Old Tiger Stadium and playing ball without clothes.

Last week I had all intentions of attending the Saturday figure drawing session at the Scarab Club in Detroit. I packed up the car with my gear, made the twenty-minute drive, and when I arrived no one was there at the club. I rang the doorbell, called, and still no reply, so I decided to go and take a look and shoot some pics of Tiger Stadium before it is demolished. The Tigers now play in downtown Detroit at a new ballpark (Comerica Park) that is more like a theme park than ballpark. I am not complaining, it is a nice ballpark, and I have enjoyed taking my family to see the games, but it seems to lack the energy that a place like Tiger Stadium has. Tiger stadium is one of the oldest ballparks around, and was (correct me if I am wrong….) built only a year or two after Fenway Park in Boston. A who’s who of ballplayers has been through that stadium, and the last time the Tigers played there was the 1999-2000 season (again correct me if I am wrong…).

I guess I made the effort to go and see the half demolished park because a friend of mine told me that the unique sports merchandise shop next to the park was gone. Thank goodness it wasn’t. In fact while I was there talking with the shop owner, Ernie Harwell’s lawyer stopped by. Ernie Harwell is the famous broadcaster of many o’ Tiger game in the past, and he is leading the charge to preserve a part of the ballpark as a museum. He has been successful and was able to get senator Levin to pony up some federal money, and has bought time for those who are raising the needed money to preserve the historic portion of the park that is on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull avenues.

This shop is the place is where I got my felt 1935 replica Tigers hat that fits so nicely. They also have other replica hats, and it is where I bought my 1964 San Francisco Giants cap. This shop is amazing, and it is the kind of shop one will never find in a modern ballpark. It is the kind of shop that Detroit fans out there in the vast WWW need to show some love to. Check out Detroit Athletic Co. here.

With all of this baseball talk, I wanted to share some of the earlier rough sketches from my children’s book. These sketches went along with the following text-

“If you went to school naked, could you play ball? Steal second base? NO, not at all!”

One of these early sketches I had the character sliding into the base on his belly, but what I hadn’t considered is just how painful that would be for a lil’ dude if he were naked. It had my designers and editor wincing. So I thought that I would have him hitting it out of the park, but it wasn’t as interesting. I then had him with his eyes closed, wincing in pain, and sliding into second on his back. Well, we all decided on him sliding in on his side with his eyes wide open from the shock and pain…