Neal Rubin

Grab your glove and say goodbye

The farther you get up Trumbull from Michigan Avenue, the more you can see of what little is left.

There's a chain-link fence around Tiger Stadium, and there's a burlap-like vinyl sheeting attached to the inside of the chain link. The sheeting is green, and staring through it is like looking at an old, grainy photograph through one of the empty bottles of cheap liquor along the sidewalk.

There's a decent gap across from the light pole in front of the Checker cab garage, though, and another one 3 inches wide across from the blue letter drop, and a foot-wide oval at eye level across from the gate at Brooks Lumber.

Head farther north toward the Interstate 75 service drive and you'll find some even better viewing spots, unless they've already been patched. Press yourself close to the fence and you'll see whatever you expect to: an assault on tradition and history, if you're Bob Livernois of Sterling Heights, or if it suits you, progress.

Livernois, 41, and his two bandmates in a group called the Shy are organizers of the Official Tiger Stadium Going Away Party on Friday night at Nemo's, a block east of the ballpark on Michigan. There's nothing truly official about it, but that's fine, because this way there won't be anybody trying to sell the nostalgia of the place they're hauling away in trucks.

It'll just be music, burgers and beer, and maybe some quick jaunts to the Corner to look for ghosts.

Dugout to dugout, there's still a ballpark. Everything else is down, if not yet hauled away. The Tiger Court food and beverage area is a mound of rubble. A long piece of something unidentifiable rests on the foul ball netting behind the plate.

Where the grandstands now end, barely past the bases, cross-sections of girders hover exposed over the seatless lower deck. The long-necked machine that chewed away the steel and concrete was almost surgically precise. We may not be all that gifted when it comes to getting things done, but we are masters at knocking things down.

A stadium serenade

By day, Livernois serves as superintendent of the Warren Consolidated School System. By night, he sings backup and plays bass guitar.

The week the demolition crew set to work, he, drummer Mike Sackey and lead singer and guitar player Larry Decker shot a video outside the ballpark for an original song with a familiar title, "Somebody to Love." To see inside the stadium, they stood atop a van.

The song has had a few thousand views at YouTube, which might not make them the official bards of Tiger Stadium but doesn't disqualify them, either. It struck them one day that with even its limited future uncertain, the ballpark deserved a sendoff.

"When we first set all this up," Livernois says, "we were hoping it would be a tight race for the Tigers into the playoffs." With the Tigers sinking listlessly toward the bottom of their division, "our focus has shifted slightly."

Now they'll try to provide an antidote to what's going on at both Comerica Park and the stadium it replaced. There's no cover charge, but preservation groups wouldn't mind a $10 donation. The first note will sound around 9:30 p.m., as the Tigers wind up their game against Tampa Bay.

Nothing's for sure

Tiger Stadium remains in limbo, the same place it's been since it closed in 1999.

Preservationists say they hope to keep what's left as a museum and amateur baseball field. They have until Nov. 1 to put together a financial plan and until March 1 to show the Detroit City Council the money.

They say they're making progress, but they're counting on a $4-million federal earmark, and Congress is a trifle busy these days bailing out the Wall Street executives who make that much in a year.

Livernois doesn't want to think of Friday night as the ballpark's last, muted hurrah, but you never know.

"I'm really curious," he says, to see whether the party will move spontaneously toward the park. He has a vision of a sort of movie scene, with people lighting candles outside the chain link fence.

They might not be able to see much, but then again, they might be able to see 1968.

Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.