Detroit Tigers: Why Are the Tigers the Tigers?

If you have ever been to Detroit, it is quite obvious that tigers have not dominated the actual landscape. So how did the Detroit Tigers baseball team get its name?

The Detroit Tigers is one of the oldest teams in Major League Baseball, at least when it comes to teams remaining in their original locations. But, despite the longevity of the baseball team in Detroit, there is actually very little information about the origin of the unlikely name. It is easy to figure out where teams like the Baltimore Orioles or the Tampa Bay Rays got their names – but there are not any tigers in Detroit – except for Kisa and Kol.

The stories about the original of the name comes from an unlikely place: the team’s socks. In the early days of baseball, the oldest team remaining in baseball – the Cincinnati Reds – was named for the players’ red socks. In 1869, the team was actually called the Red Stockings. Another old baseball team, the Chicago White Sox, was also originally named the White Stockings, until the media shortened it to “Sox.” It is also obvious that the Boston Red Sox were also named for their colorful stockings.

Prior to recognizing teams for their stocking colors, they were simply known by the cities they represented. Eventually, teams needed names. So, the original Detroit team was named for the University of Michigan Wolverines. The National League Detroit Wolverines played together from 1881 to 1888 and actually won the World Series in 1887. They also managed to rock some amazing mustaches and pinstripes back then. Unfortunately, Detroit was actually a small town of only about 110,000 people in the 1880s. This was not enough to support a big-league team, so baseball came and went and came and went.

Eventually, a minor league team came to the small town of Detroit and the residents were interested enough to have it stay. The team was also called the Wolverines, but the name remained unofficial. Since the team needed an official name, they asked for one in 1896 and it stuck.

How the name was given has two stories. One is connected to the stockings the team wore. This is the unofficial story. Supposedly, the team wore socks with black and orange stripes – so “Tigers” stuck. This story does not show up until George Stallings managed the team, but the team name appears in literature prior to his tenure as the skipper in 1901. Officially, the team never wore orange stripes on their stockings until the 1920s.

The other story – the official story – comes from the Civil War and the time the team was a part of the Western League. The Detroit Light Guard was a military group that fought with the ferocity of the jungle beast during the Civil War. The members of that brave group were referred to as Tigers. When the Civil War was over and the Light Guard returned to the city, the residents quickly made them one of the most highly regarded groups ever to come from Detroit. To show respect to the military unit, the baseball team asked for the unit’s permission to use their name. Permission was granted and the name stuck around.

Once the team joined the American League, the media used the name “Tigers” regularly by 1904. More of this history can be read in the book A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium by Richard Bak, which is published by the Tigers’ neighbor, the Wayne State University Press.

Next: Read about the 1968 Tigers in Pitch by Pitch

While the Internet is full of questions and explanations about the different Old English D’s on their uniforms and caps, the answer to the question “why the Tigers wear blue” is more difficult to find. Orange is clearly a reference to the tigers of the jungle, but no tiger has blue fur. Could the blue be a reference back to the Wolverines or to the Light Guard that may have worn blue as a part of the Union army? Possibly.