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  • Lapointe: What timing! New Lions book looks at past, present

    Lapointe: What timing! New Lions book looks at past, present

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    Two summers ago, I lunched with author Bill Morris in Lower Manhattan at a place called “Paul’s Da Burger Joint.” Although long a resident of New York City, Morris grew up in suburban Detroit and never forgot his roots.

    Among them is to root, root, root for the Detroit Lions, and Morris told me then he wanted to write a book about more than a half-century of ineptitude and heartbreak from a team its own depressed fans scornfully called the “Same Old Lions.”

    “My original idea was to write a story about futility,” Morris said recently. “America is built on success and this organization was terrible. My original working title was Natural Born Losers.”

    I told Morris then the book might sell well in Michigan but maybe not so much beyond the Great Lakes State. Then came a strange turn of events. After Morris signed a deal with Pegasus Books, the Lions got good. First, kind of good. Then, real good.

    As he finished reporting his book and began to write it last fall, the Lions had turned into one of the best stories in American sports, winning two of three playoff games and almost reaching the Super Bowl.

    “All of a sudden, they turned it around,” Morris said. “And I thought ‘Holy wow!’ This ending is really changing.”

    Spoiler alert: Although the Lions lost that last playoff game to San Francisco, the book The Lions Finally Roar (that’s Morris’s new title) still has a happy ending for both the readers and the author. It will be published in hardcover in July and can be ordered in advance from pegasusbooks.com.

    With a new season looming and a team on the upswing, Morris’s timing couldn’t be better.

    “It never hurts to be lucky,” Morris said.

    The cover alone might draw eyes. Most of it is Honolulu Blue, the Lions’ primary color, with a sky of smoky silver (sort of their other team color) as a backdrop to a sketch of the Motor City skyline. The subtitle is: The Ford Family, the Detroit Lions and the Road to Redemption in the N.F.L.

    Morris is also the author of Motor City Burning, a novel about the riot and rebellion in 1967. He grew up in Birmingham, attended Brother Rice high school, and worked as a caddy at Oakland Hills Country club.

    At the time, his father — Dick Morris — was the executive assistant to William Clay Ford, Sr., the grandson of the original Henry Ford and the owner of the Lions who took control of the team from a group of partners on Nov. 22, 1963 (the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated).

    This occurred a few years after Ford had been edged from power at Ford Motor Co. by his brother, Henry Ford II. The Lions were seen by some as Bill Ford’s consolation prize. When Ford bought the team, he offered the general manager’s job to the senior Morris, the book says.

    After Morris turned down the job because he felt himself unqualified, Ford hired Russ Thomas, the boogeyman of coaches, players, and frustrated fans for decades. Before his father died, Morris interviewed him extensively and recorded the conversations.

    Although the book uses few direct quotes from his father, its point of view is clearly informed by his dad’s perspective. He didn’t like Henry Ford II (Morris never calls him “the Deuce”) who called his younger brother, Bill, “the Kid.”

    “What an Irish peasant at heart,” the young Morris said of The Deuce. “He was a horrible man. He could be a monster.”

    As the subtitle suggests, the team’s ownership and management is the most intriguing through line.

    Much of it discusses the alcoholism of Bill Ford, Sr., and the role of Dick Morris as official drinking buddy. After work at the auto company, Ford would join cronies to booze it up at the Dearborn Inn before maybe sideswiping a few cars on East Jefferson while driving back to his mansion in Grosse Pointe.

    “As the losses piled up, Bill Ford’s drinking went from dark all the way to black,” Morris writes. “Like most alcoholics, he now existed inside an impenetrable bubble of self-absorption … No one could get in and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come out. Bill was in a permanent fog and he was killing himself.”

    Warned by his family to straighten up, Ford joined a support group, gave up alcohol, and stayed sober for the rest of his life. For years, it was assumed that his son, William Clay Ford, Jr., would take over the team. However, when Ford died in 2014, his widow — Martha Firestone Ford — assumed control.

    In 2020, she turned over the car keys to her daughter, Sheila Ford Hamp, who led the housecleaning that brought in general manager Brad Holmes, Coach Dan Campbell, and a whole bunch of good players to try to win Detroit’s first league championship since 1957.

    Unfortunately, the author got turned down for interviews with Sheila Hamp and Bill Ford, Jr. He relies on informed speculation to suggest that the transition was due to family bitterness over the way Sheila’s husband, Steve Hamp, had been treated by Bill Ford, Jr., when Hamp was fired as the chief of staff for Bill Ford, Jr., during a major corporate shuffle.

    Perhaps Sheila’s takeover of the team, Morris suggests, was payback by his mother against Bill, Jr., for sacking Hamp.

    “The precise thinking that led Martha Ford to elevate her daughter instead of her son is unknowable because the Fords, as noted, are private people who are disinclined to air their business in public,” Morris writes, adding, “Martha Ford must have found something wanting in her son.”

    All this is not to suggest The Lions Finally Roar ignores the actual football players and coaches toiling under the Ford family. Not at all. There’s plenty about “The Curse of Bobby Layne” and how the trade of this hard-living quarterback to Pittsburgh in 1958 created bad karma that lasted into the next century.

    Outsiders might not be aware of all the hoary Lions’ lore that has accumulated since they washed up on these shores in 1934. They may be surprised and amused at the misadventures of a colorful history. But much will be familiar and perhaps nostalgic to locals.

    There’s that anecdote about Joe Don Looney refusing to take a play to the huddle because he wasn’t “Western Union”; and Alex Karras brawling with Dick the Bruiser at the Lindell AC; and “Another One Bites the Dust”; and the bloody bar brawl between two Lions’ roommates, one a quarterback, the other his blocker.

    On the more serious side, there is the death of Chuck Hughes on the field at Tiger Stadium in 1971 and the paralysis of Mike Utley at the Silverdome in 1991; and the death of Coach Don McCafferty before the 1974 season; and the hurt feelings upon departure of stars like Barry Sanders, Calvin Johnson, and Charlie Sanders; and this candid insight from Morris’s interview with Joe Schmidt, the captain in their three-championship era of the 1950s at Briggs Stadium.

    A Hall of Fame linebacker, Schmidt was one of their greatest players ever and one of their better coaches. But he was happy to leave the patriarchal grasp of the dynastic family that owns the team.

    “The Fords were very kind to me and very good to me,” Schmidt told the author, “but I felt like I was being released from prison.”

    In retrospect, near the end of the book, Morris points to October of 2022 as the turning point, the moment when a new type of Ford family leadership inspired the franchise. The Lions were 1-5, worst in the league. Hamp had been booed loudly at Ford Field the previous year during a ring ceremony for Calvin Johnson.

    Hamp showed up at practice and spoke words that proved prophetic.

    “I know this is difficult,” she said. “I know this is hard …. We’re going to turn this thing around the right way … It requires patience. Am I frustrated? Absolutely. Are the fans frustrated? Absolutely … But I think we really are making progress … I just don’t want everyone to push the panic button.”

    Since that day, the Lions are 22-9, including the three playoff results. There is no panic, although happy hearts are producing joyous palpitations. If this keeps up, a lot more authors will write many more books about these Different New Lions.

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Lapointe: Goofy uniforms are the least of the Tigers’ problems

    Lapointe: Goofy uniforms are the least of the Tigers’ problems

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    Since the start of May, the Tigers have struck out on three figurative pitches.

    First, this bedrock American League baseball franchise announced a periodic replacement for its traditional home uniform, interrupting more than a century of elegant uniformity for a mere merchandising gimmick.

    Next came a blackout over yet another cable television squabble. This makes the Tigers invisible for a significant portion of their local audience right after hiring a rising star in the TV business to be their play-by-play announcer.

    Bracketing these events, they’ve lost seven of nine games through Sunday to flatten out the fizz of their effervescent start and leave them at 20-20 after 40 games, the approximate quarter mark of the season.

    For those keeping memories at home, Sparky Anderson’s 1984 Tigers — only 40 years ago — astounded Major League Baseball with a start of 35-5 en route to Detroit’s last World Series championship.

    The new, alternate uniforms were worn for the first time on Friday and Saturday nights at Comerica Park when they opened a home stand with the Houston Astros.

    Blue and even darker blue are the dominant colors with “MOTOR CITY” in white letters on the front of the shirts and “DETROIT” in white letters on the front of the dark blue caps.

    The entire outfit gives the fashion vibe of a police SWAT team. Mostly missing from the jarring, new look is ye olde English “D,” their classic logo for most of their 124 years.

    You can find it only in miniature at the top of the road sign on the right sleeve. The road sign looks like a baseball diamond. Its insignia boasts both the number 1 (for Woodward Avenue) and the “313” (of the local telephone area code).

    To see all this, you must look only from a certain angle. Yes, it is complicated. Down the side of each leg of the dark blue (almost black) pants are long stripes of light blue that make the trousers look like those worn by marching bands.

    On the shirts, the mesh of black tire tracks over a blue background adds a Spider-Man touch to the overall look that is, well, interesting, if a bit busy. They promise to wear these outfits only on Friday night home games this season.

    Some local fans remain under the impression the Tigers have never worn any home uniform for an entire season except for the white shirts with the old English “D” on the front. But they wore only “DETROIT” shirts — at home and on the road — in their inaugural season of 1901.

    Some current fans might recall the 1960 season, when their home white shirts were graced with a scripted “Tigers” on the front that was underlined. They changed it back to the fancy, current “D” the following season and the home suits have looked basically the same since then.

    And a look back through photo archives on the web site MLBCollectors.com shows different versions of the Tigers’ home clothing, particularly in the first half of the 20th Century.

    In some years, the home uniforms included pinstripes or a “block” D (different than the “English” font) on the front. Some years had both. In 1927, they replaced the “D” on the front of the shirt with a picture of a tiger.

    Their current novelty costumes lack that touch, but they do include extra doodads like a “vehicle identification number” (that recalls World Series championships) and all those racing-stripe accents.

    Perhaps these might help fans overlook the advertising clutter beginning to creep across sports uniforms, including those of the Tigers, who promote Meijer stores on their left sleeves. Before long, most athletes may dress like racecar drivers.

    One purist lamenting the current desecration of the Tigers’ home tuxedos is the veteran baseball writer Tyler Kepner, a former New York Times colleague who now writes for The Athletic. He called the new Detroit duds “a monstrosity” and he scolded the Tigers online.

    “Not you, Tigers,” Kepner wrote. “Not you, who have the most brilliantly simple, elegant home uniforms. Sigh.”

    Another change around the ballpark this season is the hiring of Jason Benetti to announce their games on most telecasts. Quick-minded and witty, Benetti’s commentary is an improvement over the vacuous platitudes heard over most telecasts on Bally Sports Detroit. We’ll see if his edge wears well.

    Before long, most athletes may dress like racecar drivers.

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    But many fans won’t know because Comcast cable this month dropped Bally, which shows the Red Wings and the Pistons along with the Tigers. Bally says Comcast wants to keep Bally but only on a premium pay tier. Bally wants to stay on basic.

    Bally’s parent company, Diamond Sports Group, has entered a calculated bankruptcy because cord-cutters have weakened the “cable bundle” business plan that supported the industry for decades. The business is churning and evolving and soon will be more costly and more confusing for consumers, especially sports fans.

    Consider even the small slights, like the announcement last week by the Tigers that an unidentified television company has suddenly acquired the rights to the Tigers’ game against Toronto on Sunday, May 26, at Comerica Park.

    That unnamed television company demanded the game time be moved from 1:40 p.m. in the afternoon to 11:35 a.m. in the morning. That’s almost two hours earlier. How convenient is that for fans who’d hoped to go to church before the game or for the Ontario fans driving across from Canada that morning?

    On the American side that day, fans wishing to watch the Tigers and the Blue Jays had better buy either a ticket at the ball yard or pay for the extra TV “tier” or “stream” or “app” that is made available for your purchase on your viewing platform. Or drive across the river to see it on Canadian TV in Windsor.

    With three-quarters of the season remaining, there is plenty of time for the Tigers to climb out of their current mediocrity and contend for their first playoff appearance since 2014. All they need is for Tarik Skubal and Riley Greene to keep doing what they’re doing and not change a thing.

    Because, eventually, Spencer Torkelson will hit a few more home runs after finally getting one Sunday. And Colt Keith eventually will hit above .200. And so will Javier Baez. And the bullpen will again close out victories. And the in-fielding will steady itself. And the warring TV parties will settle their TV dispute. And, eventually, these curious uniforms may find a safe space in the Comerica closet.

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Lapointe: The Red Wings got trashed

    Lapointe: The Red Wings got trashed

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    Thursday, February 29, dawned as an optimistic leap-year day for the Red Wings and their hopeful fans. But as the night ended, their grip began to slip on the 2023-24 season and they gradually fell from hockey’s icy cliff.

    Coming into that game, the Wings had enjoyed a six-game winning streak and seemed poised to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2016 and for the first time in the five-year reign of general manager Steve Yzerman.

    But that also was the night they debuted their new uniform decoration, the circular logo of “Priority Waste Management,” a trash hauler based in Clinton Township in Macomb County, northeast of Detroit. They displayed it high on the sweater, near one shoulder.

    It was the first time in the Wings’ 97-year history that their venerated home chasuble — bearing the white logo of the winged wheel — shared space with a piece of advertising on its blood-red background, the hallowed battle shirt once dipped in the sacrificial blood of Claude Lemieux.

    And, instead of choosing some business generic to the Motor City — a car company, perhaps, or a gambling casino or maybe even a marijuana dealership — the Wings and owner Chris Ilitch chose a company that takes away garbage.

    Such removal is an important function to civilization but somewhat unflattering as a sports team’s brand. Starting that very night, the Wings lost seven consecutive games. Yes, they got trashed. They fell from playoff ranking and never quite scrambled back up the slippery slope.

    Despite winning their final three games in one of the season’s most exciting weeks, they missed the tournament and tied for 17th place overall in the 32-team National Hockey League.

    It might be an overstatement to say the Wings jinxed their season with unfortunate commercial branding. And Detroit fans fear finding fault with Yzerman, a local legend from the “Hockeytown” era. Yzerman replaced Ken Holland, who has since done well in Edmonton.

    And Yzerman’s boosters in the seats and in the media overlook how the Vegas Golden Knights grew from expansion team to Stanley Cup champions in fewer years than it has taken Yzerman’s restoration of the franchise he once captained to glory.

    Yzerman rarely speaks to the news media and is, therefore, generally unaccountable to the fans. In that way, he resembles owner Ilitch. Yzerman deigned to hold his season-review news conference last week and spoke mostly with subtle spin and in banal generalities.

    But, when asked about his team giving up too many goals, Yzerman said it was not just the fault of the goalies or the defensemen or the forwards. He said specifically that the blame goes up to the coaching staff. He didn’t specifically mention head coach Derek Lalonde.

    But, then again, he didn’t have to. Yzerman began with his usual self-assurance.

    “It is incumbent on our coaching staff to—” Yzerman said.

    Then he paused, thought about his words, and moved his hands into a web of his fingers. In this brief moment, Yzerman was not his usual smooth-talking self.

    “Uh,” Yzerman said, continuing about the coaching staff, “Ah, uh, to instill or improve — continue to work on — being more — or whether — it’s a better system — or getting better in the way they play.”

    From a generally poised sports executive who usually speaks in whole thoughts, this Yzerman transcript demands a translation, based on the key words “our coaching staff.” It would say:

    “My coach will soon start the third year of his three-year contract. Although our team improved, it is beyond time for us to make the playoffs. If next season starts poorly, I will pull the plug on him before Christmas and find a new coach. Because there is no way I will take the blame for this slow rebuild. And the Ilitches will tolerate it because I am the golden boy of this franchise.”

    To Yzerman’s credit, he didn’t use as an excuse the injury that took captain Dylan Larkin out for almost three weeks as they went into their skid.

    “Teams lose their top player all the time,” Yzerman said, “and find a way to win games.”

    That is true. Sometimes they do it by keeping down the goals-against, especially when the general manager provides the coach with defensive-minded players willing to back-check, start scrums after whistles and intimidate opponents with heavy collisions.

    Instead, Yzerman has given Lalonde a patchwork team of veterans that includes many one-way forwards who are not overly physical on offense or responsible defensively. One was Patrick Kane, a free-agent rental with exquisite offensive skills for shooting, passing and controlling the tempo.

    He is dazzling to watch, but Kane is not the guy to defend Lucas Raymond, a blossoming attacker who nevertheless absorbs too much bully abuse after whistles from opponents who rub their gloves in his face or cross check him when he nears the enemy net.

    Remember when Yzerman was Detroit’s star center? Joey Kocur, one of his bodyguards, once said his job was to “keep the flies off Stevie.” The NHL does not allow as much vigilante brawling as in the past, but every team still needs someone to back up the skilled guys.

    Yzerman must find one or two like this. His heaviest hitter happens to be one of their best players: Mo Seider, the big defenseman from Germany, who someday may win a Norris trophy as the league’s best defenseman.

    In his third season, Seider’s first NHL fight involved the comparably shaggy Filip Forsberg of Nashville. After knocking off each other’s helmets, they repeatedly punched each other in the hair.

    Seider might be the ideal mentor to another tall, young, European defenseman, Simon Edvinsson of Sweden, who flashed great promise as a late-season callup. To fans of a certain vintage, both at best might someday play like Larry Robinson, the Montreal great, and that ain’t no faint praise.

    Another small, skilled Wing is winger Alex DeBrincat, who has three seasons left on his deal signed last year as a free agent. A tricky shooter with many arrows in his quiver, he slumped terribly toward the end of the schedule.

    On one play, DeBrincat stood uncovered, wide-open on offense at the edge of the left-wing circle, waiting for a perfect pass on the way. But he suddenly fell down to end the play. Despite his 27 goals, that crash landing seemed to sum up the end of his season.

    And what about Larkin — age 28 this summer, and entering his 10th season — with only his freshman year in the playoffs?

    With 33 goals, he had what was probably his best season. You hope his career hasn’t peaked yet without him having had the chance to lead a decent team to postseason success during his window of possibility. Most folks love stories headlined “Local Boy Makes Good.”

    So do local journalists. Certainly, Larkin grew up steeped in Motor City sports lore. His team — for all its proud history — last won a round of playoffs in 2013. Last week, he must have sensed the metro hockey energy that buzzed through town like a mini version of Lions’ fever.

    Despite all the recent failure from the players, the coaches, the general manager, and the owner, the Wings played inspirationally in the last week of the season, winning their final three against “Original Six” teams from Canada. The octopus cult bought into it.

    Especially in the home victory over Montreal at the LCA, you could sense even through the television the giddy, tingly energy you can get from a tense and earnest hockey game even when it is between two mediocre teams.

    You could see it in the fervent celebrations of joy from the players after goals scored and the explosions of emotion from the customers. Even if you forgot to turn on your radio or television last Monday night, you could hear the hockey sound all around you, a roar blowing through the streets like a big spring wind.

    While the Wings beat the Habs downtown, all that energy stirred up this big, emotional breeze that blew out from the LCA and surged over to Grand River and McGraw on the West Side where the Wings used to play at Olympia Stadium in their earliest Stanley Cup eras.

    Then the windy gusts got even louder — almost tornadic! — and turned toward the Riverfront, down by where Joe Louis Arena used to be, where the Wings played in their most recent reign of Stanley Cups.

    Then this joyous noise bounced further off the tunnel to Canada, which amplified it and sent it roaring back uptown toward Ilitch Village, where the Red Wings play now in a barn that pushes both pizza and waste removal.

    And on the sidewalk next to the still-newish arena, you could hear it loud and clear, something you used to hear a lot for many years at Olympia, and for a long time, too, at The Joe, but not so much in recent years at the LCA under what is known as “the Yzer-plan.”

    “Let’s go Wings!” the sound on the wind seemed to roar and echo, bouncing uptown up Woodward Avenue, past Wayne State and the Fisher Building and Birmingham and maybe Mackinac, too. “Let’s go Wings!”

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Lapointe: For visitors, your NFL Draft city is the bedrock of the big leagues

    Lapointe: For visitors, your NFL Draft city is the bedrock of the big leagues

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    Welcome back to Detroit, National Football League. Your 2024 draft festival marks the first time you’ve gathered en masse here in the Motor City since the Super Bowl of 2006.

    So let’s re-introduce you to a peculiar American sports town with deep roots in the Big Four pro leagues. Over the decades, those seedlings gradually sprouted nationwide like branches on family trees over generations and geography.

    You might have noticed last season when Detroit boosters declared the Lions to be “America’s Team” (for the moment) with an overall record of 14-6. Around here, our pro teams, our sports heroes, and our memories are monumental and both are revered.

    Consider: Over the Detroit River, we are building a new bridge to Canada and naming it after a hockey player. Downtown, where most draft visitors will stay, our most distinctive civic monument is a four-ton clenched fist outside City Hall, honoring a boxer.

    If you guessed their names to be Gordie Howe and Joe Louis, you passed the quiz. Along with baseball’s Ty Cobb, this trinity of local icons reflect Detroit’s longevity on America’s pro sports scene. The Tigers (1901), have been in the American League longer than the New York Yankees (1903).

    Predating even the A.L., the Tigers are Detroit’s senior class, the varsity, established here about the time Henry Ford first started making horseless carriages. The junior class would be the Red Wings, established in 1927, members of the mythical “Original Six” of the National Hockey League.

    They arrived during the American sports boom of the Roaring ’20s, when Detroit was flush with money, manufacturing jobs, and migrant factory workers, Black and white, moving here from the southern states for jobs. By 1950, Detroit had nearly 2 million citizens and many auto companies.

    The classical home uniforms of these two teams — the blue, old English “D” of the Tigers on a white background; and the white, winged wheel of the Red Wings on red — are almost like vestments, the dignified formal wear of their respective sports, practically tuxedos.

    The Lions — currently the toast of the town — are the sophomore class, arriving from Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1934. Last and clearly least at the moment is the freshman franchise, the Pistons, who moved here from Fort Wayne in 1957, a mere 67 National Basketball Association seasons ago.

    They lost 28 straight games on the way to their final record of 14-68 this season. That is the worst in Pistons’ history, worse than the 16-66 of the 1979-80 season, when Dick Vitale was fired as coach and general manager and the games were played in the Lions’ Silverdome.

    Both Vitale and the Pistons went on to better things. Detroiters realize that other regions have more big-league teams. New York, for instance, has nine franchises and Los Angeles has eight. And 10 other locales also enjoy the Big Four sports.

    But only New York has had the same four franchises in the four sports (as a group, continuously) longer than Detroit. The generational loyalty that bonds Detroit teams and their followers goes back further than it does for four-team arrivistes like Phoenix or Seattle or even Dallas.

    So the joy around here for the Lions mixed with melancholy memories because this region and these sports clubs have paid many dues in many ways.

    When they won two, post-season victories and came within 30 minutes of a Super Bowl berth, the Lions’ triggered local glee by ending a Motor City sports recession that began shortly after the city itself went bankrupt in 2013.

    Until the Lions last season, no Detroit team had prevailed in a postseason round since the Red Wings and the Tigers each won one round in 2013. The Pistons last won a round in 2008. The Wings this spring missed the playoffs for the eighth consecutive season but their fans celebrated them because they almost qualified.

    During the last decade, some days have seen all four Detroit teams in last place in their respective divisions at the same time.

    As for the historic Lions, they dominated much of the Eisenhower era, when some helmets lacked faceguards. Their most recent NFL title came in 1957, ten years before the first Super Bowl. That’s part of the reason Detroiters went so daffy last season.

    Fans expressed pent-up desire to cheer up and chat about something positive in common. When people left home wearing team colors of Honolulu blue and silver, they sparked spontaneous, friendly conversations among strangers at gyms, in the stores, and after church.

    It was something to share, like a solar eclipse. Perhaps we overdid it a bit, but this is not a glitzy coastal city full of showbiz celebrities and lots of money and major distractions. Sports here make up a large percentage of our civic self-image. And history gives it depth.

    Last fall, casual conversations sometimes drifted to shared Lions’ memories of long-ago games watched with siblings, parents, and grandparents (some long gone) at Ford Field, the Silverdome, Tiger Stadium, Briggs Stadium, and maybe even the University of Detroit stadium.

    In addition, a particular phenomenon became evident during Lions’ road games in places like Tampa, Carolina, Los Angeles, and Dallas: All those blue-clad people cheering for the visiting Lions. Other teams have fans at their road games, too, but the size of the Detroit diaspora is disproportionate.

    Why?

    In part, it’s evidence of Michigan’s economic decline over the last 40-plus years, ever since the domestic automobile industry staggered badly in the 1980s. Since then, many jobs have left the state and so have the workers. Since 1990, Michigan ranks 49th in population growth.

    Plus, the 2008 recession further wounded the economics of an aging state and a mature industry. Unlike in the early 20th Century, Detroit is no longer a boom town; the migration in Michigan is outward.

    The publication Bridge Michigan recently cited numbers from The Michigan Center for Data and Analytics — the state demographers — predicting that Michigan’s “deaths are projected to out-number births by 25,000 per year within a decade.”

    In addition, the state population — now 10.1 million to rank 10th among the 50 states — could plummet by 700,000 in 20 years, it is forecast.

    So it is likely that the blue shirts at road games were worn by Michigan migrants or their descendants. This became noticeable with Tigers’ road games of the 1980s, when the Tigers got good, followed by, first, the Pistons, then the Red Wings.

    Because it is now pro football’s turn, it is more noticeable and we’re four decades down the road. As a native Detroiter from a big family, I have siblings and kids in California, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, and New York (and Michigan).

    This is not uncommon for natives of the Great Lakes State. So you touch base. What better way to reopen a dormant conversation than “How ‘bout those Lions? (Or Tigers, or Wings, or Pistons?)”

    You can argue that such extended loyalty makes Detroit America’s best, hard-core sports town, bedrock terrain for four leagues, anchored in a different century.

    When the Motor City and its burgeoning car industry went big-league, baseball had 16 teams, football 12, basketball eight, and hockey six. Now, the Big Four sports have 124 franchises. Think further in cold numbers as if pro sports leagues were, run, say, like the auto business.

    If those leagues were scouting for expansion franchise sites right now, the metrics and demographics of metro Detroit would not point them this way. Older fans on fixed incomes or those of modest means may love their sports. But they buy very few season seats or luxury suites.

    By getting in on the ground floor, Detroit got grandfathered in, at least for now. Maybe that is why Detroit fans are so grateful for what little they get. I’ve worked in New York and Chicago, too, and reported about sports from other places.

    Few cities are as tolerant as Detroit fans and media, which may come as a surprise to sensitive Lions’ quarterback Jared Goff. They don’t mind when a “rebuilding” phase goes on for five years or for a decade. They don’t boo or heckle as much as they used to and still do in some towns.

    Detroiters are less demanding and more humble than folks in other places because their loyalty has been beaten down and tested. Visitors might notice those shirts around town that proclaim “Detroit vs. Everybody.”

    If that suggests we have chips on our shoulders, well, yes, and Detroit sports fans have good reasons for them.

    click to enlarge

    Courtesy of the Downtown Detroit Partnership

    The Detroit Lions are currently the toast of the town.

    In 1935-36, the Motor City was the “City of Champions” with the Tigers, the Lions, and the Wings all on top. Despite the revival of the Lions last season, recent overall achievement ranks Detroit one of the losingest sports markets on the continent.

    A website called “Champs or Chumps” evaluated 52 North American sports markets by the success of their current teams. L.A. is first, followed by Tampa and Kansas City. Detroit comes in 31st but our fans would shrug and say “So?” in a way that will not knock the chips from their shoulders.

    Fans here figure that if you keep buying tickets and watching the games on TV, eventually, your generation will get its just reward and enjoy a championship or two, from one or more of the four franchises, like the “City of Champions” teams of the mid-1930s or the 1984 Tigers or the “Bad Boys” Pistons or the “Hockeytown” Red Wings of the “Russian Five” era.

    Now, it is the Lions’ turn to thrill and did they ever. They led San Francisco by 17 points with 30 minutes left in the NFC championship game and then they let an apparent Super Bowl appearance slip through their fingers like a greased pigskin, losing by 34-31.

    In most cities, after such a collapse by the local team (Dallas, for instance), their fans would weep and gnash their teeth and point fingers in the blame game, and there was plenty of blame to share in Detroit. But there was little anger from Lions’ fans or media, even on talk radio.

    It was more like stunned disbelief at a new generation’s new experiences — new highs, new lows — for the first time in a decade or more

    The Lions just weren’t ready to win and maybe their fans weren’t either. After two or three days of mourning, the town returned to normal, the mood was one of gratitude and the upbeat buzz resumed.

    Hey, how ‘bout those Lions? What about next year? Who should they draft, trade, cut or sign? Lo, the clouds have cleared and the future is bright. Even in a domed stadium, the skies above us are Honolulu blue.

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Lapointe: Amid gambling investigation, Detroit can remember Ohtani’s great day at Comerica

    Lapointe: Amid gambling investigation, Detroit can remember Ohtani’s great day at Comerica

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    Late last July in Detroit’s Comerica Park, the baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani — then with the Los Angeles Angels — accomplished something so rare and so special that it may never again be done in the major leagues.

    In the first game of a doubleheader against the Tigers, Ohtani pitched a one-hit shutout, the first complete game of his career, in a 6-0 victory. In the second game, as a designated hitter, Ohtani hit two home runs in an 11-4 victory. His two-pronged attack reinforced his image as a unique and special star.

    Despite arm surgery that will keep him from pitching this season, Ohtani’s new, 10-year, $700 million free-agent contract with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers seemed like yet another glorious chapter for the Japanese star who is probably the world’s best player — and maybe baseball’s best ever.

    But that happy storyline was jolted earlier this week when the Dodgers fired Ohtani’s friend and interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, for his involvement with a bookmaker taking illegal sports bets in California. Reports said Mizuhara owed $4.5 million.

    Even the very best explanation is embarrassing to both Ohtani and to baseball: That Ohtani had no knowledge of his friend’s gambling habits; that Ohtani knew about the trouble but took pity to help a friend pay off a debt; that Ohtani has “been the victim of a massive theft.”

    Before long, Ohtani, his lawyers and his former translator will get their stories straight. In the meantime, we are left to contemplate the worst possibilities imaginable against the modern backdrop of the shotgun marriage of legal gambling and major sports.

    Since the Supreme Court opened this Pandora’s Box in 2018, arenas and telecasts are cluttered with cheesy ads pushing get-rich-quick schemes. They urge addictive and destructive behavior — and instant gratification! — upon gullible suckers who are usually, but not always, young males.

    One of the myths about legalized sports gambling is that players earn so much now that they don’t need to fix games or shave points. Even if that is true, this wishful thinking ignores the modestly-paid persons behind the scenes who interact daily with professional sports teams. Translators, for instance.

    They are privy to inside information about injuries, personal problems, or illness that might affect the winner of a game or the margin of victory. Information like that can be passed on to gamblers or bookies to settle other debts or to place new bets before the point spread changes.

    Here in Detroit, we are well-versed in gambling scandals and sports. We remember Alex Karras, a star of the Lions’ defensive line, suspended for gambling by the National Football League in 1963. We remember Tigers’ pitcher Denny McLain, pal of bookies, suspended by MLB for half the 1970 season.

    Beyond the Motor City was baseball’s Pete Rose, of course; and basketball’s Michael Jordan, who “retired” for a season after gambling revelations and the murder of his father; and the college basketball scandals around New York City that set the sport back in the 1950s; and going all the way back to 1919 and Shoeless Joe Jackson’s Chicago “Black Sox” who conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series to Cincinnati.

    According to American folklore, a little boy in Chicago on the courtroom steps allegedly shouted to Jackson: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Perhaps someone, in some language, will shout to Ohtani: “Say it ain’t so, Sho!”

    Or maybe the real story will come from Mizuhara, who said he bet on pro football, college football, soccer, and basketball. He grew up in California and speaks English well. The IRS is investigating him, so perhaps we will learn how well he speaks under oath.

    “I never bet on baseball,” he told ESPN. “That’s 100%. I know that rule.”

    Diane Bass — lawyer for the Orange County alleged bookie Matthew Bowyer — told the Los Angeles Times that her client “never met, spoke with or texted or had any contact in any way with Shohei Ohtani.”

    Ohtani, who turns 30 years old on July 5, could be in his prime. He is a six-year veteran of the American major leagues and a two-time most valuable player. Before that, he played five professional years in Japan.

    Last spring — it seems like more than a year ago — Ohtani led Japan to a victory over the United States in the World Baseball Classic, an event that seemed to add momentum to American baseball’s connections with Asian markets and talent.

    This week, that effort continued when Ohtani and the Dodgers opened the major-league season with two games against San Diego in Seoul, South Korea. If this were a movie, a gangster actor would now walk into the scene to say: “Nice sport ya got here, baseball. Be a shame if somethin’ happened to it.”

    Or, as Mark Twain once allegedly said: “Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” The problem here with this strange story is the fear that it makes its own kind of cynical sense, and that one of the best, feel-good stories in sports is about to erupt into a devastating scandal.

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Lapointe: Clinton Township blast too close to home

    Lapointe: Clinton Township blast too close to home

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    When the loud rumbles from the southeast began shortly before 9 p.m. Monday in Clinton Township, I assumed it was thunder. With no rain predicted for that night, I wondered whether the weather forecast was simply wrong again. But the rumbles continued for five, 10, and then 20 minutes.

    Then they’d stop and start again. Never heard any thunder quite like this, like constant kettle drums. Went outside, where flashes of light streaked from the same direction across the night sky. It looked like lightning, only — incongruously — with bright stars around it at the same time. No, that’s not lightning.

    Before long, radio, television, and smartphone internet informed us that all this sound and fury came from a building that caught fire and blew up on 15 Mile Road near Groesbeck in Clinton Township in Macomb County, north of Detroit. Debris killed a 19-year-old guy at a nearby car wash.

    Miraculously, he was the only serious casualty. According to the Macomb Daily, township officials said the building was not permitted to store explosive materials. But dozens of canisters there contained butane, nitrous oxide, and lighter fluid. They weighed up to 15 pounds each.

    They rained down like missiles upon the roofs of nearby neighborhoods and businesses, sometimes smashing apart and stabbing their jagged edges into the ground. Double-edged knives were said to be among the debris field that was at least a mile wide in circumference from this warehouse.

    “They brought things in the back door that we didn’t know about,” township supervisor Bob Cannon told Channel 4, speaking about what was stored at Goo Smoke Shop and Select Distributors, which shared the same building. “We won’t rest until we find out what happened, how it happened and who’s responsible.”

    The dead man was identified as Turner Lee Salter, survived by two parents and three siblings. He was an active member of Clinton Township’s Faith Baptist Church, which will host a visitation for him Thursday night and a funeral on Friday at 9 a.m.

    The church is on the corner of Little Mack and 15 Mile, not far from where Salter died of blunt force trauma to the head from airborne shrapnel. His pastor, Tim Berlin, described him in the Macomb Daily as “just a joy to be around” and a person who “was so kind, always happy, someone who embraced life.”

    In some ways it was almost a relief Monday night to learn that this terrifying mess was probably “only” an accident and not like something you might see on TV from the war in Gaza. Or something like that chemical train wreck last year in Ohio. Or something like 9/11.

    Or the beginning of The Road by Cormac McCarthy or even the Book of Revelation. Take your pick. Clinton Township is not far from Selfridge Air National Guard Base. At first, after the constant rumble wouldn’t stop, I wondered if it was the sound of many jets taking off at the same time.

    But the following explosions sounded more like fireworks, the kind they have around the Fourth of July at the Clinton Township Civic Center; but they went on far too long for even a grand finale. And those festive rockets red-glaring don’t send jagged chunks of heavy metal down upon the citizens.

    In one of life’s little ironies, some of the chemicals that blew up in Clinton Township Monday are used for vaping products, which are used to consume tobacco or marijuana through vapor and without more harmful smoke.

    Last year, a Mount Clemens marijuana retailer called JARS on Groesbeck tried to use a patch of Clinton Township land as a parking lot for its employees. However, Clinton Township rejected that attempt and has voted against legalized marijuana sales.

    A growing community that almost encircles Mount Clemens, Clinton Township includes more than 100,000 citizens. One of them is the rapper Eminem, who owns a mansion. It’s a growing exurb with a blue-collar edge, just south of the Macomb County farm belt and just west of Lake St. Clair.

    Last September, during the United Auto Workers’ strike against the Detroit Three auto companies, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rallied in Clinton Township at a non-union parts shop, about six miles north of Monday’s blast site.

    And the blast made you worry and wonder:

    • Was it arson? Did someone set this fire for fun or revenge?

    • How many other buildings are storing explosives that aren’t supposed to be there and — absent tipsters — how would anyone ever know?

    • What if this had happened in the middle of the day, with people on the job and school buses among thick traffic nearby?

    • What about terrorists? If this sort of damage can happen by accident or arson, what sort of malice might result from a purposeful political attack inflicted upon a legitimate site with stored explosives?

    • And what about those freight trains with their romantic whistles in the night? Accidentally or intentionally, if they carry toxic chemicals, might they ignite near you?

    Sleep tight, Clinton Township.

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Lapointe: WJR host calls Rashida Tlaib ‘a pig;’ her supporters ‘sick’ and ‘nuts’

    Lapointe: WJR host calls Rashida Tlaib ‘a pig;’ her supporters ‘sick’ and ‘nuts’

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    U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib is not expected to face serious challenges for re-election either in the primary from Democrats or in the general election from Republicans on Nov. 5.

    When does free speech become hate speech?

    Can someone’s words be both things at the same time?

    Consider the air pollution belched forth recently from syndicated broadcaster Mark Levin — a right-wing crank — over the powerful radio station WJR (760-AM) in Detroit.

    Levin dislikes Rashida Tlaib, the third-term Democrat in the United States House of Representatives whose 12th Michigan district includes parts of Detroit’s west side and several suburbs.

    “You are such a pig … You are a pig, Rashida Tlaib,” Levin said last Friday night over WJR and other outlets. “Absolutely unbelievable.”

    Tlaib is the only Palestinian-American in Congress. Many Muslims and Arabs live in her district, although it is multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic. Levin presented his contempt for Tlaib’s people as a plea to change immigration rules.

    “This is what happens when you don’t vet people coming into the country, like her parents, I guess, or her grandparents,” Levin said, adding, “Rashida Tlaib is an example of a completely broken immigration system. She’s an Islamist. She’s an Islamist who believes in ‘river to the sea.’”

    Some consider this phrase a code for the elimination of Israel, Levin said, adding that Tlaib once kept a map on her wall showing the Middle East without Israel. Tlaib vociferously opposes U.S. support for Israel in a war against Hamas in Gaza that began on Oct. 7 with an attack against the Israelis by Hamas from Gaza.

    Levin also accused Tlaib of representing and speaking to “Hamas front groups” protesting the war.

    “And there she is in the House of Representatives!” Levin screeched. “Embraced by the Democrat party! Embraced by [President Joe] Biden! Embraced by the Jews of the Democrat Party! … Sick! Nuts!”

    Levin said he was angered when Tlaib voted “present” on a resolution to condemn Hamas. He said her fellow Democrats refuse to criticize her because they need her vote on other issues.

    “‘It’s expected, it’s Tlaib!’” Levin shouted, mocking Democrats by pretending to speak for them. “‘It’s Rashida. We know Rashida. She’s a good gal.’”

    Levin then changed his tone to a snarl of bitter spite.

    “She is a mouthpiece for terrorism,” Levin said. “And I’m sick and tired of it.”

    As a gesture of protest to Biden for supporting Israel, Tlaib has called for her constituents to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary, which ends on Feb. 27.

    But Levin charged Biden with betraying “Israel and the Jewish people” to please Tlaib’s voters in the general election in autumn.

    “He needs the votes of her constituents,” Levin said. “He needs the votes from Dearborn-istan.” (That’s one of Levin’s favorite new words: “Dearborn-istan.” Get it?)

    “He [Biden] needs the Jew-hating, neo-Nazi vote,” Levin said. A few days before, Levin widened the scope of his aim to Dearborn’s Muslim religious leaders who, Levin said, also want a “river-to-the-sea” solution.

    “And they say as much in Dearborn,” Levin said, “like in Dearborn, Michigan — which you’re not allowed to mention — and yet the imams there are clear antisemites. Not all of them. Most of them.”

    A message to Tlaib’s office for comment was not returned. She is not expected to face serious challenges for re-election either in the primary from Democrats or in the general election from Republicans on Nov. 5.

    But Biden’s presidential race against the demagogue Donald Trump could hinge on turnouts and margins in Michigan and, particularly, in places like Dearborn, which are politically engaged more than some communities.

    Day or night, in the undertone of some WJR commercials, you can hear the fear and paranoia that WJR programming, local and national, tends to stoke.

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    Although WJR now holds a dwindling share of a dwindling media platform, its 50,000 AM watts carry to many states as well as into Canada. No doubt its signal passes through Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Southfield, Livonia, Westland, Inkster, and the west side of Detroit, where Tlaib’s voters live.

    WJR’s “news-talk” format appears to be in flux and can be divided roughly into Right Wing Lite — with local hosts in the daytime — and Right Wing Spite at night, with Levin and other syndicated voices attacking liberals and progressives more viciously after dark.

    In the early afternoon, they recently dumped the syndicated Dan Bongino, who had replaced the late Rush Limbaugh. They’ve shuffled their (mostly white male) daytime voices.

    And Levin’s attitude gets echoed by day by local hosts like Tom Jordan, who said Tuesday on “All Talk” that “I absolutely believe that Joe Biden is listening to the likes of Rashida Tlaib.” (On “All Talk,” he is rarely “President Biden.”)

    “She is denouncing what she calls these war crimes by Israel against Hamas,” Jordan said, “but ignoring the countless war crimes by Hamas.”

    This is a cute verbal trick. Tlaib decries aggression against innocent civilians, not against terrorists. The radio man simply merges them. Later, Jordan blended Tlaib supporters with people who deny the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.

    “It’s absolutely crazy,” Jordan said, “but there’s people in our — the likes of people who support Rashida Tlaib — they’re denying Oct. 7 actually occurred.”

    Last October, Jordan said of Tlaib: “She supports, it seems, Hamas, a terrorist regime … She is denouncing Israel. That is absolutely un-American … She is a terrorist sympathizer.” He then listed other terrorist groups that “she probably sympathizes with.”

    Day or night, in the undertone of some WJR commercials, you can hear the fear and paranoia that WJR programming, local and national, tends to stoke.

    Like that gritty-voiced feller for “My Patriot” emergency food supply urging you to spend your money to prepare “fer whut’s comin’.” Oh, they also sell “survival gear.” Need some, buddy? ‘Cuz ya know whut’s comin’.

    Of course, WJR has no obligation to balance its political tone or racist biases because, since 1987, radio and television stations are no longer subject to what was once called “the Fairness Doctrine.” President Ronald Reagan took care of that. Hey, didn’t he start his career in AM radio?

    Perhaps the quaint concept of “the public airwaves” has been demolished by technology that transmits media from satellites that orbit in outer space, above the public air. The abandonment of Fairness triggered the Limbaugh era for AM radio which continues to this day, three years after his death.

    It also enabled right-wing television networks like Fox News Channel and its various imitators that have popped up like weeds in a garden.

    But AM terrestrial radio stations like WJR are still land-based, just as WJR was in the 1920s, when it launched the career of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest” of Royal Oak whose nationally broadcast sermons were interrupted by World War II and the Holocaust.

    Come to think of it, Mark Levin and Charles Coughlin share the same air, a century apart, emitting similar odors from different directions. Strange bedfellows.

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    Joe Lapointe

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  • Practicality Meets Drama for Pre-Fall 2023

    Practicality Meets Drama for Pre-Fall 2023

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    As we gird ourselves to face the depths of winter, designers have something a bit more optimistic in mind: Pre-Fall 2023. 

    There are two big themes emerging for the (pre) season as collections roll out. One is practicality, as seen through the spacious cargo pockets, the abundance of trench coats and all the knitwear. The other is drama — think fringe that makes any movement more pronounced, high collars that call back to a few different prim -core aesthetics, goth black lace that feels primed for Wednesday Addams’ wardrobe. Also making an appearances is the aughts resurgence that now underlines pretty much any and all trends, this time paving the way for the return of statement tights.

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    Ana Colón

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