MAY 13 • 2021 | 43

T

hey weren’t born in 1999, when the 
Detroit Tigers played their final 
game at Tiger Stadium after calling 
the iconic ballpark home since 1912.
But the 14 players on the Frankel Jewish 
Academy baseball team experienced the 
aura of the magical place at Michigan and 
Trumbull on a warm spring afternoon and 
evening April 27 when they faced Detroit 
Cristo Rey at The Corner Ballpark, where 
Tiger Stadium once stood.
The Jaguars were swept in the Catholic 
League doubleheader at the Willie Horton 
Field of Dreams.
They fell 11-9 in the first game despite 
coming from behind several times. Cristo 
Rey won the nightcap 22-5 as FJA ran out 
of pitching.
The scores really didn’t matter.
“
After the second game, under the lights 
there, we gathered as a team and I told the 
guys to take it all in, take a breath,
” said FJA 
coach Joe Bernstein.
“I think their parents were more excited 

about being where Tiger Stadium once was 
than they were.
“So I told the guys they just played where 
Ty Cobb and Hank Greenberg played. 
Where the Tigers won the final game of the 
1984 World Series. Who else can say that?
“For me, it was great seeing people who 
live in the apartments down the right field 
line watch us play from their patios. There 
they were. Spending their afternoon watch-
ing Frankel Jewish Academy play Cristo 
Rey in a high school baseball game.
”
Junior Benji Schmeltz pitched and played 
shortstop for the Jaguars during the double-
header. Junior Daniel Bernstein, the coach’s 
son. played first base for FJA.
Not surprisingly, the teens were more 
impressed with the ambiance of The Corner 
Ballpark — the turf, below-field-level dug-
outs and views of the city — than the histo-
ry of the site.
“It was so different than any high school 
field I’ve played on,
” Schmeltz said.
“It was cool seeing Downtown Detroit 

all around us. I also liked the dugouts. You 
only see those kind of dugouts at a major 
league or collegiate stadium.
”
Daniel Bernstein’s biggest memory from 
the day was when the FJA team first took 
the field after arriving The Corner Ballpark 
quite a while before game time.
“It was great soaking it all in,
” he said.
Joe Bernstein isn’t a native Detroiter. He’s 
from St. Louis. He made just one trip to 
Tiger Stadium before it was shut down in 
1999 and demolished in 2009.
That was in 1995, when he and his wife 
were visiting his wife’s family.
He doesn’t remember the game, but 
he does remember, like many Detroiters, 
“walking across the bridge over the freeway 
to get to the stadium, and my feet sticking 
to the ground at our seats.
”
FJA was supposed to play Cristo Rey 
last spring at The Corner Ballpark, which 
opened in 2018, is home to Detroit Police 
Athletic League teams, and next to the PAL 
headquarters.
But spring high school sports were 
canceled by the Michigan Department 
of Health and Human Services and the 
MHSAA because of the COVID-19 pan-
demic, wiping out the Jaguars’ first game at 
The Corner Ballpark and Bernstein’s first 
season as FJA
’s coach.
“Getting to play there [last month] was 
Cristo Rey’s doing. We’re very thankful to 
them,
” Joe Bernstein said.
“We hope we can play there again, maybe 
as the home team. We don’t have a home 
field. We’re always searching for a place to 
play our home games.
”
While there are 14 players on the FJA 
roster, only 12 played in the doubleheader 
vs. Cristo Rey because two players were 
injured.
This is a young Jaguars team, with only 
two seniors and two juniors, and the rest 
sophomores and freshmen.
Ari Partrich, one of the seniors, had two 
hits in the first game against Cristo Rey. 
So did Schmeltz. Freshman Ryan Schmeltz 
pitched four strong innings.
The Jaguars won their first game in two 
years May 3, beating Royal Oak Shrine 
17-11 to improve their season record to 1-3.
“We’re building our program the right 
way. We’re not taking shortcuts,
” Joe 
Bernstein said. “I’m seeing leadership start-
ing to emerge, which is important.
” 

A Doubleheader at 
Michigan and Trumbull

Frankel Jewish Academy baseball team plays at 
historic site of Tiger Stadium.

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

FJA third 
baseman Ethan 
Baker snares a 
ground ball hit 
by a Cristo Rey 
batter with his 
bare hand.

FJA’s Ari Michaels 
fouls off a Cristo 
Rey pitch.

IMAGES BY BRIAN SEVALD

SPORTS

