Baseball in Detroit
Baseball in Detroit
I can only speculate that baseball was once a special and marvelous thing in Detroit. I can’t say for sure what it really was because I’ve only heard from other older people what it was once like. The Tigers won the World Series eight months after I was born. They last made the playoffs when I was three. And they last had a winning season when I was nine.
Since I can remember, the World Series has been that heralded mythical matchup of two teams that other people in another part of the country root for. It’s the thing you pretend to play in, that you picture yourself in when you’re seven years old playing ball in your backyard with the neighbor kids. It’s the bottom of the ninth and you’re down by two with two outs and there are three guys on base. Actually, your brother is on third base and it might be the eleventh inning because you stopped counting. It’s all in your head. The World Series for me has been somewhere in my mind next to being an astronaut or becoming a superhero.
October, to the Michigan baseball fan, has become someone else’s month. It’s when we pick a fallback team and root for them. It’s that time of year when we root against the Yankees. We try to pick the outcome so we might have something to enjoy. Cards in six, I said last year. For a long time, lots of people forgot there was baseball in Michigan.
And I think I did, too.
The Tigers were never really bad when I was a kid. I watched them on television with my family and collected their cards as best I could on a second-grader’s budget. One pack a week, as I recall. Every Saturday, my brother and I would ride with Dad in his Nova to Sportscard Stadium, where we’d buy a pack and Dad would ogle all of the old baseball cards. The Tigers were our team, then. They were only a few years removed from a good playoff run, but I didn’t know or care much about the playoffs. All of their players were, in my mind, the best ones. I remember Tony Phillips’ batting stance, and Cecil Fielder’s 51-homer season. I remember Travis Fryman and even Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell. A few times, we made the road trip to Tiger Stadium. I had the privilege of watching baseball at the corner before it moved over to Comerica.
But then in 1994, there was a strike and I stopped caring because all of those guys I watched on TV just wanted more money.
And since the strike, the Tigers have given us little reason to watch. Sparky Anderson left and Buddy Bell took over. Gibby, Tram, and Lou got old. Higgy joined the team and wouldn’t go away. While the skipper changed hands from Buddy Bell to Larry Parrish to Phil Garner to Luis Pujols to Alan Trammell, the Tigers lost more than 1100 games. They moved the stadium and named it after a bank and sniffed at a winning record again. While the Tigers continued to field a team that probably couldn’t Juan Gonzalez came to Detroit and did nothing.
All the while everyone forgot that there was baseball in Detroit. In 2003, they became a punch line, striving for the incredible futility-mark of 120 losses.
But it’s 2006, and the Tigers are a new team. A few guys are still around from that abysmal AA-team that lost nearly 120 games – Inge, Monroe, and Infante never left, and Santiago rejoined the team this year. The Tigers pitching staff is not really all that different – Bonderman, Robertson and Maroth all started games this year. Ledezma, Rodney, and Walker are still in the bullpen. But there are a few new faces: Guillen is our MVP. We’ve got Pudge and Maggs and Polly. Granderson is one of my personal favorites. We’ve got talented rookie pitchers in Verlander and Zumaya. And we have a pitching coach in Kenny Rogers in our starting rotation. All of this after a disappointing, inactive off-season.
They started to win early this year. They were 7-7, and most of us who’d been following the team for a while knew they’d be better than before. Jim Leyland was the manager now. And somehow, that was the tipping point for the Detroit Tigers. Bless Alan Trammell all you want, but a new personality in the dugout, particularly like Leyland, wouldn’t let them lose anymore. By May, they were in first place above the defending champion White Sox. They cruised to 40 games above .500 – this from a team which hadn’t had a winning season in 13 years, and finished 20 below .500 last year.
And everyone remembered that there was baseball in Michigan. Tigers merchandise was everywhere - slung on the department store racks only as long as they could keep it in stock, and sported by everybody who seemed to have forgotten about them. The Tigers were cool again.
They built a ten and a half game lead above the second place White Sox, but it slipped away to the Twins in the latter half of the season. The Tigers would finish the season needing a single win at home against the league’s worst team – the Royals. On the final game of the season, one base hit away from their first ever AL Central division title, they lost the game, getting swept by the Royals and losing the title to the Minnesota Twins, backing into the playoffs to play the $220 million Yankees. But they were in the playoffs. Who could complain? I told myself that I would only be disappointed if they would get swept by the Yankees, which would put a fitting end to an improved but imperfect season.
They dropped game one in New York, but took game two, bringing the best of five series back to Detroit. Then Kenny Rogers pitched. And then Jeremy Bonderman pitched. And we were in the ALCS and the Yankees went home.
And now, we’ve shut down the A’s, and we’re a win away from a sweep and the World Series. The Tigers fan’s mind has struggled to grasp the achievements of this team all year, and it has never been more difficult than it is right now. We’re not picking a fallback team. We’re not calling it for the Mets or Cardinals, or rooting against the Yankees. We’re just enjoying it… taking it in and wondering what comes next.
I don’t know what I’ll do if the Tigers win the World Series. They’ve done no wrong in this postseason, and I have no reason to doubt them now. If they can win the World Series, I will cry. Honest.
The bandwagon doesn’t bother me. I’m excited to have so many people enjoying and loving this team. It’s incredible to have so many people to talk to about Tigers baseball.
It sure is nice to have baseball back in Detroit.
I can only speculate that baseball was once a special and marvelous thing in Detroit. I can’t say for sure what it really was because I’ve only heard from other older people what it was once like. The Tigers won the World Series eight months after I was born. They last made the playoffs when I was three. And they last had a winning season when I was nine.
Since I can remember, the World Series has been that heralded mythical matchup of two teams that other people in another part of the country root for. It’s the thing you pretend to play in, that you picture yourself in when you’re seven years old playing ball in your backyard with the neighbor kids. It’s the bottom of the ninth and you’re down by two with two outs and there are three guys on base. Actually, your brother is on third base and it might be the eleventh inning because you stopped counting. It’s all in your head. The World Series for me has been somewhere in my mind next to being an astronaut or becoming a superhero.
October, to the Michigan baseball fan, has become someone else’s month. It’s when we pick a fallback team and root for them. It’s that time of year when we root against the Yankees. We try to pick the outcome so we might have something to enjoy. Cards in six, I said last year. For a long time, lots of people forgot there was baseball in Michigan.
And I think I did, too.
The Tigers were never really bad when I was a kid. I watched them on television with my family and collected their cards as best I could on a second-grader’s budget. One pack a week, as I recall. Every Saturday, my brother and I would ride with Dad in his Nova to Sportscard Stadium, where we’d buy a pack and Dad would ogle all of the old baseball cards. The Tigers were our team, then. They were only a few years removed from a good playoff run, but I didn’t know or care much about the playoffs. All of their players were, in my mind, the best ones. I remember Tony Phillips’ batting stance, and Cecil Fielder’s 51-homer season. I remember Travis Fryman and even Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell. A few times, we made the road trip to Tiger Stadium. I had the privilege of watching baseball at the corner before it moved over to Comerica.
But then in 1994, there was a strike and I stopped caring because all of those guys I watched on TV just wanted more money.
And since the strike, the Tigers have given us little reason to watch. Sparky Anderson left and Buddy Bell took over. Gibby, Tram, and Lou got old. Higgy joined the team and wouldn’t go away. While the skipper changed hands from Buddy Bell to Larry Parrish to Phil Garner to Luis Pujols to Alan Trammell, the Tigers lost more than 1100 games. They moved the stadium and named it after a bank and sniffed at a winning record again. While the Tigers continued to field a team that probably couldn’t Juan Gonzalez came to Detroit and did nothing.
All the while everyone forgot that there was baseball in Detroit. In 2003, they became a punch line, striving for the incredible futility-mark of 120 losses.
But it’s 2006, and the Tigers are a new team. A few guys are still around from that abysmal AA-team that lost nearly 120 games – Inge, Monroe, and Infante never left, and Santiago rejoined the team this year. The Tigers pitching staff is not really all that different – Bonderman, Robertson and Maroth all started games this year. Ledezma, Rodney, and Walker are still in the bullpen. But there are a few new faces: Guillen is our MVP. We’ve got Pudge and Maggs and Polly. Granderson is one of my personal favorites. We’ve got talented rookie pitchers in Verlander and Zumaya. And we have a pitching coach in Kenny Rogers in our starting rotation. All of this after a disappointing, inactive off-season.
They started to win early this year. They were 7-7, and most of us who’d been following the team for a while knew they’d be better than before. Jim Leyland was the manager now. And somehow, that was the tipping point for the Detroit Tigers. Bless Alan Trammell all you want, but a new personality in the dugout, particularly like Leyland, wouldn’t let them lose anymore. By May, they were in first place above the defending champion White Sox. They cruised to 40 games above .500 – this from a team which hadn’t had a winning season in 13 years, and finished 20 below .500 last year.
And everyone remembered that there was baseball in Michigan. Tigers merchandise was everywhere - slung on the department store racks only as long as they could keep it in stock, and sported by everybody who seemed to have forgotten about them. The Tigers were cool again.
They built a ten and a half game lead above the second place White Sox, but it slipped away to the Twins in the latter half of the season. The Tigers would finish the season needing a single win at home against the league’s worst team – the Royals. On the final game of the season, one base hit away from their first ever AL Central division title, they lost the game, getting swept by the Royals and losing the title to the Minnesota Twins, backing into the playoffs to play the $220 million Yankees. But they were in the playoffs. Who could complain? I told myself that I would only be disappointed if they would get swept by the Yankees, which would put a fitting end to an improved but imperfect season.
They dropped game one in New York, but took game two, bringing the best of five series back to Detroit. Then Kenny Rogers pitched. And then Jeremy Bonderman pitched. And we were in the ALCS and the Yankees went home.
And now, we’ve shut down the A’s, and we’re a win away from a sweep and the World Series. The Tigers fan’s mind has struggled to grasp the achievements of this team all year, and it has never been more difficult than it is right now. We’re not picking a fallback team. We’re not calling it for the Mets or Cardinals, or rooting against the Yankees. We’re just enjoying it… taking it in and wondering what comes next.
I don’t know what I’ll do if the Tigers win the World Series. They’ve done no wrong in this postseason, and I have no reason to doubt them now. If they can win the World Series, I will cry. Honest.
The bandwagon doesn’t bother me. I’m excited to have so many people enjoying and loving this team. It’s incredible to have so many people to talk to about Tigers baseball.
It sure is nice to have baseball back in Detroit.
posted by gamble at 10:02 AM
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