Time, Inc has a new cross-publication, multi-article assignment on Detroit. I’m only through reading the Sports Illustrated articles, but here are some quotes and links to all the rest I could find thus far:
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When you come downtown only for a show or a game or a $9.95 filet mignon at The Detroit Pub, you can get fooled into thinking that things aren’t so bad here. It’s like going to New Orleans and never leaving the French Quarter. “The seats are full, the restaurants are full, and you start wondering if it’s really not as bad as everyone makes it sound,” Granderson says.
Major leaguers can escape most financial realities, but over the winter the Tigers held an auction for their foundation at the Motor City Casino and offered fans a chance to buy blocks of time with Verlander, Leyland and Carlos Guillen. “That’s when it sunk in,” Granderson says. “Nobody was bidding. It was really awkward. Players had to bid on each other to get the price up to $5,000.” One item up for auction was a painting of Granderson and Ordoñez. Miguel Cabrera, the Tigers’ $152 million first baseman, ended up with the winning bid.
Granderson thought the climate might be improving this summer, when his foundation held a wine tasting and auction at Big Rock Chophouse in the upscale suburb of Birmingham. With prodding from a few Tigers, a woman paid $12,000 so her son could take Cabrera and Guillen to school for a day. Granderson’s mother, Mary, was in Detroit for the event, staying at the Greektown Casino Hotel. Granderson walked to the hotel after a game one night and was overjoyed to see the streets abuzz. Then he took the elevator up to his mother’s room on the 27th floor and looked out her window. “I didn’t see a single light on in any of the other buildings,” Granderson says. “It was depressing.”
If he can imagine, 42 years ago it was worse. In July 1967, local police raided an after-hours drinking club in northwest Detroit, igniting a smoldering discontent into five days of rioting and looting. Forty-three people died, 1,189 were injured and more than 7,000 were arrested. After a doubleheader, outfielder Willie Horton drove to 12th Street in full uniform, hopped on top of his car and, with fires raging around him, pleaded for peace. A year later the Tigers won the World Series. “For us, it was all about overcoming the riots,” says Al Kaline, star of the ‘68 World Series, and now a special assistant with Horton in the front office. “Today, it’s about the loss of jobs. We can’t get anybody a job, but we can give them something good to watch on TV and read about in the papers.”
Michigan State’s basketball team made it to the national title game in Detroit in April but lost. The Red Wings made it to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in June but also lost. Leyland knows what a championship would do for the locals. He grew up 70 miles south in Perrysburg, Ohio, and his gray mustache and gravelly voice would fit as well on an assembly line as they do in a dugout. “We have to be careful because we make a lot of money and these people have lost jobs and homes,” Leyland says. “I know what that money means. I know how much it costs for that ticket and beer and hot dog. It’s tough for these people. You can tell. You can feel it.”
Sports Illustrated Assignment Detroit
