Posted on 04/04/2009 5:01:10 AM PDT by Scanian
As Opening Day of the 2009 baseball season is tomorrow, it is fitting to note that no image better illustrates where our once-great nation is heading and why than the decrepit, half-standing former home of the Detroit Tigers, where a Major League Baseball game has not been played in nearly nine years.
To look at Tiger Stadium now -- if one can bear it -- is to imagine the scene in London the day after a visit from the Luftwaffe. Twisted steel mingles with rotting wood over a field of barren grass, overlooked by ancient plastic seats and long-decayed dugouts. Tiger Stadium is the newest of what has come to be known as the "Ruins of Detroit," once-grand buildings of gleaming majesty that, because of the corruption, incompetence, and ambivalence of our "leaders" blot the cityscape on most every corner of town.
For those of us who knew it, Tiger Stadium will forever hold a special place in our hearts. Standing like a colossus on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in the Corktown neighborhood, it is where Ty Cobb planted spikes into the abdomens of quaking shortstops; where Hank Greenberg regularly deposited anti-Semitism in the left field seats; where Al Kaline patrolled right field with aplomb. As it can be said in countless major league cities, it is where Detroit and Michigan fathers and sons walked hand-in-hand in its dank, narrow corridors and gaped breathlessly at the expanse of green in the middle of the city when emerging from the shadows.
Tiger Stadium - then Navin Field - was constructed in 1912 and the Tigers played baseball there until 1999, in favor of a brand-new stadium downtown built with the all-too-familiar combination of corporate donations and taxpayer funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
and there it is. 3rd world America, today.
We are complicit in that we elected these liberal pansies who have wrecked our nation, our lives and our finances!
Not doubting at all the wisdom of Briggs Stadium to be demolished, but I still get a bit misty eyed whenever one of the classic ballfields comes down.
I never went there, but I loved seeing it when the Yanks visited and I could see it on TV. And to me the essence of pro football were the Thanksgiving Day games played in Detroit vs the Packers.
If you’re interested there’s a great youtube of a homemovie taken in Briggs Stadium. It’s with the Yanks..Mantle hits two..Kaline hits one.
Type in Yankees vs Tigers August 4 1956
Yes, by all means preserve old Tiger Stadium.
It would be a ghost, a symbol to an age that is gone.
Let it tell the story of a country that turned its back on the ideas that made it great.
I was born and raised in Detroit; live in Grand Rapids now. The last time I was back there I drove through my old neighborhood (8Mile/Gratiot). It looks like Berlin, 1945. There’s still a few hanging on because they can’t afford to move...and no one will buy their home.
People live behind bars and multi-locks. Criminals have their rights, though. Their right to walk the streets and terrorize others. The rest live in their self-inflicted prisons.
How did we get here?
LBJ’s Great Society was the start. Now Obama will try more of the same.
In the 1960s it became “racist” to arrest black criminals...there is where it really started. Jon Nickols, head of the Detroit Police Department started STRESS: Stop Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets...the Free Press and other liberals hooted it down...so many left...others moved into their own prisons. It was “racist” to stop crime before it happened...how DID we get here? Sloppy thinking...and acting on emotions. What a price we have paid.
Ping.
I am still trying to understand why Kennedy Stadium in Washington is still standing.
They built a new stadium, but you still have to park at the old one and take a shuttle to the new one.
In the 1960s it became “racist” to arrest black criminals...
In many places, it still is considered racist to arrest people of color....
......unless these people of color are committing a crime in a holier than holy liberal enclave.
Deeetroit was
Welcome to UAW Town, trying to come near yours.
I miss Tiger Stadium.
It was considered one of the three best baseball stadiums in its day.
Even then, though, you got off the freeway and into the park.
Immediately following the game, you got back onto the freeway and headed back to the suburbs.
The war zone that is Detroit is not friendly place after dusk.
Maybe a catchier name for the city would help—say, “Northwest Zimbabwe”.......
Sorry, I don’t excuse the GOP either...both parties have been protrade-unfair trade which has crippled our auto industry...you know that the Japanese pay their companies 15% rebate for every car sold in America? This is in addition to providing these companies with much manufacturing support as well...they put a 15% VAT on American auto’s in Japan...and all administrations have gone along with this...from Bush I to Clinton to Bush II...and it appears Obama. Korea sold ten time more cars here than we did in Korea...8000 vs 800,000. Time for balanced trade...you get what you give in terms of trade...VAT taxes for the US then Vat taxes for you...it’s only fair. If something is not done, we will become a country with a permanent underclass and need massive social programs to deal with this situation. Free trade as practiced today will lead directly to socialism...do not pass go and do not collect your $200.00.
We have our own ‘Luftwaffe’ except that now it is called the Democrat/Socialist/Communist party and will eventually be shot down just like its namesake!
Nope. The car industry is going the same way as the steel industry. And the filthy unions are the root cause. People try to blame it on poor management, unfair trade practices and so on, but those are only factors that make it worse.
Free trade does not work when a union removes wages and benefit from market forces and your evil capitalistic car company has to pay extorted and unrealistic wages of $80,000 to a guy with no other qualifications than being able to put on safety glasses and work a screwdriver.
When I was a kid, there was always a newspaper delivered to our home (remember newspaper delivery?) and it was expected that I’d read to know what was going on in the country/world.
Over the years there seemed to be an almost CONSTANT headline, year after year after year.
“Coal Miner Union closes all mines. John L Lewis”
“United Steel Workers shut down steel plants in nation”
“UAW shuts down (fill in your choice of company)
“IBEW shuts down electrical goods plants”
“ILGW Union shuts down clothing companies”
“Shoe workers strike shoe making factories”
“Shipyard Union strike for .......”
“Teamsters strike trucking companies”
“Railroad Unions halt nations’ railroads”
It occurs that the MORE frequent certain names were headlined, the further they and their industries have sunk.
It also occurs that the ONLY!!! unions that still have any strength are those whose services and labor CANNOT be obtain elsewhere...teachers, truck drivers, hotel workers on site etc.
Oh, I forgot one headline...
“Printer’s union shuts down NEWSPAPERS”
Interesting.
You are deluded...as for steel, auto’s...do you think an America without industry will ever by as prosperous?...one happy note is that you will get yours in the end...this process will continue until this country is a third world hell hole; all those who salivate at the prospect of an America without any industry will have to live with what they have done as will their kids too...We may be invaded because we won’t be able to build our own weapons...what a tool of the corporatist you are...truly their version of a useful idiot. Well get ready for much socialism because this is where it’s heading. The only thing that ever stood between us and socialism was good paying jobs with benefits and the soon to be destroyed middle class.
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