Sports in Detroit and MichiganWhere’s the game tonight?

On April 15, 1952, Pete and Jerry Cusimano, two Eastern Market store owners, tossed an octopus onto the ice at Olympia Stadium. The eight arms stood for the eight wins it took to win the Stanley Cup back then, and that night the Red Wings finished a perfect 8-0 run to the Cup. The Cup has since grown to 16 wins, but the octopus stuck around.

In 1995 fans threw 36 octopuses onto the ice in a single game, and that same year the club made it official with a mascot, Al the Octopus. He's named after Al Sobotka, the arena's operations manager and Zamboni driver, who scooped the octopuses off the ice and twirled them over his head while the crowd cheered.

The nickname was born in 1996 as a Red Wings marketing campaign and got painted at center ice at Joe Louis Arena. It sat out for a while at the new arena, but for the club's 100th season in 2025-26 a fan vote put the Hockeytown wordmark back at center ice, next to a redrawn 1934 Winged Wheel.

Eleven: 1936, 1937, 1943, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008. That makes Detroit the most successful American-based team in NHL history. On top of that, the Wings made the playoffs 25 seasons in a row, from 1991 to 2016.

On October 27, 1995, in Calgary, coach Scotty Bowman sent out five Soviet-trained players together for the first time: forwards Sergei Fedorov, Igor Larionov and Slava Kozlov, plus defensemen Slava Fetisov and Vladimir Konstantinov. With their passing, puck-possession style, Detroit won its first Stanley Cup in 42 years in 1997 and repeated in 1998. Konstantinov's career ended in a limousine crash just days after the 1997 title.

Gordie Howe played 26 NHL seasons, 1,687 games of them for the Red Wings, and his 801 goals stood as the record until Wayne Gretzky passed him in 1994. He remains the oldest player ever to skate in an NHL game, at 52 years and 11 days. The Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, open to traffic since July 27, 2026, carries his name.

From 1927 it was Olympia Stadium at Grand River and McGraw, better known as the Old Red Barn. In 1979 the team moved to Joe Louis Arena on the riverfront and closed it out with a 4-1 win over the New Jersey Devils on April 9, 2017; Little Caesars Arena has been home ever since. It's also where women's pro team PWHL Detroit starts out, with its first home game at noon on December 12, 2026, against the New York Sirens.

The franchise started in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1937. Owner Fred Zollner's company made pistons for cars, so the team became the Fort Wayne Pistons. In 1957 Zollner announced the move to Detroit, where the name fit the Motor City perfectly.

Chuck Daly's tough, physical Pistons, with Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman. In 1989 they swept the Lakers for Detroit's first NBA title, with Dumars as Finals MVP. In 1990 they beat Portland in five, and Isiah Thomas took Finals MVP.

The 'Goin' to Work' Pistons, a blue-collar group, beat the star-studded Lakers 4-1 in the 2004 Finals, closing it out 100-87 in Game 5. Chauncey Billups was Finals MVP, with Ben Wallace anchoring the defense. The basketball world was shocked. Detroit wasn't.

The suburban arena opened in 1988 and was the Pistons' home until they moved back downtown to Little Caesars Arena in 2017. The Palace was imploded on July 11, 2020. Since October 7, 2019, the team's practice facility and headquarters has been the $90 million Henry Ford Detroit Pistons Performance Center in New Center.

Dave Bing, the former Pistons star who went into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1990. He was elected mayor of Detroit in a special election on May 5, 2009, won a full term that November, and chose not to run again in 2013.

Yes. The Detroit Shock won WNBA titles in 2003, 2006 and 2008, and on June 30, 2025, the WNBA awarded Detroit a new expansion team. It starts play in 2029 at Little Caesars Arena, with an ownership group led by Pistons owner Tom Gores and his wife, Holly.

In 2023-24 they lost 28 straight, the longest single-season losing streak in NBA history, before snapping it against Toronto on December 30, 2023. A year later they were back in the playoffs at 44-38, and in 2025-26 they went 60-22 to finish first in the East, winning their first Central Division title in 18 years. Cleveland beat them in seven games in the conference semifinals.

George A. Richards, the radio man who brought the team to Detroit, scheduled a Thanksgiving game against the Chicago Bears in 1934 and put it on a 94-station NBC Radio network. The Bears won 19-16, but a tradition was born. The only gap since was six seasons, from 1939 to 1944.

Richards bought the Portsmouth Spartans of Ohio for $8,000 and moved them to Detroit in 1934. The Lions won the NFL title in just their second Detroit season, 1935, and again in 1952, 1953 and 1957. Richards picked the blue after admiring the Pacific on a trip to Hawaii, hence Honolulu Blue.

The NFL Draft took over downtown from April 25 to 27, 2024, and more than 775,000 people showed up over three days, an all-time record at the time. Pittsburgh topped it in 2026 with 805,000. Detroit is still proud it showed everybody how a draft is done.

Detroit still asks. In 1997 he ran for a league-best 2,053 yards, and after 15,269 career yards he called it quits following the 1998 season. He announced it in July 1999 with a fax to The Wichita Eagle, and went into the Hall of Fame in 2004.

Calvin Johnson, the Lions receiver a teammate nicknamed after the Transformers villain. In 2012 he piled up 1,964 receiving yards, the NFL single-season record. He went into the Hall of Fame in 2021.

The old Hudson's department store warehouse from the 1920s, built right into the stadium's design. Ford Field opened with a preseason game against the Steelers on August 24, 2002, seats 65,000, and hosted Super Bowl XL on February 5, 2006. Before that, the Lions played at the Pontiac Silverdome from 1975 to 2001.

After decades of heartbreak, the Lions won their first division title since 1993 in the 2023 season, then beat the Rams 24-23 on January 14, 2024, for their first playoff win in 32 years. In 2024 they went 15-2, the best regular season in franchise history, and earned the NFC's No. 1 seed for the first time. In 2025 they finished 9-8 and missed the playoffs.

Michigan and Trumbull in Corktown: pro baseball was first played here on April 28, 1896, at Bennett Park, and Tiger Stadium later stood on the same spot. The 6,783rd and final game came on September 27, 1999, a sellout and an 8-2 Tigers win. Since March 24, 2018, the site has been home to the Detroit PAL youth sports headquarters and the Willie Horton Field of Dreams.

He could hit like nobody else: his .366 career batting average is the all-time record, and he won 12 American League batting titles, nine of them in a row from 1907 to 1915. When the Baseball Hall of Fame held its first election in 1936, he got the most votes: 222 of 226.

Four times: over the Chicago Cubs in 1935 and 1945, the St. Louis Cardinals in 1968 and the San Diego Padres in 1984. The 1968 hero was Mickey Lolich, with three complete-game wins, two of them with Detroit facing elimination, including the winner-take-all Game 7 in St. Louis. Lolich died on February 4, 2026, at 85.

The Tigers opened 35-5 through May 24, the best 40-game start in Major League history. They finished 104-58, led their division wire to wire, and beat the Padres four games to one in the World Series.

The Detroit Stars were a charter member of the Negro National League in 1920 and played at Hamtramck Stadium from 1930. It's one of only five Negro League home ballparks still standing, on the National Register of Historic Places since July 31, 2012, with its grandstand restored and reopened in 2022. Hall of Famer Turkey Stearnes starred for the Stars.

A carousel and a Ferris wheel inside the ballpark, statues of Tigers greats Cobb, Gehringer, Greenberg, Horton, Kaline and Newhouser behind left-center, and nine giant tiger sculptures, the biggest 15 feet tall at the shoulder. It opened on April 11, 2000, on a 34-degree day, with a 5-2 win over Seattle. On September 21, 2026, the club announced it becomes Fifth Third Park starting with the 2027 season.

In 2012 he became baseball's first Triple Crown winner since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, leading the league in average, home runs and RBIs. He hit his 500th homer in Toronto on August 22, 2021, and got hit number 3,000 at Comerica Park on April 23, 2022. Only seven players in history have reached both marks.

A grass field on Belle Isle: that's where the Detroit City Futbol League, a co-ed rec league of teams from the city's neighborhoods, started in 2010. The turf was the very grass moved over from the Pontiac Silverdome after the 1994 World Cup. The club itself was founded in 2012 by a group of young Detroiters and goes by Le Rouge.

DCFC's supporters' group, founded in 2012 by brothers Ken and Gene Butcher, who along with Drew Gentry started bringing drums, flags and smoke bombs to matches. The smoke has rules now: only after DCFC goals, with gloves on and a signed team waiver. In the East Grandstand the core stands and sings the whole match.

The Hamtramck stadium was Michigan's first WPA project, built under President Roosevelt's Depression-era public works program, and Roosevelt himself came to the 1936 opening. In 2016 DCFC renovated it with money from its own fans: more than $740,000 in 109 days, a debt the club paid off in 2020, two years ahead of schedule.

It won three NISA finals: the Fall Championship, 2-1 over the Oakland Roots on October 2, 2020; the Legends Cup, 3-0 over Chattanooga on April 25, 2021; and the NISA Final, 1-0 over the LA Force on July 3, 2021. Since 2022 it's been in the USL Championship, the American second tier.

At Michigan Avenue and 20th Street, on the old Southwest Detroit Hospital site, where Corktown meets Mexicantown. Ground was broken on the 15,000-seat AlumniFi Field on July 15, 2026, with a planned 2028 opening. The $150 million-plus stadium is privately owned and privately financed.

For the 1994 World Cup, the Pontiac Silverdome got a special natural grass surface. It had a test run in June 1993, when Germany beat England 2-1 in the first international soccer match ever played indoors on natural grass. In the summer of 1994 the same turf hosted four World Cup matches.

Michigan Stadium officially holds 107,601, the largest venue in North America and the third-largest in the world. The record is 115,109 fans for a 41-30 win over Notre Dame on September 7, 2013, the biggest crowd ever at a college or NFL game. It opened on October 1, 1927, and the 100th birthday party is set for 2027.

That's what everyone calls Michigan vs. Ohio State in football, one of the most famous rivalries in college sports. They first met on October 16, 1897, and it's been the big one between the two neighboring states ever since. The 2026 edition kicks off at noon on Saturday, November 28, in Columbus.

Michigan hit 1,000 wins on November 18, 2023, the most in college football history. On January 8, 2024, in Houston, it beat Washington 34-13 for the national championship. That was the program's 12th national title and the first since 1997.

Basketball lives at the 12,707-seat Crisler Center, which opened with a game against Kentucky on December 2, 1967. Hockey plays at Yost Ice Arena: it was dedicated as a field house on November 10, 1923, turned into an ice rink in 1973, and seats 5,800.

On March 26, 1979, in Salt Lake City, Michigan State beat Larry Bird's unbeaten Indiana State 75-64 for its first national title in basketball, with Earvin 'Magic' Johnson named Most Outstanding Player. Title number two came on April 3, 2000, under Tom Izzo, 89-76 over Florida.

Dick Vitale, who went 78-30 with the Detroit Titans from 1973 to 1977 before moving on to coach the Pistons. Detroit Mercy's gym was dedicated as the Memorial Building on May 25, 1952, and has been Calihan Hall since 1977. Spencer Haywood's No. 45 hangs in the rafters, too: he averaged 32.1 points and 22.1 rebounds a game in 1968-69.

On March 21, 2024, in the first round of the NCAA tournament in Pittsburgh, the Oakland Golden Grizzlies knocked off mighty Kentucky 80-76. The hero was Jack Gohlke, with 32 points on 10-of-20 three-point shooting. Back home, the Rochester school plays at the OU Credit Union O'rena.

He came to Detroit from Alabama in 1926, at 12, settled in Black Bottom and started boxing at the Brewster Recreation Center. He became heavyweight champion on June 22, 1937, and his 25 successful title defenses are a division record. Max Schmeling handed him his first pro loss in 1936, but in the rematch two years later Louis knocked him out in two minutes and four seconds.

It's the Monument to Joe Louis by Robert Graham, dedicated on October 16, 1986, at Jefferson and Woodward. Sports Illustrated gave the bronze fist to the Detroit Institute of Arts, so officially it's a museum piece standing on the street. Louis's name was also on Joe Louis Arena, the Red Wings' old riverfront home.

Sugar Ray Robinson did. Like Joe Louis, he grew up in Black Bottom, and he learned the basics at the Brewster Center. Where he was born is still argued over: his birth certificate says Ailey, Georgia, while he himself said Detroit.

The city's Kronk Recreation Center at 5555 McGraw Avenue, where Emanuel Steward became head coach in 1971. That same year his fighters won seven Detroit Golden Gloves titles, and the Kronk red and gold became famous worldwide. The building closed in 2006 and later burned; Steward went into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1996.

Not Tommy Hearns, but Hilmer Kenty, who won a world title on March 2, 1980. Five months later Hearns stopped Pipino Cuevas to become Steward's champion number two. Hearns went on to be the first boxer in history to win world titles in five different weight classes.

On December 10, 2025, Kronk Gym reopened at 670 Wilkins Street, inside the historic Brewster Wheeler Recreation Center. That's the same building where Joe Louis and future legendary trainer Eddie Futch once trained. Detroit's two great boxing traditions now share one roof.

Formula One raced on downtown streets from 1982 to 1988, CART ran there from 1989 to 1991, and in 1992 the race moved to Belle Isle. The island hosted it through 2001, again in 2007 and 2008, and from 2012 to 2022, with the 2020 race canceled by the pandemic. In 2023 the Grand Prix came home to downtown.

Nine turns and 1.7 miles, including a 0.7-mile front stretch on Jefferson Avenue and a one-of-a-kind double-sided pit lane. The May 29-31, 2026, weekend was the city's 36th Grand Prix, and Alex Palou won the IndyCar race. Next up: June 4-6, 2027.

The race returned to Belle Isle in 2012 thanks to his vision, run by a nonprofit subsidiary of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. On November 4, 2019, it was announced that Penske's company would buy the IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On July 31, 2025, Fox took a one-third stake in Penske Entertainment.

Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan: a 2-mile, D-shaped oval designed by Charles Moneypenny that hosted its first race on October 13, 1968. Roger Penske bought it in 1973, and the grandstands later grew from 25,000 to more than 125,000 seats. Denny Hamlin won the NASCAR race on June 7, 2026, and NASCAR weekend returns June 18-20, 2027.

On October 10, 1901, at a horse track in Grosse Pointe, Henry Ford drove his first race car past Alexander Winton, the country's best-known race driver, when Winton's car ran into trouble. The win brought in new investors, who backed the Henry Ford Company. Ford split from them in 1902 and founded Ford Motor Company in 1903.

On the third Saturday of August (August 15 in 2026), classic cars cruise up and down Woodward Avenue all day. The first one, in August 1995, was a fundraiser for a soccer field in Ferndale, and nearly 250,000 people showed up, ten times what anyone expected. It's now North America's largest one-day automotive event, with nearly a million people and 40,000 classic cars every year.

The first PGA TOUR event ever held inside the city of Detroit, played for eight years on Detroit Golf Club's North Course, a 1916 Donald Ross design. The final edition ran July 30 to August 2, 2026, and Michael Thorbjornsen won it at 18 under for his first PGA TOUR title. The 2027 schedule has no Detroit stop.

Blame Ben Hogan. He won the 1951 U.S. Open here and said afterward he was glad he'd brought this course, 'this monster', to its knees. The name has stuck to the Bloomfield Hills course ever since.

Six U.S. Opens (1924, 1937, 1951, 1961, 1985, 1996), three PGA Championships (1972, 1979, 2008) and the 2004 Ryder Cup. The South Course closed for 21 months on October 1, 2019, while Gil Hanse restored Donald Ross's original design. Most of the clubhouse burned down on February 17, 2022.

Oakland Hills has the next few decades booked: the U.S. Women's Amateur in 2029, the U.S. Women's Open in 2031 and the U.S. Open in 2034. After that come the 2038 U.S. Girls' Junior, the 2042 U.S. Women's Open, the 2047 U.S. Amateur and the 2051 U.S. Open.

His 11 major championships rank third all-time, behind only Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. In 1918 Oakland Hills hired him as its first professional for $300 a month, and in 1919, playing out of Oakland Hills, he won his second U.S. Open.

Horton Smith, who won the very first Masters in 1934. In 1946 he became head professional at Detroit Golf Club and stayed until his death in 1963.

The boxing legend was the first African American to play in a PGA-sanctioned tournament, and from 1941 to 1951 he ran his own Joe Louis Open to showcase Black golfers. On October 7, 2025, the city unveiled a bronze statue of Louis the golfer on the Joe Louis Greenway, by Detroit sculptor Austen Brantley.

The Detroit Free Press Marathon is the only international marathon in North America where you cross into Canada over the Ambassador Bridge at sunrise, then come back to the U.S. through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, under the river. The bridge has been part of the course since 1999.

Neal Shine's, the Detroit Free Press managing editor, who came back from the Falmouth Road Race in 1978 with a bold idea. It has since grown into Michigan's largest road race. The course records belong to Greg Meyer (2:13:07, 1980) and Elena Orlova (2:34:16, 2004).

Race weekend runs October 16 to 18, 2026, and the marathon starts at 7 a.m. on Sunday, October 18. It's sold out, and so is the international half. There's also a second half marathon, a marathon relay, a 5K, a 1-mile race, a Kids Marathon and, for the littlest runners, the Little Detroit Dash.

Because you cross a border twice. The international races require a valid travel document, and for Americans an enhanced driver's license from states like Michigan counts. Heads up: a past OWI/DUI conviction can get you turned away by Canada unless you've arranged special permission in advance.

Detroit's St. Patrick's run in Corktown, always on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day. There's a kids' quarter mile, the Emerald Mile and the Corktown 5K, and then the St. Patrick's Parade rolls through. Proceeds support the St. Patrick Senior Center.

On Thanksgiving morning, before Detroit's big parade, thousands of runners hit the street, plenty of them in costume: it's 'the Parade before The Parade,' a tradition for more than 40 years. Pick the 10K, the 5K or the mile. In 2026 it's on November 26, with the 10K and mile at 7:30 a.m. and the 5K at 8:30 a.m.