Tiger Stadium / The Corner

For 88 summers, the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in Corktown was Detroit baseball. Navin Field opened here on April 20, 1912 — the same day as Boston’s Fenway Park, five days after the Titanic sank — and grew into Briggs Stadium and then Tiger Stadium, the beloved double-decked ballpark where Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline, and a century of Tigers played. The Lions called it home too, for decades.

The Tigers left for Comerica Park in 2000, and after years of fighting over its fate, the old stadium was demolished by 2009. Here’s the part that gives us chills: a band of volunteers calling themselves the Navin Field Grounds Crew snuck onto the abandoned lot and mowed and tended the actual playing field — for years, without permission — until it was finally saved. Today it’s the Corner Ballpark (the Willie Horton Field of Dreams), home to Detroit PAL youth baseball, with Tiger Stadium’s original flagpole still standing in center. You can walk in and stand on the same ground. The grandstands are gone; the diamond endures.