Walter Owen Briggs, Sr. (February 27, 1877 – January 17, 1952) was an entrepreneur and professional sports owner. He was part-owner of the Detroit Tigers from 1919 to 1935, and then sole owner from 1935 to his death in 1952. Briggs also helped fund the Detroit Zoo in 1928, and personally paid for many of its first exhibits. He was also a patron of Eastern Michigan University and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
He was elected to The Lambs in 1920 as a non-resident member, in an era when many baseball owners and managers were members. His son, Walter Owen Briggs, Jr., joined the Club 20 years later.
Briggs followed the Detroit Tigers from the time he was young. In his early youth he worked at the Michigan Central Railroad and later opened Briggs Manufacturing Company in 1908, which specialized in the manufacturing of automobile bodies for the auto industry and later diversified into plumbing fixtures. After the death of Tigers’ part-owner Bill Yawkey in 1919, Briggs surviving partner Frank Navin arranged for Briggs and industrialist John Kelsey to buy a 25 percent stake in the club. Briggs had long chafed at not being able to see the Tigers play the Chicago Cubs in the 1908 World Series; he saw his stake in the Tigers as a way to ensure he would never have to worry about getting a seat to a game again. In 1927, Briggs bought Kelsey’s stake to become a full partner with Navin, though he stayed in the background while Navin was alive. After Navin died in 1935, Briggs became the sole owner of the franchise.
Briggs was noted for fielding a well-paid team that won two American League pennants (1940, 1945) and a World Series championship in 1945 under his ownership. He had a reputation for being prejudiced against African-Americans, in part because he refused to sign black players and would only allow black fans to sit in inferior obstructed-view sections at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium). While he employed blacks at his factory, they were subjected to pervasive discrimination and less-than-ideal working conditions. The Tigers did not field their first non-white player until 1958, six years after Briggs’ death, making them the second-to-last team in the majors to integrate (ahead of only the Boston Red Sox).
Briggs died at age 74 in Miami Beach on January 17, 1952. He is interred in the family mausoleum in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. In a 2017 op-ed for the Detroit Free Press, Briggs’ great-grandson, Harvey Briggs, publicly apologized for Walter’s racism in his capacity as Tigers’ owner. Harvey wrote that for all the good his great-grandfather might have done for Detroit, “I cannot overlook one fact. He was a racist.”