Jim Leyland still remembers the day his aunt took him a baseball game at hallowed Tiger Stadium. It was just the second big league game he had ever witnessed in his life.
        As a young minor league ballplayer, Leyland spent seven years in the Tigers’ farm system, dreaming of someday being invited to set foot on the field at Tiger Stadium. The invitation never came. The closest Leyland ever got was Double-A Montgomery.
        As a minor league manager, he spent 11 years in the Tigers’ organization, working and waiting for his chance to coach or manage in Detroit. But the call never came.
        On those rare occasions when Leyland did come to Detroit for organizational meetings after the end of the minor league season, he wasn’t even allowed in the Tigers’ clubhouse. “That’s just the way it was back then,” Leyland recalled Tuesday, when informed that Detroit’s Economic Development Growth Corporation’s commission had voted, 7-1, to demolish what remains of the venerable structure at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. “I was in the organization for 17 years and I had managed a lot of those players in the minors leagues, but we still had to wait in a waiting room outside the clubhouse.
        “Don’t get me wrong, I love Tiger Stadium,” Leyland said before Tuesday night’s game against the Red Sox. “But I don’t have a soft spot for stadiums. I just don’t. I’m a person who believes in moving on.
        “It’s like a lot of places, there are a lot of wonderful memories,” he continued. “It will always be a special place. But the young kids today know nothing about Tiger Stadium _ and don’t care.”
        Leyland managed at Tiger Stadium in 1997 when he came to town with the Florida Marlins who were en route to the world championship. He remembers the tiny dugouts and the cramped clubhouses at the old ballyard. He doesn’t miss it one bit.