorado on the way to his job. Ricky was one of the biggest Tigers fans I've known, as were his brothers. With the blessings of Rick's fiancee and also his parents, Rick's siblings first attempted to get permission from the Tigers organization to spread his ashes on the field at Tiger Stadium but were politely declined.
They pressed on with their plan though, and the following season, Ricky's siblings got tickets for grandstand seats in the front row out in left-center field and carried out the plan anyway.
Ricky's ashes are now scattered wherever the dirt from Tiger Stadium's warning track currently is, but I still have a couple pictures his siblings took of themselves scattering their brother's ashes.
That is incredibly cool. What a great resting place.
After the stadium had been demolished, and the Navin Field group had devoted themselves to keeping The Corner from looking like a weed-choked back lot, I went down there with a couple of Tupperware dishes. I scooped up some dirt from the right-handed batters' box, and some more from the mound. I keep them in some glass bottles - my own souvenirs taken from where Greenberg, Kaline, DiMaggio, Lolich, Feller, and hundreds of others stood.
Tiger Stadium the most just because basically Fenway and Wrigley are the only stadiums left to get the "old stadium feel". Sad
Palace was very nice, but most of the workers there seemed to be pieces of shit.