University of Virginia Library

The Fifth Quarter

A Tale Of Two Series Cities

By John Marshall

They talk of Detroit and they
talk of cars. The hyper-super-hemiblown
metallic monsters, all shiny
and wide-tracked, march off the
assembly lines of Dearborn and
Hamtramack, onto the waiting
trailer trucks, and into the garages
of Main Street America where the
neighbors gawk ("Bet she'll do a
hundred easy on the Interstate,
Harry." "Dunno, Ben, still breaking
her in.") and then go out and buy
the same car themselves Year after
year. And the President breathes a
sigh of relief, for everyone knows
that the United States of America is
OK when all's right with Detroit.

They talk of Detroit and they
talk of a town with soul, the
Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown.
Here the Super Supremes and the
Temptin' Temptations follow the
formula disk after disk, as the
magic money machine spins at 33
and 45 rpm all the way from the
Roostertail to the Copa and
Caesar's Palace. Mindless foot
stomping and can't-keep-still hand
clapping cheer the plastic-packaged
Blacks. It's the same old song.

They talk of Detroit and they
talk of the riots. They had them in
the forties and they had them in
the sixties. The smoldering, burnt
out ashes of block upon block
turned a mayor alcoholic and
made him a divorcee, turned a
governor into a fool and began his
steady jog into obscurity. A model
city, they used to say. Only Los
Angeles has more freeways, and
look at Cobo Hall.

But this summer Detroit was a
different town. Sure, there were
still the incredible deb parties in
Grosse Point and no one was
stopping the drag racing along
Woodward Avenue out to Ted's.
But the Newspapers n were back
and morning coffee faces were once
again buried in the Free Press,
cocktail hour faces buried in the
News. And the Critical eye of the
nation had lifted from the rubble
left by rioters— there was Chicago
and Mayor Daley and Detroit felt a
lonely self shame no longer.

The riots broke out again last
Thursday afternoon, October 10.
They erupted from a million T.V.
sets at 5:00 and into a thousand
corner bars. They swept across
Hazel Park, Royal Oak, and
Birmingham. They spilled onto the
runways of Metropolitan Airport
and closed it to all air traffic. The
suburbanites rioted beside the
blacks of the ghettos. The mayor
rioted. The governor rioted. For
this was a different Detroit. And
these were different riots. The
Tigers became the 1968 World
Champions of baseball. All was
even righter with Detroit.

The Promises of a ninth inning,
come-from-behind summer in
creaky Tiger Stadium were kept in
an explosive seventh inning some
seven hundred miles away in Busch
Stadium in St. Louis. Curt Flood
slipped and Bob Gibson was beaten
and champagne flowed in the
locker room of the visitors. After
twenty years of famine and futility,
the Tigers were once again the best
there is. They beat the team they
weren't supposed to beat by
winning three straight — only three
other teams have duplicated that
feat.

In a country that weeps for
Gene McCarthy and the New York
Mets, there were few tears indeed
for the St. Louis Cardinals. After all,
why should there be? They have
had more than their share. It's
about time they lost. Such is the
psychology of the underdog and
the downtrodden in this country.
Too much success is a cause for
suspicion — and jealousy. Too much
success is almost unamerican.

But the city of the soaring-shiny
Gateway Arch couldn't help but
shudder. It was the Cardinals, more
than anything else, that had
fostered a rebirth in civic pride
which manifested itself in the most
beautiful new stadium in the
country. The whole town migrated
to the white concrete bowl near the
riverfront, not just the blue collar
workers and blacks who seem to
follow most of the other baseball
teams in the country. The whole
town, two million fans a season. St.
Louis and the Cardinals moving
forward.

Now they won't talk as much
about the Cardinals and St. Louis.
They'll talk of Detroit. And the cars.
And the Motown sound. And the
Tigers, the 1968 World Champions.
Detroit has it all.