Question about old Tiger Stadium and the parking lot for the Detroit Lions

Has been a few years ... more than a few years, actually :o ... since I've visited DetroitYes!

About ten years ago, I started working on a book project about Chuck Hughes, the Detroit Lions' receiver who collapsed and died in Tiger Stadium on October 24, 1971. Got a ton of help from folks here at DetroitYes!

Unfortunately, had to set the project aside for several years. Lots of reasons for that which might all sound like excuses. Suffice to say, a couple years back, I decided enough time had passed and that I had grown tired of having this thing looming over me. I decided to renew my efforts to get this biography done and off my plate. I am now within a couple months of completing my manuscript on Hughes - his life, death and legacy.

With that in mind, I have returned to DetroitYes! with a question I am hoping someone here, some long-time Detroiter, might be able to help me with.

It involves the location of a player's parking lot for the Detroit Lions while they were playing at Tiger Stadium.

Before I go any further, I know the Tigers' players, up until 1994, used to park on Tiger Stadium property. Their lot was located where the team later created the Tiger Alley area north of Michigan Avenue. That may well have been where the Lions' players parked. However, in a couple of the 250+ interviews I did for this project - one with the late, great Charlie Sanders and the other with hard-hitting safety Tommy Vaughn - another area was hinted at. I didn't realize its importance to me until many years after the fact.

During my interviews with Charlie and Tommy, they both mentioned a "tunnel" that apparently existed beneath Tiger Stadium. One that emerged into a player's parking area on the other side of an unnamed street. So there is no confusion, here are the exact quotes.

What follows is a snippet from an interview I completed with Charlie Sanders on Jan. 27, 2007. He's talking about leaving Tiger Stadium after learning of Chuck Hughes' death. “By that time, word had made it outside to the wives, where they used to wait for us in that old tunnel down under Tiger Stadium. Every time the door would open and a player would come out, you could hear the sobbing coming from inside.”

What follows is a snippet from an interview I completed with Tommy Vaughn on Jan. 14, 2007. He is also talking about when he left Tiger Stadium that day: "I finally got my things together and walked out the ballpark through the old tunnel underneath the stadium. It comes up on the other side of the street in the player’s parking lot. I was getting in my car when I saw one of my guys – he lived down the street from me and I gave him tickets for the game. He yelled out to me, ‘Vaughn – how’s Chuck?’ I kind of stopped and finally said, ‘He didn’t make it, man.’ And he says to me, ‘He died?’’ And I say, ‘Yeah. Chuck died.’ I couldn’t believe I was actually saying that."

So ... can anyone ... anyone ... confirm that there was a parking lot for the Detroit Lions' players *beyond* the confines of Tiger Stadium? Perhaps off Cochrane? Or Michigan Avenue? A lot that was connected to Tiger Stadium via some underground tunnel of some type?

Well ... all I can do now is wait and hope someone who comes here can assist me. Thank you in advance!