Well, Bill Acorn, he found this plaque at a fair up on Armada, a swap meet.

He brought it down to me and asked if I could get it reconditioned, which I did.

It's got the signature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and it's got the signature of every single Governor of all the, at that point, 48 states.

BILL: This swap meet discovery made back in the 1980s.

The plaque dates to 1936, a salute to the athletes of Detroit.

The woman who sold it didn't offer much information.

How she got it, I don't know, but she wanted to get rid of it.

And Bill paid her $30 for it.

We gave it to the Historical Museum as it should be.

And I'm not sure if any of us ever really understood what it was.

BILL: The plaque, it went down to storage, which brings us to the state of Detroit sports today.

The Lions last again, the Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons, they're at the bottom now too.

Makes us think of headier times like 13 years ago, when the Wings last took the Stanley Cup.

Four years before that the Pistons won their last championship.

But the Tigers, stunningly bad that year.

The last time the Tigers were champs, 37 years ago.

The Lions, 63 years, way back before the Super Bowl started.

But there was a magical moment when all the Detroit teams were winners all at the same time.

Charles Avison's written books spreading the word of when we were the City of Champions.

The season 1935-36.

It actually says City of Champions, right on the newspaper.

What the season has is the Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, first championships, same season.

You can see in the bottom left hand corner, Joe Louis.

This is the year that Joe Louis rises from an unknown fighter to an international superstar.

We have Eddie Tolan for sprinting.

BILL: The world's fastest human.

This was before Jesse Owens.

CHARLES: We have Gar Wood.

BILL: The speed boat king.

CHARLES: We have Walter Hagen.

BILL: Pro golfer.

Women's tennis or we have billiards.

And this is just 21 of the 33 championships from the season.

Every one of these athletes contributed to the rise of Detroit from a baseball town that had never even won a World Series to one of the great sports towns in the country in only a single year.

BILL: Ty Cobb took the Tigers to the World Series three times but they lost them all, the last time in 1909.

Detroit had been a boom town in the 1920s.

It was like Silicon Valley.

A lot of new money, a lot of people were flush with capital.

The Dodge Brothers and Henry Ford, Chrysler but the depression hit Detroit probably harder than it hit most American cities.

So people needed something to feel positive about.

And in 1935-36, they had a lot to cheer.

Boxing was in a bad way in 1935.

There was no true superstars.

1934, nobody knew who Joe Louis was, complete unknown.

Joe was not actually a champion yet but he was on the verge and everyone knew that Joe Louis was the best fighter, heavyweight fighter in the world.

BILL: 14 matches in 1935, Joe Louis won them all.

The biggest in New York against former champion, Max Baer that September, on the same day Louis got married.

And it is one of the greatest fights you will ever see.

Joe Louis was the first universal African-American superstar.

And after the fight they asked Joe, "Hey, Joe, "where are you gonna go for your honeymoon?"

Joe says, "We gotta get back to Detroit.

"The Tigers are in the World Series.

BILL: The Tigers face the Chicago Cubs in the 35 series.

Detroit had been on a tear since 1934, all because of owner Frank Navin, Unlike all these other Major League owners the baseball team was sort of a fun diversion with their money, they made their money in other businesses.

Frank Navin's business was the Tigers.

BILL: Navin lost big in the stock market crash and suffered a heart attack in 1933.

Friends told him he should sell the team Frank Navin doesn't sell the team.

He takes a gamble, the biggest gamble of his life.

And rather than sell the team, he borrows $100,0000 and he goes out and pays to the Philadelphia Athletics and he gets Mickey Cochran.

BILL: Mickey Cochran took over as Tigers player manager.

Going into spring training of 1934, the media gets to Mickey Cochran and they ask him, "Hey, Mickey, "how you think the Tigers are gonna do this year?"

He says, "We're going to the World Series."

And he says to them, "You don't know how to win.

"It all starts with believing that you can do it."

BILL: Other than Cochran, there weren't many standout players.

Among them second baseman, Charlie Gehringer Gehringer was pretty much their only star.

BILL: Soon there'd be another, the first baseman from the Bronx.

As I got older, I learned more about the significance of Hank Greenberg as the Jewish cultural sports hero.

So it was 1934 was his first full season.

And he breaks out in the biggest way.

I mean, he was an absolute smasher in 1934 and 35 he wins the MVP.

You think about Detroit at the time, who was the most popular radio personality?

Father Charles Coughlin and Hank Greenberg is playing in this atmosphere in this city where an internationally known anti-Semitic priest is broadcasting anti-Jewish propaganda in Detroit.

BILL: The tigers lost in the last game of the 34 series to the St.

Louis Cardinals.

Expectations ran high for 35.

And when they asked Mickey Cochran, "Hey, Mickey, "how do you think the tigers are gonna do this year?"

What do you think his answer is?

"We're going back and this time we're gonna win it.

"This time we're gonna win it."

BILL: Cochran, right again.

Beating the Cubs in six games, he even scored the winning run.

ANNOUNCER: The run, it wins the ball game and the World Series.

BILL: Detroit already had seen three failed NFL teams come and go.

The fourth arrived in 1934 from Portsmouth, Ohio.

George Richards bought them.

The guy who owned the Lions was the owner of WJR Radio.

The idea is to bring this talented team to Detroit, name them something along the lines of the Tigers, like to keep it that like, I don't know, maybe the Lions.

Their number one player whose name is Dutch Clark.

He was nicknamed the Ty Cobb of football.

So the idea is that there's a new Ty Cobb in Detroit but he doesn't play baseball.

You gotta come over to University of Detroit field and watch him play for this new team is called the Lions.

BILL: That first year brought a Detroit Thanksgiving tradition.

No TV yet, but on the radio coast to coast.

They finished near the top in 34.

In 35 they'd rally in the last five games to face the New York Giants.

They won the championship on a very cold, blustery day.

Not only did they fail to sell out their tickets but the people who bought them didn't show up.

BILL: The crowds did get bigger and the Lions would move to what would become Briggs Stadium.

Charles Avison's talking hockey for a "City Champions podcast".

We spent an entire episode talking about one of the most fascinating components in Detroit Redwing history, which has never been discussed.

It baffles me that people can be so fanatical about Detroit and Detroit sports but this just isn't on the radar.

This was the first group of guys who won a championship under the Red Wings banner.

And yet their numbers are not retired or names are not hung in the rafters of Little Caesar's arena.

Well, one guy who certainly deserves recognition of a retired jersey, and that would be Ebenezer Goodfellow from Fallowfield, Ontario.

Now how many people do you know, named Ebenezer?

It's unknown and I mean how can it be known?

The whole season's forgotten but in this particular case what we have is Ebbie Goodfellow is the captain of the team, the most revered Redwing.

One of the best players in the entire NHL, gives up his captaincy to Doug Young.

To force Doug Young into the spotlight and say, "Doug, you are a star.

"And we think you're such a star, "we want you to lead us as the captain of this team."

BILL: Ebbie Goodfellow, the guy who stepped up by stepping back.

Well, he was a good fellow.

You just can't beat the name.

Yeah, a good fellow.

BILL: The wings beat Toronto, the city celebrated again and again.

The Detroit Times actually threw this big banquet at the Masonic Temple in April of 1936 and declared Detroit the City of Champions.

Brought a lot of the players and coaches.

It was celebrated as the greatest gathering of champions under a single roof.

BILL: The Tigers, Wings, Lions, Joe Louis and others, they all came.

Since it was a Detroit times event, the news and the free press gave it scant coverage.

The awards were given and then everybody kind of forgot about it.

Things that happened in the twenties and the thirties, they sort of fade out unless there's good film and there's not much good film.

BILL: How does this story of champions live on?

You can find it at the big mall in Novi, an artist co-op store where Charles Avison's been selling and storing his books for the last decade.

So these books got shagged in the water, you can see these boxes are all wet.

BILL: A leak of some sort, one more thing to contend with.

Am I crazy?

Did I find this story and I'm the only one in the world that thinks this is important?

BILL: Sales are slow but will pick up at Christmas time.

A fine gift, but will people spend the time to read it?

Of course Charles wrote the book and then in 2012, Dave Bing re-instituted City of Champions day as April 18th.

And he tasked the Detroit Historical Society with keeping that history alive.

BILL: That includes the plaque Jim Nicholson brought to the museum those decades ago.

Nicholson says he's not a big sports fan but he's had season tickets for the Lions since the seventies Detroit is still a great sports town despite four really bad pro sports teams.

And a lot of people figure, "Oh, if we just hang on there'll be another Ebbie Goodfellow "or another Hank Greenberg to lift us "and carry us to the next championship."

Which might be decades away.

Detroit fans are pretty patient.