Again, I know my blog posts have been few and far between this season. I have no real good reason for this, to be honest. I've been working a lot, and most days I don't necessarily have the creative spark needed to type up a post of any sort. But I have noticed a trend these past few days, and that's the shared identity between Detroit and its sports teams.
As I watched the Tigers today thank the fans by literally giving selected ones the shirts off of their backs, I looked out over to left field, at the Monument Wall. Motion statues depicting Tigers legends make their homes out there, with the names and numbers plastered on the wall underneath. My gaze stopped on Willie Horton and Al Kaline, two surviving Tigers greats who are still involved with the organization to this day, and I thought about what they mean to the franchise and the city of Detroit. Honestly, these two men are part of the reason that I've always been proud to say that I'm from the City of Detroit (not the suburbs, born INSIDE the City limits), and they're part of the reason that I've fought to return to Detroit, and part of the reason that I grew up feeling alone in Atlanta.
In 1968, Kaline and Horton, along with Mickey Lolich and Denny McLain, led the Tigers to a World Series championship. But just a year prior, in mid July of 1967, Willie Horton finished a game, drove a few miles to the site of the Detroit riots and stood on his car, in his Tigers uniform, and pleaded with residents to stop the mobscene. These riots did horrendous things to racial tensions in the city, and caused a lot of people to turn their back on Detroit permanently. My own grandfather was a worker for Ford Motor Company, and to this day, hates when I talk about Detroit. It doesn't matter that I've gotten so many more chances to be something in life when I've lived here, all he sees in his mind are the black people that ruined things for everyone. It's very sad, and it's something I know I'll never be able to get him to forget and forgive. Maybe it's part of the reason he still has a hard time being around me, I don't know.
The 1967 riots were horrible, yes. But the 1968 championship served to help bond Detroiters once again. For a short time, there were no black and white people, there were only Tigers fans cheering their team on to the title. It was their assumed identity.
I see that the city is hurting. The former mayor is in jail for embezzlement and other charges, there are deserted buildings in downtown that look like they could fall at any moment, and the emergency manager is struggling to find the money to turn street lights back on and properly fund fire departments throughout the city. But there's hope. Because of the sports teams, portions of the city are being revitalized. A new hockey arena is about to be built just a few blocks away from where Comerica Park and Ford Field currently reside. Businesses are springing up in the city, Fortune 500 CEOs are relocating offices downtown. And it's the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions who are helping to rebuild the city and its image.
I look at Cleveland, which is supposedly more vibrant, more liveable than Detroit. And then I see that for their baseball team, the Indians, who are chasing a wild-card spot in the playoffs, they can barely managed to draw 12,500 people some nights? I really start to wonder if this is just more Detroit-bashing in the media, and I can't help but be offended. Maybe it's because I see 37,000 - 42,000 on a nightly basis walking through our turnstiles... or maybe it's because I'm from Detroit and those claims are an attack on me, on my identity.
