J. Kyle Keener/The Detroit Free Press
In 1997, John Butsicaris, then 76, was still working six days a week at the Lindell. More Photos »
For more than a century, the city of Detroit has been driven by a pair of powerful but erratic engines: cars and sports. Detroiters are no strangers to the sorrows these engines can bring: layoffs, factory shutdowns, losing streaks, even winless seasons. Yet, many Detroiters are feeling giddy these days. The auto industry has come roaring back from the brink of ruin, and the Tigers are back in the playoffs for the second straight year — routine stuff in the Bronx, perhaps, but something that hasn't happened in the Motor City since the 1930s.
Craig Porter/The Detroit Free Press
The Lindell A.C. was crowded in August of 1975, years after Billy Martin fought his own player there, and Paul Hornung and Alex Karras gambled there. More Photos »
To top it off, the star of this year's Tigers is a slugger named Miguel Cabrera, who led the American League in home runs, batting average and runs batted in, a trifecta last accomplished nearly half a century ago by Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox, and by only a handful of others in the history of the game.
The team plays in a sparkling downtown park that was built a dozen years ago and named, to the dismay of many purists, after a bank. More than three million fans have passed through its turnstiles so far this year, and it's a safe bet that many of them don't remember or have managed to forget the team's previous home, a great sooty iceberg built in 1912 just west of downtown. Tiger Stadium is gone to dust now, memories of it growing dimmer every time Cabrera whacks another ball over the outfield wall at Comerica Park.
But Detroiters tend to have a deep, quirky sense of pride, and more than a few of them will tell you that there's a bygone relic even more worthy of mourning than Tiger Stadium. Or the downtown J. L. Hudson department store. Or Cass Tech High School, whose alumni roster includes John DeLorean, Lily Tomlin and Diana Ross.
That other place was a bar called the Lindell A.C. It was in an unexceptional-looking brick building a few blocks from Tiger Stadium, but it became a legend, a place where the famous rubbed elbows with the unknown.
It was first opened in 1949 in the no-star Lindell Hotel by Meleti Butsicaris. In the 1950s, a regular customer suggested putting signed photographs of athletes on the walls. He even showed Butsicaris and his sons, Johnny and Jimmy, how to cut a baseball bat in half lengthwise, the better to screw it into the wall. Soon other bats and baseballs, hockey sticks and pucks were added, along with the jerseys of local gods like Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Gordie Howe and Dave Bing, a Pistons star who is now the mayor of Detroit. But the maraschino cherry on the memorabilia was surely Lions linebacker Wayne Walker's jockstrap, which was fastened to a plaque in a prominent place on the barnacled walls. The customer who came up with the original suggestion about hanging the signed photographs was a Yankees infielder named Billy Martin.
After relocating to the corner of Michigan and Cass Avenues in 1963, the Butsicaris family added "A.C." to the name at the suggestion of a local sports columnist and repeat customer named Doc Greene — a wry swipe at the swells who patronized the nearby Detroit Athletic Club. The Lindell A.C.'s burgers were out of this world, there were three television sets, and the place was always jumping. Jimmy Butsicaris installed himself at the corner of the bar every night, where he could keep one eye on the door and one on the cash register. "He didn't want to have any seepage," the owner of a nearby bar says. "And he wanted to know everybody who walked in that door — cop or robber, friend or foe." For foes, Jimmy kept a set of brass knuckles in his pocket.
In 1963, Pete Rozelle, the commissioner of the N.F.L., suspended Paul Hornung, the golden boy of the Green Bay Packers, and Lions defensive lineman Alex Karras for gambling on games in the Lindell A.C. Rozelle also ordered Karras to divest himself of his one-third interest in the saloon. Hornung was contrite; Karras was outraged. The scandal was excellent for the Butsicarises's business.
To work out his anger, Karras took up professional wrestling during his suspension. One night, he and a future opponent, Dick the Bruiser, went at each other inside the Lindell A.C., an epic brawl that left the place — and Karras — in tatters.
Bill Morris grew up in Detroit in the 1950s and '60s. He is the author of the novels "Motor City" and "All Souls' Day," and has finished another, "Vic #43," set during the 1967 Detroit riot and the Tigers' 1968 championship season.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 10, 2012
Because of an editing error, a picture credit with an article on Tuesday about Lindell A.C., a famous bar near Tigers Stadium in Detroit that closed in 2002, misidentified the photographer. The picture of memorabilia on the wall of the bar was taken by John T. Greilick of The Detroit News, not J. Kyle Keener of The Detroit Free Press.
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