Name-a-Day Calendar, January 15: Detroit Mercy Titans
Page 70 of 365
Chosen in: 1924
Chosen by: School administration
Detroit College was founded in 1877 and began intercollegiate athletics in 1896. In the school’s infancy, its sports teams were called the Tigers. This continued for a few decades; the school became the University of Detroit in 1911 but the team remained the Tigers.
Around this time, another streak of Tigers was taking the city by storm: baseball’s Detroit Tigers actually predated the Detroit College Tigers by two years but their popularity didn’t skyrocket until the first decade of the 20th century. They joined the American League in its inaugural 1901 season, officially becoming a major league team in the process,1 and they won this league three years in a row from 1907 to 1909.2
After a while, the University of Detroit decided they didn’t want to be the second fiddle in Tigertown, so they switched their nickname to “Titans” in 1924.
All of this came before the “Mercy” part of the name was even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. The Sisters of Mercy founded the Mercy College of Detroit in 1941. This new school and the older University of Detroit, both Catholic institutions, would merge in 1990 to become the University of Detroit Mercy.
The Titans’ mascot, Tommy Titan, was introduced in 1975 and can likely be traced back to Dick Vitale, the men’s basketball head coach at the time.
Previous page: DePaul Blue Demons
Next page: Drake Bulldogs
Find every page at the Name-a-Day Calendar hub!
Did you know the Tigers won their first game as a major league team via a 10-run comeback in the bottom of the ninth? Probably common knowledge to most Tigers fans but a fun discovery for this Twins fan.
They lost all three resulting World Series, the 1907 and 1908 editions to the Chicago Cubs and the 1909 edition to the Pittsburg Pirates. (No, that’s not a typo; Pittsburg didn’t officially get the trailing “h” until 1911.)