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OUT OF THE BALLPARK: In 'Stranded at the Corner,' documentary filmmaker Gary Glaser shows what fans have been doing to save Tiger Stadium -- and what others haven't

April 23, 2006

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BY JOHN MONAGHAN

FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

RIGHT: Comedian Thom Sharp riffs on the sorry state of maintenance at Tiger Stadium in the film. A Ty Cobb plaque used to be in the background. Filming him is director Gary Glaser, a former Detroiter who now lives in Kalamazoo. Glaser hopes his film persuades the powers that be that something useful can be done with the ballpark. (RACHEL SCHOENBART)

'Stranded at the Corner'

Premieres 7:30 p.m. Monday

Gem Theatre, 333 Madison, Detroit

Tickets are $6 from the Web site until midnight and $8.50 at the door

http://www.strandedatthecorner.com/

Filmmaker Gary Glaser has no delusions that his Tiger Stadium documentary will save the historic ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull.

But he's prepared to go down swinging.

If nothing else, he says, "Stranded at the Corner" will keep viewers up-to-date on activists' efforts to do something -- anything -- with the park.

Earlier this month, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick hinted that the stadium likely will be razed, with a final announcement expected in May. Aside from a handful of special events including a Super Bowl party, the stadium has been dark since 1999, when the Tigers moved to Comerica Park.

Monday night's premiere screening at the Gem Theatre promises to be a "save the stadium" rallying point, attracting both those still hoping for a last-minute solution and those who simply want to enjoy the recollections and vintage clips collected with the help of Dearborn writer and Tigers expert Richard Bak.

There are plans to show the film at other venues, though nothing is firm at this time.

Among the highlights: views of the park around its 1912 debut as Navin Field; a Willie Horton story about cooking barbecue for the grounds crew; footage of the Detroit Lions during their years at the park (1938-74); home movies taken at the stadium in 1954, and an a cappella version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" by the Contours.

Glaser, 55, a native Detroiter who now lives in Kalamazoo, has been making documentaries since 1984, including 1997's "The Hudson's Building," which rallied to save the historic downtown department store after it closed in 1983. Another edition of the film covered the building's demolition in 1998.

Glaser likes going to Comerica, but he believes the old park was in a different league.

"The classic parks like Wrigley, Fenway and Tiger Stadium were built in the middle of neighborhoods, so the lines in the outfield were different," he says. "They had nooks and crannies, and the home team knew how to play that. We have a wonderful story about a home run that gets caught behind a flagpole. That just doesn't happen in these cookie-cutter stadiums."

Glaser has been working on the movie for the past year, financed by Peter Comstock Riley, a Grosse Pointe businessman and former Detroit Tigers employee who booked baseball events at the stadium after the team left for Comerica.

Because the movie was shot on high-definition video instead of conventional film, Glaser was able to do last-minute tweaking up until last week. This means you'll see footage from this year's opening day, along with a recent interview with Harry Glanz, the Southfield-based mortgage banker who made headlines with his plan to bring youth baseball and other events to the park.

Glanz's plan, which calls for retention of the 55,000-seat stadium, is one of three that share screen time in "Stranded at the Corner." Others call for scaling the stadium back to its much smaller, 1912 Navin Field configuration with the hope of attracting a minor league team. A group from neighboring Corktown would like a mixed-use operation of youth baseball and retail.

The problem, according to the documentary, lies partly with Tigers owner Mike Ilitch, who wants nothing to compete with his team's home at Comerica. The city, meanwhile, doesn't want to adopt any plan of which Ilitch doesn't approve.

Ilitch has been paid between $200,000 and $400,000 a year to maintain the stadium from a 90-cent-per-ticket surcharge tacked onto Tigers tickets during the team's last few years at the old stadium. That money dried up at the end of last month.

The movie is especially critical of how Ilitch has spent that money. In a running gag, Detroit-born comic Thom Sharp, a rabid Tigers fan, tries to get a security guard to come to the door of the old stadium. While he's waiting, he notes the building's crumbling state. He calls a weed tree sprouting from the roof Ilitch's idea of a reforestation project.

References to the pizza mogul are also interspersed with slapstick clips of Buster Keaton, in a toga, from his silent comedy "Three Ages." Glaser says Ilitch organization representatives politely declined to be interviewed in the film.

Race also plays a factor in the film. It took more than a decade after Jackie Robinson's major league debut in 1947 for Detroit to recruit Ozzie Virgil as its first black player in 1958. A photo in the film shows segregated seating at Navin Field.

The film's narrator posits that some black Detroit residents feel that the call to save Tiger Stadium comes primarily from nostalgic white suburbanites. However, the black person interviewed in the film takes the side of saving Tiger Stadium.

What does Glaser hope to accomplish with "Stranded at the Corner"?

"We're definitely advocating something here," he says. "We want it to be entertaining and maybe persuasive. We want to remind people of all the things that happened there, how important it is to their lives."

"I may be foolishly optimistic," he concludes, "but I believe that some proposal still might emerge suitable to all parties that would retain the field so kids can run the bases, I can run the bases and it doesn't become a Wal-Mart."

Contact freelance writer JOHN MONAGHAN at

[email-masked].

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