Urinals flush with sports history
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Scott Jagow: The Detroit Tigers are hoping they get to sell playoff tickets again this year. The Tigers made the World Series last year, but lost to St. Louis. This season, they’re a few games out with less than two weeks left.
Meanwhile, the city of Detroit is selling something else — pieces of the old Tiger Stadium. Everything must go: the seats, the signs — even the urinals. The city has hired a St. Louis company to handle the auction.
Bruce Schneider is the company’s CEO. Bruce, why would someone want to buy an old stadium urinal?
Bruce Schneider: I don’t know, but they’re bidding on ’em. I mean, when we did this stadium in St. Louis, the one item that got the most billing was a urinal.
Jagow: And how much would someone pay for a urinal, Bruce?
Schneider: Well . . . I’m not sure. We’ll let the market tell us where it’s gonna let up.
Jagow: Now, what else? Since you did this in St. Louis before, what were some of the other items that were popular?
Schneider: Players’ lockers were very popular, turnstiles were popular, which we have at Tiger Stadium also. You know, there’s lots of signage and benches in the dugout. You know, believe it or not, there’s still some field, like tarps and those old, some older-looking protectors that protect the players when they’re, you know, when they’re having practice throughout. There’s a market share for everything, it seems like.
Jagow: And some of these things go for thousands of dollars.
Schneider: On one of the items already in Detroit, we’re up to close to a couple thousand dollars on a 1968 World Series banner.
Jagow: What does the money go toward?
Schneider: I’m not in charge of, you know, that part of it, but I think they’re going to, you know, try to leave the field in tact to leave that for Little League and younger players to play baseball on and preserve some of the older, more interesting pieces of that stadium. And then demo the parts that are gonna be developed, I guess, I’m just guessing, into condominiums or shopping or commercial or retail or whatever they’re gonna do.
Jagow: So your company is just in charge of selling the little pieces of Tiger Stadium.
Schneider: That is correct.
Jagow: Well, since you’re based in St. Louis, did you get something from Busch Stadium?
Schneider: You know, I got some little trinkets and so forth — my son actually got some stuff. But I try not to get too attached.
Jagow: All right Bruce, thanks for joining us.
Schneider: My pleasure.
Jagow: Bruce Schneider is CEO of Schneider Industries, an auction company based in St. Louis. In Los Angeles, I’m Scott Jagow. Thanks for joining us. Have a great day.
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