Sports

'Detroit Week' On Grantland Features Motor City Cultural And Sports History

April 16, 2014, 4:20 PM

Grantland, the critically acclaimed sports and pop-culture website, is doing a deep dive into Detroit's recent history this week. The result is a rich and entertaining look at some of the region's legendary people, places and teams. 

"Few cities have as rich a cultural and sporting history as Detroit," Grantland says in an introduction to its stories.

"From the ’80s Pistons to Bob Seger, Eminem to Miguel Cabrera, the Motor City is a rich tapestry of compelling figures, unbelievable moments, and uniquely American ingenuity."

Grantland, started by Bill ("The Sports Guy") Simmons, has a relationship with ESPN, and the Detroit content is linked to the cable network's "Bad Boys" documentary about the famous Pistons teams of the 1980s that airs Thursday at 8 p.m.

The Detroit-centric subjects include the Tigers' Dave Dombrowski; the Lions' Barry Sanders; Eminem; Elmore Leonard; the Red Wings of 1988-89; Bob Seger; the gym at St. Cecilia, an incubator of NBA talent; and the Red Wings' 23-season streak of making the playoffs. The series continues through Friday.

In "The Dickens of Detroit,"  Michael Weinreb takes readers on a tour of metro Detroit's sights and sounds through the writing of Leonard, at the same time telling the story of the man who is "arguably the most impactful writer in the history of a city that has been essentially told to bag its own ass more than once in recent years."

Weinreb writes:

The tall, skinny building at 1300 Lafayette sits on the outskirts of downtown, and in Chapter 4 of "City Primeval," two of the best pages of prose Leonard has ever written about his hometown are set there. You want to know what elevated Leonard’s bad guys into something more than caricatures? Here it is, in a description of Clement Mansell staring out the window and scanning the entire city, panning across the river to Windsor, to the towers of the Renaissance Center that now make up General Motors’ headquarters, to the concrete remnants of downtown, to the little pocket of Greektown (“he could almost smell the garlic”) and to the police headquarters at 1300 Beaubien and to the nearby Frank Murphy Hall of Justice (“where they had tried to nail Clement’s ass one time and failed”) — all that blight and halfhearted urban renewal witnessed through the eyes of a cold-blooded killer. It’s cold and ruthless and withering, and then the scene ends with Clement looking up at the sky and wondering if his mother might be floating out there somewhere in space. 

In "Losing Yourself All Over Again," Amos Barshad recalls the Detroit rap scene of the 1990s that produced Eminem and, eventually, the film "8 Mile:"

When "8 Mile" hit theaters in the fall of 2002, it was a minor revelation. We hoped it’d be good — we had no idea it’d be that good. Eminem and his unlikely collaborator, director Curtis Hanson — fresh off a whimsical Michael Chabon adaptation, "Wonder Boys" — loosely approximated a few hard days of Marshall Mathers’s come-up in rough-and-tumble ’90s Detroit. Rendered in muted blues and grays, obsessively authentic, and boldly understated, the result was, quite possibly, the best rap movie ever made.

It was also, in no uncertain terms, a love letter to a scene. The movie culminates in a virtuosic sequence: Scarred, reeling, and increasingly inclined to give no fucks, B-Rabbit wades into the grimy dungeon of the Shelter to do battle with his demons — and the Leaders of the Free World.


Read more:  Grantland


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