The Brat Patrol

Today, the demolition of Tiger Stadium began. I’m no sports fan (apart from autosports), but I still feel the loss of this landmark… and part of my childhood.

Papa Thomas, my friend Joey’s grandfather, would sit on his front porch and listen to the Tigers game on his handheld AM radio. We would crowd around him and get the translation of Ernie Harwell’s play-by-play (we didn’t know a lot about the sport at the time). Papa was a diehard fan. On the hot summer nights most of the neighborhood could be found outside, on a porch, in a pool, or in each other’s driveways talking. In 1984, most of that talk was about our soon to be champion Tigers. When Joey flew in for the summer from California he proudly wore his Tigers ballcap. He was the first person I knew to have a fitted cap. Impressive. Tigers baseball was all I knew and Tiger Stadium was the Mecca of it all.

I went to my first ballgame at Tiger Stadium with my Dad and my cousin’s husband: Rich. I didn’t really know any of the players or what was going on. When everyone started cheering “Lou, Lou, Lou, Lou” for Lou Whittaker, I misheard them and joined in: “Boo, boo, boo, boo!” (I thought we were taunting the other team.) Rich and my Dad straightened that out pretty quickly. Rich tried to explain the scoresheet in the back of the program to me, but defaulted to just the simple score. The guy sitting in front of us figured out it was my first game and introduced himself as “Jose”… and told me that they start every game by singing to him: “Jose, can you see?…” I wonder how long he was saving that one… Rich passed away unexpectedly last year. I can count the number of times I visited Tiger Stadium on one hand. Yet, the only time I remember anything about was my first trip with Rich and my Dad.

Tiger Stadium had a genuine feel about it. I’ve only been to the new park (named after a bank that gave up on Michigan a few years ago…) two times. It’s big, impressive, and commercial. The view is a little better… even from the cheap seats… but it’s a sellout: designed to make families happy and sell watered-down beer and overpriced hotdogs.

Today we loose Tiger Stadium. We loose a legitimate part of Detroit history. We loose a landmark. One thing I (and many other Detroiters) will never loose are the memories of good times with our families and friends at Tiger Stadium.

_{(Sorry if I seem to be rambling with this update… I’m a bit out of sorts thinking about the stadium…)}

Every set ever made. I recognized more than my share of sets from my brother’s, cousin’s, friends’, and my collections.

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Balduck Park was the nearest public park to our neighborhood. During the summer, kites flew there and there was a “nature area (which we called “The Naych”) to hike and ride bikes, a hill provided some excitement and a few fields to play soccer, baseball, and football. My early memories of Balduck include an archery range, too, but I never had a chance to participate. Every 4th of July, the “big kids” would head over to the field at Balduck and launch the “good” fireworks into the sky. On the 5th, a group of us would pick over the scraps looking for cool shell casings and any remaining live fireworks. Usually, we would tape together the old casings of spent fireworks to resemble guns, swords, and rocket launchers.

The hill was a blast in the winter. We would go in small groups to sled down the hill. At one time, there were toboggan runs. They were great when iced over, but eventually grass grew in the cracks and they were removed. (Legend told of a little girl that wiped out on her sled and knocked all of her teeth out, but that was mostly local urban myth.)

Eventually, we outgrew playing war in the alleys and backyard bushes and moved to the Nature Area. We would have epic hunter/hunted battles. Days were spent building forts and traps throughout the single acre wooded lot. We mostly just sat there in our rigged-up base talking and eating lunch.

When were a little older (maybe between 12 and 16), we would venture to the Nature Area at night, dressed head to toe in military camouflage. Although it started as a chance to play “witch” (kind of like tag at night… more on that later) in the woods, it quickly evolved into “hey-let’s-scare-the-crap-out-of-drunk-highschool-kids.” Jocks and their prey would hang out at the picnic benches just outside of the Naych swigging on ill-gotten booze and ghetto-taxed beer. We found this practice despicable (at the time). So, what else was there to do other than shoot the drinks off of the table with BB guns and slingshots? Most of the time, this would send the offenders scattering, yelling all the way to their cars. (Balduck had a reputation as a dangerous place because a body was found behind the hill in the early 80’s.) Rarely, the letter-jacket wearing tough guys would venture into the woods to prove their manhood. Mistake.

By this point, the majority of us were 14, 15, and 16 years old. Some of us had a few years of high school wrestling experience and were in the best shape of our lives. The jocks would enter the Naych. 1 or 2 of the crew would then cover the entrance with a big branch of leaves. Then the biggest of the bunch would drop from the trees directly in front of them… dressed in full combat gear. Drunk and scared out of their minds, the Jocks would run back towards the entrance that no longer existed (once they figured it out and screamed “they’re trying to trap us… we’re going to die!”), freak out and turn around to run down a random path. At that point we usually uncovered the entrance and snuck around trying to find them without revealing our location. Awesome.

One time, however, they must have called the police, because Detroit’s finest showed up with a spotlight and some flashlights (on a night that we didn’t scare any drinkers). Although very scary, we managed to escape undetected. A huge rush, yes… but also pretty stupid. At around 6’ 2” and 180 lbs, I might have looked pretty scary dressed in camo, to both a jock and the cops.

As we grew older and spent more time at school or driving around with our newly earned licenses, we visited Balduck less and less often. I still remember that place very fondly. Every time I look out my window at the woods around our house, I think “hey, that would be a great place to build a fort and play witch.” Someday, I might do just that.

During our regular adventures, we discovered that the over-grown vegetation in the alley at the end of the block made a great place to set up a “base.” We put on our best camouflage outfits, hopped on our bikes, and drove right into the bushes. I’m sure a half dozen 7-10 year-olds dressed as a special forces unit riding brightly colored Schwinns wasn’t especially inconspicuous, but we thought we were just about on par with a ninja squad. We fashioned tunnels through bushes, made an area to hide our bikes, and formulated an escape plan in case we were discovered.

Occasionally, one of the neighborhood dogs on the other side of the alley fence would discover us, bark a bit, and then be on it’s way. The real excitement happened when the people who’s garages lined the other side of the alley started backing out. We tried our darnedest to keep from being discovered. Occasionally, we would be chased off because it was “too dangerous” in the alley. However, minutes later, we would be back, planning world domination one alley at a time.

Once of the great things about the BRAT Patrol was that each family had a different “attraction” at their house. Ryan had a fort built on 4 foot stilts, Mike and Ginny had a racetrack (initially for bikes, but later for RC cars) behind their garage… plus they hosted “Ghostbusters Central” in their garage, we had a pool, and Joe had a tree fort.

In the summer we would usually start the day with skateboarding or bike riding, then end up working on one of the forts or racetrack, then eventually cool off around mid-day in the pool. There was nothing quite like building a fort or digging a hole then jumping into the pool.

We al lived just a few doors from each other, all on the same block. That was our world. We rarely went “around the block”... especially when we were younger. It was the DMZ of the area. The overall area was better then. Not the stereotypical Detroit you hear about on the news.

Our neighbors were mostly police and firemen mixed with the average blue collar jobs in the auto industry and factories. We were all on the same schedule, starting with a 9:00 all clear to go outside and play…