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Back in the day, the Lindell AC bar at the corner of Cass and Michigan in downtown Detroit was the place to go before or after a Tigers game. It was a true sports bar, supposedly America's first, and it was often filled with baseball players after games.
The hamburgers were great. Ditto for the atmosphere. One night after a Tigers game, I ended up standing at the jukebox next to baseball legend Reggie Jackson, who was then with the Oakland A's. Jackson returned to his table occupied by a group of star-struck women. As a teenager, I remember thinking, wow, he's a player off the field as well.
Mayor Coleman A. Young went there as did other politicians. My friend, the late Dave Lasky, was friends with the owners, the Butsicaris brohers, Jimmy and Johnny. I always remember one of them puling out a little pearl-handle pistol from his pocket to show us.
Now this a piece of pure Detroit is captured in "Meet Me at The Lindell," a documentary on Detroit Public TV that aired Aug. 24.
The Busicaris were a presence in downtown Detroit.
My friend Marty Greenberg tells me he and Dave Lasky once went to a Tigers' game with Jimmy Butsicaris, weatherman Sonny Eliot and Ozzie Virgil Sr., the first Dominican player in major league baseball, who played for the Tigers in 1958. He was the Tigers' first player of color.
Of Jimmy Butsicaris, Greeberg said: "He was always very nice. He was a tough guy. If you were a friend he took care of you. He had a heart of gold. He knew everyone. Everyone."
The bar closed in 2002. Jimmy died in 1996 and Johnny died in 2011.
