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The Final Season: Fathers, Sons, and One Last Season in a Classic American Ballpark

tom stanton

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Maybe your dad took you to ball games at Fenway, Wrigley, or Ebbets. Maybe the two of you watched broadcasts from Yankee Stadium or Candlestick Park, or listened as Red Barber or Vin Scully called the plays on radio. Or maybe he coached your team or just played catch with you in the yard. Chances are good that if you're a baseball fan, your dad had something to do with it--and your thoughts of the sport evoke thoughts of him. If so, you will treasure The Final Season, a poignant true story about baseball and heroes, family and forgiveness, doubts and dreams, and a place that brings them all together.

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, Tom Stanton lived for his Detroit Tigers. When Tiger Stadium began its 88th and final season, he vowed to attend all 81 home games in order to explore his attachment to the place where four generations of his family have shared baseball. Join him as he encounters idols, conjures decades past, and discovers the mysteries of a park where Cobb and Ruth played. Come along and sit beside Al Kaline on the dugout bench, eat popcorn with Elmore Leonard, hear Alice Cooper's confessions, soak up the warmth of Ernie Harwell, see McGwire and Ripken up close, and meet Chicken Legs Rau, Bleacher Pete, Al the Usher, and a parade of fans who are anything but ordinary. By the autumn of his odyssey, Stanton comes to realize that his anguish isn't just about the loss of a beloved ballpark but about his dad's mortality, for at the heart of this story is the love between fathers and sons--a theme that resonates with baseball fans of all ages.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2001
Literary awards
casey award, 

This edition

Format
256 pages, Paperback
Published
May 8, 2002 by St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN
9780312291563
ASIN
0312291566
Language
English

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About the author

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tom stanton

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Dear Readers:

I feel fortunate to have been writing professionally since age 18, beginning back in the final year of Jimmy Carter's presidency, when I sported a poorly executed, Peter Frampton-inspired perm. Decades on, my hair is gone, but writing remains central to my life. I've been a reporter, editor, publisher and, more recently, an author and journalism professor (Go University of Detroit Mercy Titans!). If you know me for my books, it's likely for the Tiger Stadium memoir The Final Season, the Quill Award finalist Ty and The Babe or the feverishly publicized Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America. My forthcoming book is Terror in the City of Champions, a true story set in mid-1930s Detroit.

OK, enough of the formal stuff. Some things you might be interested to know:

* Elton John's music has been a big part of my life since "Bennie and the Jets," which is no excuse for accidentally setting off one of his legendary tantrums backstage one evening. (My fault.)

* I drink too many ... Tim Hortons Ice Caps.

* The three biggest thrills to come my way due to book writing: going with Elmore Leonard to a Detroit Tigers baseball game, hearing Alec Baldwin read an excerpt from one of my books on television and receiving an unexpected phone call from one of my favorite authors, Pat Conroy.

* My eternally kind wife and I care for four feral cats -- Pumpkin, Sox, Frisco and Panther -- who dictate our schedule.

* When I travel, I inevitably wind up searching out bookstores and libraries. (We probably have that in common.)

* One of my uncles, Edward Stanton, was a photographer in Detroit in the 1930s, and his shots of black Detroit can be found here: http://reuther.wayne.edu/image/tid/1983

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.2 / 5.0, 42 votes)
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42 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
adriana_12995
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Also available on my blog at http://dfculver.mlblogs.com

Stanton’s The Final Season took longer for me to complete than I anticipated, however this was due to my own busy schedule, more than anything on his part.

Stanton dances between memoir and documentary as he chronicles the Tiger’s last season at Tiger Stadium (Navin Field, Briggs Stadium) before moving over to Comerica Park.

Part of the power his tale is how Stanton delves into his family’s rich history with the Tiger’s organization. From his grandfather, to his father, himself, and finally on to his sons. Baseball, and in particular Tiger’s baseball, has been a part of all of their lives and a way for them to bond. Stanton reveals a reunion at the ballpark between his father and uncle who had not seen each other in almost three decades.

While at times I envied Stanton for being able to attend all 81 home games at Tiger Stadium, I also empathized with him at times when he missed out on family events due to conflicting schedules (I silently cheered when he left a game during the 4th inning to be there for a son’s birthday).

His family supported him in writing this tale, and I have to say that he did not disappoint them by pushing out a mediocre history of a final year. The love and devotion he gives to his family in these pages as well as to the Tiger’s team overall deserves to be honored.

Overall, this is one of the better baseball books I have read so far this year and it comes from someone who was outside of the inner-workings of baseball.

I’ll be looking to pick up some of Stanton’s other books in the near future, starting with The Road to Cooperstown, in which he takes a trip to Baseball’s Hall of Fame with his older brother and father.
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Smiles14
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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If you're a Tigers fan, from Detroit or remember Tiger Stadium, read this book. It will bring back memories.
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Uneeponge
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is a book written about the final season played at Tiger Stadium, in Detroit, MI. The field closed in 1999 and Tom Stanton (a journalist) decided that he was going to attend all 81 home games with his father and his family.

Although my daughter and I live at least 100 miles from Detroit, we make it a point to get to a Tiger's game at least once a year. Therefore, we were also there that "final season." They played badly that year, but that wasn't really why we were there. We were there for the memories.

Memories that Tom Stanton reminded me of while reading this book. He was also overwhelmed with memories of the old players...Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, George Kell, Alan Tramall, Roger Clemens, ect...Memories of going to the game with his father and his uncles. Memories of all the good times his family had with baseball.

In 2000, the Tigers started playing at Comerica Park, just a couple of miles down the road. We now go there, and it is a nice enough place. But it will takes years for the memories to form, if ever.
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snowflower234
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Absolutely stellar. What an amazing experience this must have been. This book is rich in themes of family, fatherhood, and (obviously) baseball. It will make you want to play catch with someone in your family or go to a game.
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ProfessorBrahms
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Such a great book. You don’t need to be a Tigers fan to enjoy it. If you enjoy baseball and the connections to family that the sport creates then you will love this book. After I finished reading, I wanted to give this book a big hug.
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StickyWizard
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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If you are a Detroit Tigers fan and you grew up in the Detroit metropolitan area in the 60's and 70's than this book is for you. Growing up in that time period, baseball was the most popular sport by far. Youth soccer wasn't even heard of. The '68 and '84 Tigers were living gods. Valhalla was located on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull and was known as Tiger Stadium. Baseball was played at the corner for over 100 years. You just can't tear a stadium down and build a new one miles away without tearing the hearts out of Tigers fans that have worshipped the team for generations.

Author Tom Stanton's father grew up in Hamtramck. His Grandfather got off the boat from Europe and settled there and never played an inning of baseball in his life but still considered himself an aficionado. He was drawn to the Tigers the same way nearly everyone else was because here, baseball was the National pastime. Stanton's history could have been mine. In fact, I begin to wonder if his relatives ever crossed paths with any of mine. I'm sure that they did.

This is not just a story about the last season played in Tiger Stadium. In fact, the games are secondary, and the author never writes more than a sentence or two about any of the games. This is a story about a community and a region of the country where baseball is almost a religion. Stanton tells the story of the final season through his family and the many people that were impacted by the closure of the iconic park such as season ticket holders, vendors, people that own the parking lots. The stadium was falling apart, and they needed a new one. Many of the seats were obstructed. I just wish they could've built right on that same spot. To me, this is the worst part. I'm sure that ghosts of the Tiger's past got together regularly to play pick-up baseball with Ty Cobb and Hal Newhouser. It's too bad it's gone but as former GM Bo Schembechler once said, "they don't play in the Colosseum anymore."

My recommendation is for all Tiger fans to read this book and then watch on YouTube, the final game. Skip to the bottom of the 8th inning and watch the entire closing ceremony. I loved watching the old Tigers from as far back as 1926 run onto the field in a full uniform and take their former position one last time. It was a real-life field of dreams. I was moved.
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