Detroit Tigers Baseball
The Detroit Tigers came into existence in 1901. The Tigers played their first game as a major league team in the American League in April 1901 led by the legendary Ty Cobb. Detroit won three AL pennants in the early 1900s. The city was at first an indifferent baseball town; AL president Ban Johnson considered moving the Detroit team to Pittsburgh in 1903. But the NL blocked the move.
There are various legends about how the Tigers got their nickname. One has to do with the orange stripes they wore on their black stockings. It is the only team to wear a symbol of their nickname on their uniform.
The Detroit Tigers won their first World Series in 1935. In 1940, major league baseball Commissioner Landis awarded free agency to 91 Tigers players, ruling that general manager Jack Zeller had violated baseball's working agreement with the minor leagues by making secret deals with players on different teams in the same leagues.
In 1984, the team started out at a record 35-5 pace and finished with a franchise-record 104 victories. Pitchers Jack Morris and Dan Petry anchored the pitching staff, and relief pitcher Willie Hernandez won both the Cy Young Award and the MVP award. They claimed the World Series over the San Diego Padres.
The Tigers last winning season came in 1993, and only twice since then have they even finished within 5 games of .500 (1997 and 2000). The Tigers lost 109 games in 1996 and 119 in 2003.
Comerica Park
Tiger Stadium opened in 1912, the same day Boston opened Fenway Park, but baseball had been played on the site since 1896, five years before the Tigers or the American League existed. The stadiums best seats puts fans as close to the action as any ballpark in the league.
Babe Ruth hit his 700th career homer here on July 13, 1934 before there was an upper deck. The ball cleared the right-field stands and rolled several hundred feet down a street. Eight years earlier he had paid $20 to a youngster who retrieved one of his home run balls, which had rolled more than 800 feet from home plate.
The field is state-of-the-art. Comerica Park is a combination ballpark, theme park and baseball museum. It contains a ferris wheel, carousel and a mammoth water feature in center field that can be choreographed to any music. Comerica Park appears rooted at the center of an urban village, a village that includes shops, restaurants, offices, and other attractions. And with no upper deck outfield seats, no ballpark offers a better view of a downtown skyline than Comerica Park.