Recreation Park

Long before the Tigers, this was where Detroit baseball was born — and where the city won its first world championship. Recreation Park opened at Brush and Brady streets in 1879 as Detroit’s first enclosed ballyard, and from 1881 it was home to the Detroit Wolverines of the National League.

In 1887, stacked with future Hall of Famers like slugging first baseman Dan Brouthers and beloved catcher Charlie Bennett, the Wolverines won the NL pennant and then beat the St. Louis Browns in a sprawling 15-game, cross-country “World’s Championship Series” — Detroit’s first baseball title. The park was demolished in 1894, and the site is now part of the Detroit Medical Center. But its DNA runs straight through the city’s baseball story: that same Charlie Bennett later lent his name to Bennett Park, the ballpark that grew into Navin Field, Briggs Stadium, and finally Tiger Stadium. Every Tigers summer traces back to this corner.