Tiger Stadium Quotes

I flew to Detroit and reported to Local 299 on Trumbull Avenue. That was Jimmy’s home local. It was down the street from Tiger Stadium.

Alex stood near Tiger Stadium. It was closed down now and abandoned, a ghost of itself. Alex loved baseball and lamented the new stadiums and their corporate sponsors. Who wanted to watch the almost spiritual game of baseball in a park named after a goddamned financial institution?

Bagpipe Music' It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw, All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow. Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python, Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison. John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa, Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker, Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey, Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty. It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky, All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi. Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather, Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna. It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture, All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture. The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober, Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over. Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion, Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'. It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh, All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby. Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage, Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage. His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish, Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish. It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible, All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle. It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium, It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums, It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections, Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension. It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit. The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever, But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Assumption, with its revolving chief priests, each sent to us via the Patriarchate in Constantinople, each arriving in the full beard of his authority, the embroidered vestments of his sanctity, but each wearying after a time—six months was the rule—because of the squabbling of the congregation, the personal attacks on the way he sang, the constant need to shush the parishioners who treated the church like the bleachers at Tiger Stadium, and, finally, the effort of delivering a sermon each week twice, first in Greek and then again in English. Assumption, with its spirited coffee hours, its bad foundation and roof leaks, its strenuous ethnic festivals, its catechism classes where our heritage was briefly kept alive in us before being allowed to die in the great diaspora.

we don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context. Because violence in the right context is different. We pay good money to watch it in a stadium, we teach our kids to fight back, we feel proud when, in creaky middle age, we manage a dirty hip-check in a weekend basketball game. Our conversations are filled with military metaphors—we rally the troops after our ideas get shot down. Our sports teams’ names celebrate violence—Warriors, Vikings, Lions, Tigers, and Bears.

This is a central point of this book—we don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context. Because violence in the right context is different. We pay good money to watch it in a stadium, we teach our kids to fight back, we feel proud when, in creaky middle age, we manage a dirty hip-check in a weekend basketball game. Our conversations are filled with military metaphors—we rally the troops after our ideas get shot down. Our sports teams’ names celebrate violence—Warriors, Vikings, Lions, Tigers, and Bears.

In May of 2010, the newest pitching phenom, Stephen Strasburg, played a minor league game in Syracuse. A huge crowd turned out, the largest in the history of the stadium. The game was broadcast on regional television. Gazing over the enormous crowd, the play-by-play man asked his partner on the air if he had ever seen a pitcher draw such a crowd all by himself. The color commentator, ex-Detroit Tiger pitcher Steve Grilli, answered without hesitation, “Yea, Mark ‘The Bird’ Fidrych—every time he went out.