Here is an excerpt from an interview I did with author Tom Stanton. Stanton has written four baseball related books The Final Season, The Road to Cooperstown, Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, and Ty and the Babe. All four should be available from your local bookshop. Enjoy!

You have been to Cooperstown a few times; I have been there three times. For a baseball fan, is there any place that compares to Cooperstown?

I have been to Cooperstown many times, and I treasure the place. Fenway Park is grand. Wrigley Field, too. Yankee Stadium had its charms. Our Tiger Stadium, as well, but Cooperstown is special because its neutral territory and you get fans from all over the world (that) make pilgrimages to the place. The magic of the Hall of Fame is not that it tells the history of the game; it is that you relive your own history as you tour the place. Cooperstown will always have a special place in my heart.

 

They are tearing down Yankee Stadium, but we keep fighting for Tiger Stadium. Why do you think we cannot let it go? In addition, do you think it is right to drag this on?

I have mixed feelings about Tiger Stadium’s status. I would love for part of it to be preserved, but I would hate to watch it rot away like the train depot down Michigan Avenue. I think we are reluctant to bid farewell to the place because it is a touchstone for so many of us. It is personal. It is the place we went with our fathers and grandfathers. It is the place we took our own children. Long after the old family home disappeared from the Detroit landscape, Tiger Stadium became the last place I could go to connect with my grandfather who lived on through stories of baseball. We are reluctant to surrender the place because surrendering it means we are surrendering part of our lives and our history.

 

Have you been to “The Corner” to see what is left?

I have been by it several times. It broke my heart watching the walls come down.

 

In Ty and the Babe, you write about Cobb in a fairer light than anything else I have read. Was this something you decided you would do going in, or something that came about from research for the book?

I wrote Ty and the Babe in part because I often heard stories from old baseball figures – like (former Detroit Tigers announcer) Ernie Harwell — who said Cobb was not as bad as he had been portrayed. He certainly was not a saint, but he was not Satan either. I approached the work open to the possibility that there was another side to Cobb that had been lost to history, and I hope I captured some of it. It is difficult when you pull a person out of the context of his time, but Cobb was not all that different from many men who played the game in his time. It is unfair to demonize him now and pretend as if all the others were somehow much more culturally enlightened. Most of them were not.

 

You are obviously a Detroit Tigers fan, but when you are writing do you put that aside for the story, or do you stay emotionally invested in the team?

I am fortunate that I do not need to set aside my love for the team. It is part of my persona. People expect me to be a Tigers fan, and I am, but it is never really the same as it was when you were eleven years old.

 

As a Tigers fan what do they have to do for next season?

Like many other fans, I thought we were on our way to a World Series title. I even proposed co-writing a book with Jim Leyland. Fortunately, for both of us, he did not want to do it. I am not sure what they need to do to win. I do not know whether several of our pitchers had off-seasons in 2008, or whether they had career seasons in 2007. We need starting pitching. We need relief pitching. We need better fielding, a catcher, and a left-handed hitter, but what do I know?