Still a field of dreams

Read past Politics & Prejudices columns:

A great idea, but can it work?

What if Detroiters could enjoy their luxurious new ballpark and keep the old one, too? Within a few days, a serious – and possibly sensible – proposal will be made to let them do just that, though the powers and pretenders are apt to hate it. But first – you may not have noticed, but the Detroit Tigers began playing in a new stadium this month, which excited the dying daily newspapers (their marketing departments, actually) into great orgiastic displays of promotional hype.

Now, had the newspaper monopoly turned all decision-making powers over to me, as they naturally should have, I certainly would have put the new park’s grand opening on the front page, but in a way that indicated the world was still out there. Want a benchmark for how far journalistic standards have fallen – oops – changed? When what is now Tiger Stadium opened in 1912, it didn’t even make the front page. Why? Still too much news pouring in from the sinking of the Titanic, which, though Leo DiCaprio’s grandparents were not yet hatched, was seen by the editors as a bigger deal.

Incidentally, I went to the opening game at Comerica, and while the weather was bad, and the management’s mishandling of everything from crowd control to the concessions was worse than reported, the park is, indeed, splendid.

Yet old Tiger Stadium still stands in clear view from the upper portions of Comerica, eight blocks away, its forlorn light towers still rising over one of the most famous superstructures in baseball history. Two years from now, I have been predicting, it will be a vacant lot – or worse, a ghastly second Hudson building-style ruin.

Last fall, the city, which owns Tiger Stadium, was looking for bids on a vastly unrealistic proposal to turn the place into some palace of luxury condos and a sports center, etc. Hello? In a seedy sector of semiabandoned southwest Detroit?

To me, that said Detroit City Inc., a partially owned subsidiary of Ilitch Enterprises, wanted cover (hey, we tried, man) to tear it down after a decent interval. Yet there may be another option. What if the stadium was turned over to a consortium of local colleges, universities and neighborhood groups, which would take turns holding athletic events there? "That’s exactly what we propose to do," said John Kelly, the sometimes mercurial, sometimes brilliant former state senator, who is now on the Wayne State University board of governors. "We will announce formation of the Tiger Stadium Authority within days."

Originally, Kelly thought to capture the stadium for Wayne State, which is now on a drive to re-emphasize sports. But the school doesn’t play enough baseball and football games to make that work. "But if you add in University of Detroit Mercy, Wayne County Community College, and perhaps U of M Dearborn," he says it makes much more sense. Under his proposal, every participating school would have a seat on the stadium authority, as would the Corktown neighborhood association. What about the costs of upkeep, etc.? Kelly notes there was a 50 cents-per-ticket surcharge for years for ballpark maintenance – and says there is at least $13 million in a fund available for the purpose, which would last a good long time. "The Tiger Stadium Authority will ask the city to turn the stadium over to us, but I don’t expect them to," said Kelly. Why? He thinks the Detroit Tigers fear someone might bring in a minor-league team to play there, and drain support from the not-very-good major league club, especially if ticket prices are far less.

Yet there is a way around their opposition: Kelly intends to try and get a proposal on the November ballot asking voters to let his Tiger Stadium Authority have the ballpark. Since you need fewer than 8,000 signatures to get something on the city ballot, that may well be doable – and force Dennis Archer to scramble for cover.

Personally, I don’t know how workable this all is, but it is strongly appealing. It might make more sense to remove part of the cavernous, seldom-used outfield seats and shrink the ballpark back to its 24,000 seat, Navin Field boundaries.

But the thought of this baseball shrine getting another life as a home to city amateur and college sports has to be enormously appealing. So much so that – even if it cost the city – it should be well worth at least a serious look by the voters who happily gave the Tigers $100 million or so toward the cost of their new playpen.

Then again, perhaps you think we’re in greater need of another abandoned ruin.

OK, so maybe we do need the death penalty: Consider, gentle reader, a human maggot, one Dr. Donald S. Dreyfuss of Bloomfield Hills. According to Sunday’s Oakland Press, this nursing homeowning parasite has pleaded guilty to mail fraud and receiving kickbacks after stealing vast amounts from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicare and Medicaid. (He’s agreed to pay back $516,000.) Nurses said he seldom saw patients at all, though when filing his fees he sometimes claimed to have seen 100 a day. Yet when Dreyfuss is sentenced sometime soon, he may get off with probation.

Another selfless healer, Dr. Raymond Weitzman of West Bloomfield, will go on trial soon; prosecutors say he stole even more money. The pious medical ethics hypocrites loved to loudly denounce ol’ Jack Kevorkian. Where are they now?

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for the Metro Times. You can write Jack Lessenberry c/o this paper or via e-mail.