Facebook photo
The folks who keep up the grounds at the old Tiger Stadium at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull tried to correct what they see as an injustice on the part of the Detroit Tigers organization.
On Sunday, the Navin Field Grounds Crew volunteers who maintain the site honored former Tiger stars Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker with the symbolic retiring of the double-play combo’s jerseys, Marlowe Alter of the Detroit Free Press writes.
“We’re doing what the Tigers should have done years ago,” Tom Derry, co-founder of the voluntary Navin Field crew, said, according to the Freep. “For 19 seasons they were a double-play combo, major league baseball has never seen anything like it. They were the backbone of the Tigers last world championship team in 1984.
“People have been saying all along the Tigers should retire their jerseys and they haven’t done it so we figured we’d do it.”
The paper reports about 35 people showed up. Trammell and Whitaker, neither of whom were at the ceremony.
The Tigers have been stingy about retiring numbers.
The Freep reports that only five players have had their numbers retired: Charlie Gehringer (No. 2), Hank Greenberg (No. 5), Al Kaline (No. 6), Hal Newhouser (No. 16) and Willie Horton (No. 23) — along with manager Sparky Anderson (No. 11). Ty Cobb played when players had no numbers.
