In place of the stadium where fans saw players like Ty Cobb and Hank Greenberg play, there is only a small slice of it left.

Tiger Stadium, which hosted many games between 1912 and 1999, has been demolished and hauled away. But its remains are not going into a landfill where they will rot for the rest of eternity. Instead, more than 94% of the concrete (17.4 million pounds), steel (11.4 million pounds) and other resources will be recycled.

Some resources, like the concrete, won’t go very far. It’s estimated that the crushed structural concrete will be used as fill material under roads, parking lots, and foundations. Steel from the stadium could end up being used to make new cars or kitchen appliances, to name a few.

"That's the beauty of metal," said Chip Hering, the executive vice president of Ferrous Processing & Trading Co., which processes scrap metal. "Metal has no memory of what it used to be." One reason that the vast majority of the old stadium is being recycled the fact that scrap prices are up 251% from 2003, meaning that there’s more of a profit to be made. A study by the National Demolition Association found that about 75% of demolition material is usually recycled.

The concrete from the site was sold to a MCM owned yard, where it will be crushed to pebble-size material and used as filler and pavement. The steel and other metals (about 89,000 pounds of aluminum, copper, etc.) went to the Ferrous Processing & Trading yards where it will be cut and shredded before being sold and re-melted.

There’s no way to know where all the material goes, but bits and pieces have started showing up. At some local scrap yards, workers were surprised and delighted when the stadium’s distinctive blue beams showed up. “They got a kick out of it,” said Hering.

The Tigers moved to Comerica Park for the 2000 season, and have remained there since.