Kuzul

He has been, in a way, the Rasputin of the Tigers. Or the poetic feline who possesses nine lives. Take your pick.

They’ve tried running Brandon Inge out of town for about eight years now. It’s all been done to him—free agents and trade acquisitions arriving to play his position (twice), talk radio blazing with anti-Inge venom. The Tigers even designated him for assignment last summer, and traded for a replacement: Wilson Betemit.

Betemit has been signed by the Baltimore Orioles as a free agent. And Inge not only survived his DFA, he made it all the way back to the Tigers’ playoff roster.

Betemit, the man the Tigers traded for to take Inge’s spot on the roster, is gone. And Inge is still here. Figure that one out.

Nature even tried to nudge Inge out of Detroit, vis a vis the infamous bout of mononucleosis that befell him last year, which was likely a factor in his woeful performance at the plate.

Yet here Inge was, as recently as last week, boldly and gamely speaking of seizing, once again, his cherished spot at third base.

He declared himself healthy, and frankly a little ticked off.

“I love Don Kelly,” Inge told the media during the Tigers Winter Caravan last week, speaking of the man he was slated to platoon with at the hot corner. “But I don’t intend on platooning.”

Inge, the player who many Tigers fans either hate to love or love to hate, looked to be working on yet another life wearing the Old English D.

Then came the news that rocked the baseball world.

It started spilling out on Twitter shortly after 3:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.

Prince Fielder, the Herculean free agent first baseman, had been signed by the Tigers. For nine years, at a cost of $214 million.

Inge again became collateral damage, because in order to make room for Fielder—no fat jokes, please—the Tigers planned on moving incumbent first sacker Miguel Cabrera to (drum roll please) third base.

Rim shot!

They’re doing it again to Brandon Inge.

The first time this happened was eight years ago, when the Tigers, coming off a 43-119 debacle, managed to snare free agent catcher Pudge Rodriguez.

Inge was the Tigers’ catcher back then.

Despite Pudge’s Hall of Fame credentials, Inge, with a sour puss, whined about the acquisition. Inge thought himself fit to be the team’s starting catcher, despite a batting average hovering around .200 in 2003.

Inge pointed to his defense, which he felt was akin to Rodriguez’s at the time.

I thought Inge to be a petulant young player back then, with the way he reacted to the (at the time) gargantuan news of Pudge’s signing.

Then in spring training 2008, Inge, the Tigers’ starting third baseman at the time, was displaced by the winter time acquisition of Miguel Cabrera. On Opening Day, Inge found himself in center field, of all places. Soon he was back behind the plate, playing a position he thought he’d left for good after he fell in love with third base.

Meanwhile, the Tigers kept playing musical chairs with their glove men.

Cabrera moved from third base to first base after 14 games. Carlos Guillen switched from first to third. Inge kept catching, and would replace Guillen in the late innings at third base.

Guillen didn’t play after August 25 that year, so Inge reclaimed third base.

In 2009, Inge was an All-Star third baseman, and played the second half of the season on two ravaged knees.

The 2011 season was a disaster for Inge. He didn’t have his health or his strength, and soon he didn’t even have a spot on the Tigers roster. He was roasted daily on sports talk radio. Even after being designated for assignment in July, Inge refused to leave the Tigers, accepting the assignment rather than becoming a free agent. He ended up in Toledo, which wasn’t far enough away for the haters’ liking.

It looked like the end of Inge’s Tigers career. The team traded for Betemit. Inge was a minor leaguer, his teammates mostly 10 years younger than he, or more.

Yet I wondered aloud on “The Knee Jerks” podcast in mid-August whether the Tigers might call Inge back to the big club when rosters expanded on September 1. Wouldn’t it be something, I opined, if Inge returned to the Tigers and became productive?

The Tigers indeed recalled Inge—on August 20, making him eligible for the playoff roster. Leading off the second inning, taking his first hacks as a Tiger in a month, Inge clobbered a home run. The man fans hate to love and love to hate got a curtain call.

That game on August 20 was the first of four multi-hit games Inge would register as he got stronger and more productive. Rasputin was still alive.

As the Tigers’ winter caravan rolled on last week, Inge spoke eagerly about the upcoming season, being healthy and all.

Then came the Fielder signing, and Inge was knocked for a loop yet again.

As manager Jim Leyland put it the other day, Inge is “not the happiest camper” in the wake of the news of Fielder’s blockbuster, totally unforeseen signing.

Leyland told the media at the Fielder press conference on Thursday that he wishes he could have broken the news to Inge personally, instead of the latter finding out the way the rest of us found out.

Normally it wouldn’t matter what a guy who hit .197 last season thinks about player personnel moves. It wouldn’t matter if that player found out by TV, radio, Pony Express or by messenger pigeon.

But there’s something about this crazy, mixed up relationship between Brandon Inge and the Detroit Tigers. And, by extension, the fan base.

It’s a relationship that keeps all parties off balance. Just when Inge thinks he has it made, the rug gets pulled out from under him. And just when the Inge haters who follow the Tigers think they’re rid of him, he re-emerges.

Frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my 41 years of following and covering Detroit sports.

Brandon Inge has, yet again, been nudged out of the picture, and this time there isn’t center field or catcher waiting as a consolation prize.

Even though Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski said Inge “is still an important part of this team,” it’s hard to see how, with Cabrera moving to third base and Alex Avila entrenched at catcher.

Lots of Tigers fans couldn’t care less if Inge is “not the happiest camper” right now. They’re too giddy about Prince Fielder. Duly noted, and understood.

With Brandon Inge, it always seems like there’s someone else. Then it always seems like it’s him again. This has been going on for eight years now.

To quote the Grateful Dead, what a long, strange trip it’s been.

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In a flash, a whirr and a blur, another year in sports came and went. 2011, it seemed, might have been missed had you blinked.

And what a year it was for Detroit sports.

Tigers AND Lions in the playoffs, for the first time in the same year since 1935.

Pistons with a new coach (again).

Red Wings almost coming all the way back from an 0-3 playoff deficit against the San Jose Sharks.

Michigan football resurging under new coach Brady Hoke.

And I wrote about it all—with varying degrees of premonition and soothsaying.

For the fourth year in a row, I take you through the calendar and share some of my bon mots—and why they were or were not some of my favorites.

 

January

(on Steve Yzerman putting together a winner in Tampa Bay)

You can dress him however you like, put him wherever you want, but you can’t take the will to win out of him.

There’s quite a story going on in the NHL, not that you’d know it, because it’s happening to a team closer to Cuba than Canada.

Yzerman is Vice President and General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team that really does play in the NHL; I looked it up.

No team with which Yzerman has been associated has had a losing season since 1991.

Now he’s taking the slapstick Tampa Bay Lightning and making them the new Beasts of the East.

Yzerman is turning the Tampa (freaking) Bay Lightning into winners in his first year on the job.

Surprised?

Stevie’s team made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals, as a matter of fact.

 

(on why the Pistons should hang onto veteran Tracy McGrady)

McGrady might be a Hall of Famer when all is said and done, except not all has been said, and it doesn’t look like all has been done; not even close.

The Pistons signed McGrady last August and it was the quintessential marriage of convenience. McGrady needed the Pistons so he could show the NBA that he still had game, and the Pistons needed another NBA veteran with a name; a player who wasn’t too far removed from his oohs and aahs days.

 The Pistons didn’t need another swingman; in fact, they needed one like a hole in the head. And it wasn’t like NBA teams were knocking McGrady’s door down for his services. But the Pistons figured they could get McGrady on the cheap (which they did), and maybe he could still score a little and provide a veteran presence.

It’s not a bad idea to keep dudes like this on your roster, if you can manage it.

The Pistons decided otherwise, and let McGrady walk away after one season in Detroit.

 

(on the once unthinkable retirement of former Piston Dennis Rodman’s number)

He worked as a janitor at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport after high school, but after another growth spurt he gave hoops another shot.

Keep in mind he played little to no high school basketball.

Turns out Rodman could play the game, after all, mainly because he had a fetish for rebounding. He played a semester for some place called Cooke County College in Gainesville, Texas, averaging over 17 points and 13 rebounds per game.

From there it was on to SE Oklahoma State, an NAIA school—which was not exactly the career path of choice if one hoped to crack the NBA.

The Pistons are going to do something on April 1 that, had you put money down on it in 1986, you’d be breaking the bank right about now.

On that date, Dennis Rodman’s No. 10 Pistons jersey will be raised into the rafters, which is appropriate because that’s often where you could have found Rodman himself, in his salad days as the league’s most ferocious rebounder.

Not long after, Rodman went into the Basketball Hall of Fame, too, for good measure.

 

February

(on the long overdue election of NFL Films founder Ed Sabol into the Pro Football Hall of Fame)

Ed Sabol is still around, thank goodness. He’s 94 years old.

I say thank goodness because only last week did the powers that be deem him worthy of induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

You heard me; it took them nearly 50 years after he fed his first footage into his 16 mm camera to put Ed Sabol into the Hall of Fame.

This is more overdue than a cure for the common cold.

Ed Sabol doesn’t just belong in the Hall of Fame, he should have his own wing. This is like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame realizing it hadn’t yet inducted the electric guitar.

It was very satisfying watching Ed, with son Steve by his side, giving his induction speech.

 

March

(on who should be the Tigers’ starting second baseman)

If I had a vote, I’d cast it for Will Rhymes to be the Tigers’ second sacker.

Rhymes, a lefty bat, is a prototypical second baseman. He’s hard-nosed and the front of his jersey is always dirty. He hit .304 in 191 AB last season, and he only made four errors in 53 games.

He’s a late bloomer, turning 28 on April 1, but that’s still seven years younger than (Carlos) Guillen.

Umm, you can’t win them all. Rhymes did indeed win the job in spring training, but he didn’t hit a lick and was lopped off the 40-man roster earlier this month.

 

(on the importance of leadoff hitter and center fielder Austin Jackson to the Tigers’ cause)

Jackson is the most important because if he gets a case of the sophomore jinxies, and the Tigers don’t have a reliable leadoff hitter, then the house of cards that is the team’s offense gets blown down.

Jackson strikes out a lot, which is understandable for a young player, but also more tolerable when that young player is hitting .300. It’s not so great if the batting average is .250 or .260.

Well, the batting average was .249, and the strikeouts jumped from 170 to 181. Yet the Tigers still won their division.

 

April

(on the sad state of veteran forward Mike Modano, who was on the outside looking in, for the most part, during the NHL playoffs)

Mike Modano, healthy scratch. For a playoff game.

Not what anyone had in mind when the Red Wings brought the veteran, home-grown kid back to Detroit.

Modano has gone on record as saying that this is likely his last chance at the Stanley Cup, because retirement is beckoning him.

“I can’t stay on the ice as long,” he told the media a few days ago. “I think my body is telling me that I’m near the end.”

Modano only got into two playoff games, and he retired over the summer, after having missed about three months of the season with a badly gashed wrist.

 

May

(on my frustration with the stubborn Tigers manager, Jim Leyland)

Jim Leyland, in case you haven’t heard, is a rocket scientist.

He presides over a job so sophisticated, so complicated, that it defies the understanding of those who aren’t rocket scientists.

He stands above all in his knowledge of his very scientific vocation, and therefore has no use for those whose brains simply cannot wrap themselves around the mesmerizing theorems, laws and corollaries that one must know in order to manage a baseball team.

OOPS; did I say Jim was a rocket scientist?

I made an assumption, since that’s how he treats his job, and those who dare question his logic.

The Marlboro Man had the last laugh, of course.

 

(on the prospects of new U-M football coach Brady Hoke)

Michigan football had been living in the penthouse and is now slumming. This is a program whose name wasn’t just spoken, it was said with a sneer—by both supporters and rivals.

 

Michigan didn’t get hurt, it inflicted it on others.

…But Hoke needs to start beating Michigan State, too. And continue to beat Notre Dame. And he needs to keep having good recruiting classes. He needs to restore pride and faith in Michigan football once again.

Brady Hoke has one charge and one charge only: He has to save Michigan football. That’s all.

And you know what?

I think he’s gouhnna do it.

That last sentence was my attempt at spelling how Hoke pronounces “gonna.” And, for the record, Hoke seems to be right on course, leading the Wolverines to a fine 10-2 season.

 

(on the Red Wings forcing a Game 7 in their conference semi-final series against San Jose, after dropping the first three games)

It’s now the thinkable.

The Red Wings are Secretariat in 1973, the ‘51 Giants, the ‘78 Yankees. They’re the ‘68-69 New York Jets, the 2004 Red Sox.

The tortoise has nothing on them, in that great race against the hare.

Check the calendar for a month of Sundays. Charlie Brown might get that kick off, after all, out of Lucy’s hold.

This isn’t happening, but yet it is. Even Disney’s Mighty Ducks never pulled something like this off.

The Red Wings are going to play a Game 7, which was a fantasy a week ago. Remember a week ago? A gut-wrenching overtime loss in Game 3? Devin Setoguchi with a hat trick, including a penalty in overtime and the game-winner shortly after he fled the box?

The Red Wings dropped that Game 7 to the Sharks, but they made Hockeytown so extremely proud of them.

 

(on why the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera hasn’t been embraced by fans as a superstar player should)

We love the idea of Miguel Cabrera being on our team. But we don’t love him. In fact, there’s a bunch of us who may not even like him, because he’s not that likable of a guy, frankly.

Which is all such a shame, because we probably have him figured out all wrong. His teammates liken him to a big, cuddly bear. That may be the case; they ought to know, after all.

But we don’t see that side because we don’t see him. All we see is a big, talented man wearing a Tigers uniform. That may be enough for some, but it falls way short for most.

We don’t know Miguel Cabrera because we never hear from him. This is his fourth season as a Tiger and the man is a blank canvas, save for some splotches that have been tossed onto it.

I stand by this, though he ingratiated himself more as the season wore on.

 

 

June

(on LeBron James, after the Miami Heat lost the NBA Finals to Dallas)

The Miami Heat won’t soon live this one down, folks. Maybe not ever. History, me thinks, will be in a cranky mood when it passes judgment on the 2010-11 Miami Heat—the team LeBron James couldn’t wait to join. The team that so easily seduced him, but that he also disappointed by leaving during the NBA Finals.

Until he wins a championship—and there’s no guarantee that he ever will—LeBron James should go down as one of the most laughable “superstars” that pro sports has ever seen. He should go down as a less-than-brilliant, heartless, gutless player who managed to fool his public even while hiding in plain sight.

But LeBron didn’t just fool them; he failed them.

His name doesn’t belong in the same sentence as Michael Jordan’s, unless it’s to create a grocery list of reasons why it doesn’t.

Why don’t I tell you what I REALLY feel?

 

(on the death of former Tiger Jim Northrup, and my personal dealings with him)

Jim Northrup always got his hacks in—whether it was at the plate or at the table.

I remember conversing with him on the phone in advance of the roundtable and it was free form Northrup. He was in a mood to talk, as usual, so I obliged, feeding him batting practice pitches and marveling at the results.

I found out that he hated playing for Billy Martin because, according to Jim, Martin was quick to take the credit and even quicker to blame his players and others when the Tigers were in a losing funk.

I found out that when Norm Cash was released in 1974 (the day after my birthday), Norm found out on the radio, driving to the ballpark. Northrup told me that he was so upset about the way his friend and teammate was cashiered, that he burst into manager Ralph Houk’s office to vent.

He was one of a kind, Jim Northrup was. RIP.

 

July

(on the potential end of Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood’s career)

So it will be with Osgood, 38, who is likely to be among the last to acknowledge that his days as Howard’s backup are over with.

Osgood is coming off two less-than-stellar seasons that have been pocked with injury, most recently to the groin—a goalie’s worst enemy.

Osgood is another who isn’t making things easy for Holland. Ozzie hasn’t offered to be jettisoned, nor will he make such an overture. At least, it’s doubtful that he will.

 But Osgood’s reticence hasn’t stopped Holland from carrying on with his duties as GM. The Red Wings have some money to spend on a new/old goalie. They told Osgood (and Kris Draper) that a new contract wouldn’t be offered until after July 1, the date that free agents can begin to be signed. That is, if a contract would be offered at all.

It wasn’t, and Ozzie retired to help coach the organization’s young goalies.

 

(on the All-Star season authored by Tigers catcher Alex Avila)

Now I know why they call April 1 April Fool’s Day.

For that was the date, after just one game had been played in the 2011 season, that sports talk radio was lit up with phone calls from loudmouths on their cell phones, calling for the ouster of catcher Alex Avila from not only the Tigers starting lineup, but from the roster, from Detroit, and probably even the state of Michigan—to be on the safe side.

The Tigers had lost on Opening Day to the Yankees in New York, and I won’t argue that it wasn’t one of Avila’s crowning moments. He was shaky behind the plate and he looked overmatched with the bat—albeit he was going against southpaw CC Sabathia.

 After one game, the callers were frothing at the mouth.

 By mid-season, those same callers were urging fellow fans to vote for Avila for the All-Star team.

 

August

(on the importance of Lions QB Matthew Stafford staying healthy for the whole season)

Every time Stafford gets hit, every time he scrambles around in the pocket—hell, every time he jogs onto the field for player introductions—Lions fans will wring their hands and rock back and forth in their seats.

The sales of candles and rabbit’s feet will explode in Motown this football season.

…The Lions are worthy of the buzz for reasons other than Stafford, I will grant you that.

There’s Ndamukong Suh, the wrecking ball defensive tackle, who might be, after just one season, the best in the business. Suh is the godfather of the D-line and sitting with him at the table are some very fearsome lieutenants.

There’s freakishly big Calvin Johnson, the receiver who gleefully gallops across the gridiron, making the football that he’s clutching look like a baking potato.

There’s more talent across the board than any Lions team we’ve been presented with in years.

But Matthew Stafford has to stay healthy. He just has to.

So far, so good.

 

(on my [then] disappointment with Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera)

Baloney, I say, to those who would tell me that I expect too much from Miguel Cabrera.

Look at his numbers, they’ll say. He grinds out an MVP-like season almost annually.

So how come Cabrera has never truly ever, in his four years as a Tiger, put the team on his back for any extended period of time?

Has he? Go ahead—I’ll wait while you come up with some examples. Or one, even.

Cabrera is doing it again, his timing again impeccably bad.

He has pedestrian numbers, this season, for a man of his talents. He swings too much at the first pitch. He grounds out to shortstop more than I thought was humanly possible.

This is the column that I took the most heat from. And Cabrera turned it around almost immediately and I gladly ate crow.

 

(on the Pistons hiring yet another new coach—Lawrence Frank)

They paraded another poor sap onto the lectern to be given his death sentence as the new head coach of the Detroit Pistons the other day.

There was Joe Dumars, team president, leading the march, and the way these things have gone over the years, you half expected to see Joe reading from a Bible n Latin, his head bowed.

The scene that unfolded on Wednesday was the seventh one presided over by Dumars since 2000.

It goes like this: Dumars leads his doomed coaching choice onto the lectern, says a few words tinged with hope and confidence that the man seated to his left is “the one.” Doomed coach speaks of work ethic and tradition and fends off questions about his past failures or mercurial history. The proceedings end with Dumars, the coach’s future executioner, shaking hands and smiling with his eventual victim as the cameras snap away.

Let’s hope Frank proves to be something other than just another Pistons coach who stays for a couple years then is jettisoned.

 

September

(on Lions coach Jim Schwartz)

Jim Schwartz has been the head coach of the Detroit Lions for nearly three years and I don’t trust him.

He doesn’t have “the look.”

How can he be the coach of the Lions and not look like he just saw Humpty Dumpty fall down and bounce back up?

The Detroit Lions coaches of years past have always had “the look.” The one that speaks the ghoulish thousand words.

…A look further at the hype reveals a common thread—the folks going ga-ga over the Lions do so because they all believe in the head coach.

“Smart” is the word that is most often repeated when describing Schwartz.

Jim Schwartz does know his football. He knows talent. And he knows what he’s doing as a head coach in the NFL.

Now THERE’S a look for you.

Schwartz has the 10-5 Lions in the playoffs, three years after 0-16. Looks good to me!

 

October

(on the prospects of the Red Wings without defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom)

Lidstrom, the Red Wings‘ all-universe defenseman, is 41 years old. In human years.

In hockey-playing years, he’s closer to 30, because he hasn’t used his body as a battering ram or for someone else’s target practice.

Lidstrom plays hockey like Bobby Fischer played chess and Minnesota Fats played billiards—literally. No one has seen that 200’x80’ sheet of ice better than Lidstrom, who is always a move or two ahead of his opponent. He’s the geometric hockey player—using the puck’s caroms and angles like Fats used those green felt rails.

There hasn’t been a defenseman like him, before or since he entered the NHL in 1991. I’ll put up a batch of my wife’s Pasta Fagioli that there won’t be one like him after, either. Ever.

Sooner rather than later, the Red Wings will have to pursue the Cup without Lidstrom, a frightening thought indeed.

 

(on why the Tigers beating the Yankees in the playoffs couldn’t really be celebrated)

It’s tempting to say that this is as good as it gets—that the moment is so savory as to be incapable of being eclipsed.

The problem with beating the New York Yankees in the first round of the playoffs—on the Yankees home field in a do-or-die game that boils down to the fate of the last batter, indeed the last strike—is how easy it is to feel like nothing can be tougher.

Or that nothing could be better.

As sweet as the Tigers’ 3-games-to-2 victory was over the Yankees in the American League Divisional Series (ALDS), it doesn’t change the fact that the Tigers are still just one-third of the way toward their post-season goal.

And that’s as far as the Tigers got, thanks to Texas’s Nelson Cruz.

 

November

(on why Lions DT Ndamukong Suh is good for the NFL’s business, good guy or bad guy)

It doesn’t matter if the publicity is positive or negative. The NFL loves Ndamukong Suh because, for the first time in decades, the league has a Bad Guy.

Suh’s entry into the NFL is the best-timed debut of any pro player since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird splashed onto the NBA scene in 1979. Before Magic and Bird, the NBA was scrambling for media attention. They were like the NHL has always been.

Prior to Magic and Bird, the NBA used to televise its Finals games on tape delay. No fooling.

The NFL has been desperate for a marquee name on defense for several years. The two guys who most fans think of when it comes to tough defense—Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis—are on the back end of their careers.

Suh’s play on the field seemed to take a slight step backward in his sophomore season, but his presence in the league is still high-profile and impactful.

 

(on former Lions guard—and paraplegic—Mike Utley’s battle to once again walk sans crutches)

Utley then made one of the most famous gestures in Detroit sports history.

His life certainly flashing before his eyes, his fear of his own well-being no doubt palpable, Utley nonetheless thought about the fans and his teammates.

He managed to work his right hand into a position of hope.

Thumbs up!

The gesture just about brought the Silverdome down. The image was beamed onto the big JumboTron screen above the end zone scoreboard, so that the fans could see it, just as those watching at home on television could.

Thumbs up!

Utley’s message of hope became the rallying cry for the Lions, who didn’t lose another game the rest of the year until they succumbed to Washington in the NFC Championship game in January.

It’s hard to find a more inspirational figure than Mike Utley.

 

(on the mid-season struggles of Lions QB Matthew Stafford)

But someone has to get Matthew Stafford right. And fast. There’s no Dave Krieg 1994 or Eric Hipple 1981 standing by. The only way backup Shaun Hill starts is if Stafford is hurt—there’s no QB controversy here.

Stafford isn’t right. His sluggishness extends back to the 49ers game on October 16.

The Lions have to fix him, or none of this playoff talk will mean a Hill of beans.

The Lions fixed him—i.e., his broken right index finger healed—and Stafford is as hot as they come heading into the playoffs.

 

December

(on a new era of Lions football, being ushered in by coach Schwartz, after the team clinched a playoff berth)

It’s a new age of Detroit Lions football. Jim Schwartz aims to make his the next great era. One that will make history not as kind to the Fontes years, after all.

If that happens, we just might look back to Christmas Eve, 2011 as the victory that started the Lions on their way.

We just might.

 

(on new Pistons coach Lawrence Frank and his dual charge: to make the Pistons competitive and likeable)

From this hodgepodge of a roster, coach Frank has to not only make the Pistons competitive but also make a team that people will want to see perform. He doesn’t have the luxury of a superstar player around whom the rest of the team satellites.

The Pistons’ fan base, I suspect, is ready to embrace a kinder, gentler team—even if it’s one that doesn’t produce a lot of wins right away. That’s how bad things have gotten here since 2008.

Frank has dealt with starting 0-16 in New Jersey a few years ago.

The Pistons won’t scare him.

The Pistons’ new slogan, to replace the tired and worn “Going to Work,” should be a derivative of Al Davis’s mantra with the Oakland Raiders.

“Just Like Us, Baby.”

After three games, the likeable part looks to be more feasible than the competitive part, for now.

 

There you have it! 2011 in a nutshell.

See ya next year.

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The only difference, as far as I can see, between the backup catcher in baseball and the backup quarterback in football is that no one clamors for the former to play. Other than that, you can barely slide a credit card between the two positions, in terms of what they mean to their respective teams.

Both are non-starters for a reason.

Yet in the NFL, there is a mystique about the backup quarterback. He’s not the starter, but as soon as the real starter goes a little sideways, everyone from the crank yankers calling in to sports talk radio to your Uncle Gus can’t wait to see the No. 2 QB jogging onto the field.

Not so with the backup catcher.

The backup catcher is someone who can’t hit, who can’t run and whose only seemingly redeemable quality is that he’s “a good clubhouse guy.”

At least the backup quarterback has been known to save the day on occasion, with a heart-stopping drive at the end of a game or a surprising starting performance that makes him look, for 60 glorious minutes, like the second coming of Johnny Unitas.

The backup catcher is a guy who plays only because the starter can’t possibly catch all 162 games.

The Tigers tried to have Alex Avila catch that many games last year, or so it seemed. He was given less time off than an accountant during tax season.

There was a pseudo rotation between Avila and the newly-signed Victor Martinez for a time, but Victor’s knees couldn’t take the punishment and he was relegated solely to designated hitter duties.

That left Avila, with token appearances by utility man Don Kelly and a couple of dudes from the stands, if memory serves.

The Tigers have provided Avila with some relief, however, for 2012 with the signing of—drum roll, please—our old friend Gerald Laird.

He’s baaack!

For what the backup catcher normally provides offensively, Laird fits the bill. He also fit the bill in 2009 and 2010, during his first tour of duty with the Tigers. Trouble was, he was the starter—and still hitting like a backup.

I don’t have the time or the energy to do the research, but if you were to tell me that the mean batting average for backup catchers last year—or any year, for that matter—was around .200, I wouldn’t bat an eye (no pun intended).

That’s what backup catchers do, you know. They hit around .200, play once a week, maybe twice, and the hope is that they just don’t screw anything up.

They’re like substitute teachers, in a way.

Laird had the last laugh, though. Tigers fans weren’t exactly enamored with him after his less-than-spectacular hitting prowess (he hit a composite .218 in his two Detroit seasons), and were happy when he wasn’t asked back for 2011.

That’s OK—for Laird, who hooked up with the St. Louis Cardinals last December, got all of 95 at-bats in 2011, hit a robust .232 and (here’s the punch line) won a World Series with the Cards.

All the great catchers in baseball history had their caddies, which are what the backups are, essentially.

The Yankees’ Yogi Berra had his Charlie Silvera. The Reds’ Johnny Bench had his Bill Plummer. The Tigers’ Bill Freehan had his Jim Price.

Silvera, Plummer and Price were your typical backup backstops. That is, they couldn’t hit their way out of a paper bag. None was a threat to unseat the starter ahead of them.

Tigers fans might have rolled their eyes at the news of Laird’s signing last week, but he makes sense, frankly. Laird already knows the Tigers pitchers, for the most part, he has no grandiose ideas of taking young Avila’s job and he hits the requisite .200-ish.

But in fairness, the backup catcher should at least field a little, and Laird can do that. His 32-year-old arm is still strong enough to keep would-be base stealers somewhat honest.

The Tigers just need Laird to catch no more than 40 games next season, stay out of the way and don’t screw the pitchers up. It’s all any big league team asks of its No. 2 catcher.

Oh, and be a good cheerleader, that so-called “good clubhouse guy.”

When the Tigers went to the World Series in 2006, they had Vance Wilson around as Pudge Rodriguez’s caddie. If backup catchers were an organization, Wilson would have been a card-carrying member.

Actually, Vance might have been the Chairman of the Board, for he spent several seasons backing up Mike Piazza with the Mets before coming to Detroit to give Rodriguez an occasional breather. That’s playing second banana to two Hall of Famers. Not bad.

Wilson actually batted .283 in 152 at-bats with the ’06 Tigers, and he was widely recognized as one of the best backup catchers in the game—not that they give out any awards for that.

And Wilson was consistent. Before his career ended with a bad elbow injury after that 2006 season, Wilson in his final three seasons had 157, 152 and 152 at-bats from 2004-06, respectively. He was Mr. Backup—the Sultan of Squat.

Wilson was manager Jim Leyland’s attitude guy, too.

After he hurt his elbow in spring training, Wilson stayed with the team all season in 2007, rehabbing and keeping his spirits up—and those of his teammates with his practical jokes and loosey-goosey demeanor.

I saw him in the clubhouse a couple times in ’07, and on both occasions I asked him how close he was to coming back and playing.

“REAL close. REAL close,” he’d say.

Wilson never did play after 2006.

No matter. The backup catcher is the never-say-die guy on the baseball team. He’s often the least pretentious and with the smallest ego. He’s just happy to be in the big leagues.

As well he should, given his hitting skills.

Welcome back, Gerald Laird! It’s nice to have your .200 batting average, good defense and slow legs back with the Tigers.

Just don’t screw anything up.

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It’s been said that the triple is the most exciting play in baseball. I’d submit to you that the inside-the-park home run trumps that, but there you go.

Let’s give the triple the benefit of the doubt. But if that’s the case, how come no one waxes about the greatest triples in baseball history? I haven’t seen any TV specials about the historic triples of all-time. There aren’t coffee table books celebrating the triple.

The home run is still the Cadillac of baseball hits.

That’s what Ralph Kiner called the four-bagger—sort of.

Kiner, the Hall of Fame slugger of the Pittsburgh Pirates, once said that “Singles hitters drive Fords. Home run hitters drive Cadillacs.”

The Tigers have had their share of Cadillac drivers, as has any big league franchise.

From Greenberg to Kaline to Cash to Colavito to Fielder to Cabrera, the Tigers all-time roster is liberally sprinkled with Cadillac drivers.

There have been two home runs—two moon shots into the Detroit night, one into right field, one into left—that still have people around these parts talking. And they won’t ever stop talking about them.

The first occurred in 1984, in Game 5 of the World Series. You know the one.

It was the bomb that Kirk Gibson detonated against Goose Gossage, the home run that put the exclamation point on the Tigers’ first World Series championship in 16 years.

Gibson’s blast into the right field upper deck made Motown dance in the streets again, even if they had to avoid the burning police cars to do so.

The second happened five years ago, and the artisan has been reminding us too frequently this season how long five years can be in baseball time.

It was the rocket launched deep into the left field seats by Magglio Ordonez that won Game 4 of the 2006 American League Championship Series, sending the Tigers to the World Series for the first time in 22 years.

Ordonez’s blast off Oakland’s Huston Street didn’t win the World Series, but it was captured by so many cell phone cameras at Comerica Park, that if you search for it on YouTube, you’d think it was a World Series winner.

Ordonez, with one lightning fast upper cut swing, also sent Detroit into a tizzy—sans burning police cars.

I challenge you to come up with any home runs in Tigers’ history that resonate deeper than those of Kirk Gibson and Magglio Ordonez.

Gibson, today, is showing his tender skills as a manager, leading the previously sad sack Arizona Diamondbacks toward the NL West title.

It would be criminal if Gibby doesn’t win the NL Manager of the Year Award, for what he’s done in Arizona.

A mere 12 months ago, Gibson was the Diamondbacks’ interim manager—and that’s usually a nice, official way of saying he was the seat warmer for the next, “real” manager.

I’m wrong so often that I feel compelled to tell you when I’m right.

Shortly after Gibson became the interim skipper after the firing of the woefully ineffective A.J. Hinch, I wrote that the situation was awful in Arizona—a roster bereft of talent, a dysfunctional front office—but that Gibson would make the best of it anyway.

I warned not to bet against him.

After the Diamondbacks players appeared to respond positively to Gibson’s restless poking and prodding, management rewarded him by ripping the interim stripe from his uniform.

A quick look at the standings today shows that the Diamondbacks are threatening to run away with their division. The defending World Series Champion San Francisco Giants are in second place and are gagging on the Arizona dust.

Kirk Gibson might, just might, find himself in some rarefied air—that of the former World Series champion player who turns World Series manager.

Not too many have pulled that off.

Again, don’t bet against him.

The other iconic Tigers home run slugger, Ordonez, is driving a sputtering Cadillac these days.

Some days it runs smooth, but most days it looks like it’s seen better days, which it has.

Ordonez is 37 years old and for most of the season he’s looked every minute of 37.

At times, it has been painful to watch Ordonez play. The baseball hasn’t been exploding from his bat as it has in the past. More like the balls been fired from a popgun.

Time was when an Ordonez swing was breathtaking. Whip fast, Magglio swung in that delectably smooth upper cut manner that sent baseballs into the deepest alleys of Comerica Park, and into the seats. It all looked so effortless.

Too often this season, Magglio swings and the ball dribbles off his bat and he’s thrown out by five steps.

It’s as if Ordonez’s AC cable has been pulled and he’s operating on battery power now and that battery is nearing the end of its charge.

Still, he occasionally shows us a glimpse of yesteryear.

Ordonez had three hits—two doubles and a home run—in Thursday’s 11-8 loss to the Royals at Comerica Park. The three hits were power shots off Ordonez’s bat, just like he used to do. The home run was vintage Ordonez, complete with the quick upper cut swing.

The batting average is still mediocre, in the .230s. But this week Ordonez has come up with some big hits, not the least of which was a single through the box in the eighth inning Tuesday that tied the game—a game the Tigers won in the ninth inning on a Ramon Santiago walk-off home run.

That’s funny. That’s backwards.

Shouldn’t it have been a Santiago single to tie and an Ordonez homer to win?

Sure—any year but this year.

When he was 37 in 1994, Kirk Gibson was in the midst of his second tour with the Tigers. He had come home in 1993 after six years away from Detroit. He had become a has-been—a journeyman with failures in Kansas City and Pittsburgh on his resume.

The return to the Tigers seemed to breathe new life into Gibson. He had two solid seasons and was in the middle of a third. In 1995, he abruptly retired after seeing the team’s wheels start to come off. Not wanting to be a part of colossal losing, Gibson quit.

Gibson’s instincts were right on the money; the Tigers lost 109 games the next season. Those instincts are serving him well in his second career.

Ordonez’s 37 hasn’t been anything like Gibson’s 37. In many ways, Ordonez has resembled the Tigers team that Gibson abandoned as a player in 1995.

But the Tigers appear to be on their way to the playoffs, and when you get there you can never have too many guys who’ve fought those battles in the past.

Who knows? The Tigers might face Gibson’s Diamondbacks in the World Series. And the press will have a field day.

Meanwhile, Magglio Ordonez is 37, creaky and not the player he once was. Yet this week’s offensive display has me thinking Gibson-tinged thoughts.

Don’t bet against him.

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Posthumously is an empty word, full of regret. It’s a parade rained on; a celebration muted.

Someone’s being honored in death, and so often the death wasn’t too long prior to the honoring.

Sometimes the posthumous honor can’t be helped. Roberto Clemente and Lou Gehrig, two of the youngest Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, come to mind.

Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates died on New Year’s Eve, 1972, traveling on a doomed plane, trying to bring relief to some earthquake victims. Clemente was 38. The New York Yankees’ Gehrig succumbed to the neuromuscular disease that would bear his name at age 37.

It couldn’t be avoided, to pay homage to Clemente and Gehrig after they were taken from us.

This Sunday, the Tigers are going to hold a pre-game ceremony and the stories will flow and so will the tears and then the jersey will be retired and the whole thing will have an air of sadness about it—because the honoree won’t be there to see it.

The Tigers are going to do the right thing the wrong way, when they retire Sparky Anderson’s No. 11 on Sunday before the game with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It was by design, of course, that the D-Backs are the team in town for this occasion, because their manager is Kirk Gibson and their bench coach is Alan Trammell, two Tigers heroes of the past who were touched deeply by Sparky, and who are influenced by him to this day.

But this is all wrong. This is closing the barn door after the horses are out. The Tigers had years to put Sparky’s number out of commission and they failed to do so. The reasoning isn’t very tasteful.

Actually, there’s something else wrong with this whole thing. The Tigers should be honoring two men on Sunday: Sparky and Bill Freehan, the old catcher who was No. 11 before Sparky and whose wearing of that number has seemingly been erased from the fans’ memory banks.

Freehan was, simply, the best catcher in the American League for most of the 1960s and maybe the best catcher in Tigers history—though Mickey Cochrane supporters would have something to say about that.

Freehan, a local kid who went to the University of Michigan, wore No. 11 from 1963-76 and was one of the greatest of Tigers. He was a class act who stayed with the team after retirement to instruct the young catchers in spring training and then only left to coach Michigan baseball. Freehan stayed true to both his baseball wives.

But Sunday is Sparky’s day, which means Freehan won’t ever get his due. Neither will Sparky, if you want to know the truth.

The Tigers blew this one. They had a big lead and frittered it all away. It was a choke job, perpetrated by one man—owner Mike Ilitch.

Ilitch hasn’t made too many PR blunders in his 29 years owning the Red Wings and 19 years owning the Tigers. His commitment to Detroit and his generosity to his players have been above and beyond the call of duty.

Except when it comes to Sparky Anderson, who died last November after a brief battle with dementia. This is where Mike Ilitch has shamelessly put his personal vendetta ahead of his stewardship of the Tigers franchise.

The relationship between Ilitch and Sparky got off to a rocky start and didn’t get much better. It all started when Ilitch, as part of his agreement to buy the Tigers in 1992, had outgoing owner Tom Monaghan fire two of Sparky’s close friends—team executives Jim Campbell and Bo Schembechler.

Sparky, in his book They Call Me Sparky, said that things changed after Ilitch bought the Tigers and Campbell and Schembechler were canned. Nothing too shocking there; Sparky was hired by Campbell in 1979 and in the two years that Bo was the Tigers president, he and the skipper bonded fast. So no wonder things changed when Ilitch took over and brought in his own people.

It got worse in spring training, 1995, when Sparky publicly and vehemently refused to manage the replacement players who the owners were considering suiting up in the throes of the 1994-95 players strike.

Sparky dug his heels in and Ilitch didn’t care for that one bit. 1995 was Sparky’s last season managing the Tigers, and he couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

When Anderson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000, he infamously chose to be chiseled onto his plaque wearing a Cincinnati Reds cap.

Sparky managed the Reds from 1970-78—just a little more than half the time he spent piloting the Tigers (1979-95). Yet Sparky chose to be immortalized in bronze wearing the Cincinnati “C” instead of the Old English D. Speculation as to why, leads to no unsurprising theories.

Sparky could have handled things better, too, I’m sure. It’s a new owner’s prerogative to retain or dismiss staff from the previous reign. Sparky should have been more tolerant of Ilitch’s discretion.

But Ilitch is the owner and thus has way more influence over what does and doesn’t get done when it comes to whom the Tigers choose to commemorate.

Sparky stopped being Sparky, those close to him say, about two years ago. He’d still show up to baseball events but he wasn’t all there. It was evident during the 25th anniversary celebration of the 1984 World Series team.

Before that—long before—Mike Ilitch had his shot at retiring Sparky’s No. 11 but chose not to take it.

Now, only after Anderson’s death, are the Tigers getting around to doing the right thing.

Gibson was quoted in Friday’s Detroit Free Press.

“I’ll just tell you this,” Gibby said. “The thing I’m going to least like about (the number retirement) is that (Sparky’s) not there. That’s going to be the toughest part for me.”

It’s going to be the toughest part for everyone—from Sparky’s widow Carol, who expressed similar sentiments shortly after the ceremony was first announced, to the old Tigers players who plan on showing up, to the fans.

Here’s something telling: the Tigers actually released a statement on Friday that said Ilitch would appear in person and on the field on Sunday to help retire Sparky’s number.

The Tigers needed to issue a statement to confirm something that should be a no-brainer?

The reason is simple. The statement was indirect acknowledgement that Ilitch’s past grudge still haunts him, and the Tigers, to this day—or else the statement wouldn’t be necessary.

They’re going to put No. 11 into moth balls for good on Sunday. With apologies to Dickens, it will be the best of times, and it will be the worst of times.

That’s what happens when you do these things posthumously—especially when it didn’t have to be this way.

If you’re scoring at home, the play is E-owner.

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I come to bury Ryan Raburn, not to praise him.

May as well get that out of the way, forthwith, because I don’t want you under any illusions here. Those who are here to read a balanced, Devil’s advocate piece about Mr. Raburn, the Tigers’ mockery of a second baseman, click away, right now. Hit “back” on your browser. Anything—just get the hell out of here.

Listening to Pat Caputo on 97.1 The Ticket this morning, I was told that the reason the Tigers keep Raburn on the roster is, frankly, because of money. Raburn’s contract, set to pay him about $2 million next season, is signed, sealed and delivered. Caputo said that the choice is simple: keep Raburn or release him and eat the contract.

Let me tell you, it would be the best $2 million the Tigers have ever shoved down their gullets.

This shouldn’t even be an issue. Ryan Raburn isn’t a big leaguer. At least, not now, he isn’t. Certainly, he’s not an everyday second baseman.

I’ve seen some hack jobs and frauds come through Detroit: Nate Colbert, Rob Deer, Bip Roberts, to name a few. But never have I seen a player get as much playing time as Raburn gets with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of—are you sitting down?—66-to-8.

Let me repeat: 66. To. Eight.

That kind of ratio simply cannot be tolerated on any big league player’s stat line—at least not of any player who’s playing for a team that is in playoff contention.

The Tigers are trying to pull a real humdinger if they think they can win even the putrid AL Central with an infield that’s half made up of Raburn and Don Kelly. But this isn’t about Kelly, who currently is the team’s starting third baseman by default. This is about Raburn.

Raburn brings nothing to the table these days. His glove, I’ve written before, was welded, not laced. He doesn’t run particularly well. But it’s his bat that is the most offensive part of his game.

Big league hitters need to make contact, at least some of the time. Home run hitters are prone to the strikeout, but they’re home run hitters. You can live with 150 K’s if the dude is also smacking 30-40 big flies a season.

Raburn, in 185 at-bats this season, is hitting .200. But that’s not the worst of it. There’s the 66-to-8 ratio previously mentioned, and the home run total is a mere five. Raburn has nearly twice as many strikeouts as he has base hits. If he draws a walk, it’s by pure accident or because the pitcher’s arm is dangling off his shoulder.

Raburn is a sucker for the high fastball, above the letters and right about at his eyeballs. He’s also prone to being called out on strikes, and swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. Did I leave anything out?

Raburn is an abomination—a disgrace as a big leaguer. The fans at Comerica Park, who have amazed me by their Job-like patience in the past, have taken to booing Raburn with zeal in recent games.

Manager Jim Leyland says he’s sitting Raburn down tonight against the Seattle Mariners.

“I’m going to get him away from it. Maybe a couple of days,” Leyland told Tom Gage of The Detroit News. “He’s fighting himself. But he also had a couple of borderline pitches that didn’t go his way. That’s what happens when you’re struggling a little bit—which obviously he is.”

Leyland is at his wit’s end with Raburn. The manager even pinch-hit Ramon Santiago for Raburn in the ninth inning of Friday night’s loss to the Mariners, after Raburn had a three-strikeout night.

There’s no good reason that Raburn should occupy a spot on the Tigers roster, including his contract situation. If Gary Sheffield’s monster contract can be devoured, as it was when the Tigers released him just before the 2009 season, then certainly Raburn’s can, too.

The Central Division has never been as ripe for the taking as it is this season. The Tigers’ main competition, the teams we all thought would be their nemeses—the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins—are down in the dumps. The Twins aren’t coming back. The White Sox are still a distance from .500.

The Cleveland Indians are taking their predictable plunge. The Tigers just have to win this division, their first in 24 years.

But they can’t do it while playing a “second baseman” who hits .200 and who strikes out more than eight times for every time that he walks. Oh, why did the Tigers let Placido Polanco walk away from them after 2009?

Forget trading Raburn, if that’s what you’re thinking. Who would have him? He has no trade value. His numbers aren’t written in invisible ink, you know.

The Tigers are trying to hide Raburn, but that’s impossible. No matter where they bat him, a rally inevitably seems to find him—and that rally promptly has its air released from it, replaced by the air of Raburn’s bat swooshing into nothing.

Raburn had a good second half last year. But this is big league baseball, not Little League or high school baseball. This is the big time. Professional sports can be a heartless business, because it’s so predicated on “What have you done for me lately?”

Last year was last year. Those wins don’t get added to this year’s record, and Raburn’s numbers can’t be blended into this year’s stats to dilute their stench.

If the Tigers are serious about winning—and I mean truly serious—then they’ll do things befitting that seriousness. That means making decisions that are based on performance, not contracts or what someone did last year.

Magglio Ordonez is coming back soon from his ankle injury. Speculation is that someone who “doesn’t deserve” to be optioned to Toledo will be lopped off, i.e. Andy Dirks or Danny Worth.

Two things: the Tigers are carrying one more relief pitcher than normal; and why does the optioned player have to be Dirks or Worth?

Ryan Raburn ought to be cut the moment Ordonez sets foot in the Tigers clubhouse, which could be as soon as Monday.

These are the big leagues. And this is a pennant race in the making. The Tigers aren’t bottom-feeders who can afford to wait to see if Raburn will come around. We’re into mid-June, almost. In the big leagues, if you don’t perform, they get rid of you and give someone else a shot.

The Tigers are insulting the intelligence of their fanbase if they think they can trot Ryan Raburn out to second base every day, with his .200 average and 66-to-8 walk-to-strikeout ratio, and call themselves playoff contenders.

Shame on them if they think that. And shame on them if they keep Raburn much longer, whose impersonation of a major league baseball player wouldn’t even last five minutes on the stage at Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle on amateur night.

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Well, here’s what you’re up against when you set out to explain baseball scorekeeping to someone who’s never done it before: “K” stands for “struck.”

How’s that for the first lesson?

Strikeouts are called Ks because k is the last letter in the word struck. And this is why baseball scorekeeping is the most free hand kind of scoring of any sport.

Seriously, if K stands for struck, then anything should go, shouldn’t it?

It almost does.

The only thing uniform about the scorecards of the baseball fans of America is that they all have columns and rows that form grids, inside of which contain hieroglyphics that would make the ancient Greeks blush.

Bowling has its own odd way of scoring, which essentially gives the kegler bonus points for things like strikes and spares. Apparently just keeping track of how many pins get knocked down was considered too boring or lacking in profundity.

Bowling out-thinks itself in its scoring. If you get a strike or spare, you don’t just score “10” for the total number of pins that hit the floor. The score for that frame gets put on hold, until the ball is rolled in the next frame. Then that roll’s result gets added back to the previous frame to create a total that is synthetic, which is then added to the next frame, which we already used for the previous frame, which is the frame we’re now in, as we look ahead to the next frame and add that frame’s score to the current frame, which has already been used once, as I mentioned two lines above.

That’s not scoring, that’s pig math.

Tennis is lovely—literally.

Another sport that gets too fancy-shmancy with its score-keeping.

Tennis goes: love, 15, 30, 40, deuce—instead of 0, 1, 2, 3, tie.

Oh, brother.

Baseball seems bottom line enough; each run is worth one, and whichever team scores more runs, wins the game.

That’s the sausage. Now let’s look at how that sausage is made.

Before the game even begins, two baseball fans sitting next to each other with scorecards could very well be at odds.

One fan might denote each player’s defensive position in the batting order with the logical abbreviations of 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, etc. The other might use the numerical coding of 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

Baseball has a “to each his own” way of documenting a game’s occurrences. There are no rules, really. How a person fills up his or her scorecard grids is like religious or political preference—no trying to convert anybody!

You ever try to read the scorecard of someone who does it differently than you? It’s like looking through the eyeglasses of someone who’s near-sighted—and you’re far-sighted.

Some things, you might be able to make out, but others require squinting, closing one eye or nudging the person and saying, “What’s THAT?”

In innings where no one reached base, you’ll have a pretty good shot at translating someone else’s scorecard. Because a fly out to the left fielder can really only be “7” or “F7” or “FO7” or “FO-LF.” Pretty cut and dry.

A ground out to the shortstop, with the bases empty, also has its limitations: “6-3” or “GO6” or “GB6” or “SS-1B.”

It’s when runners hit the base paths that scorecards become the scorer’s fingerprint.

The way base runners’ point-by-point destinations are denoted in the grids is truly how scorecards take on their own style.

I’ve always preferred the “diamond” method: the manner by which a batter got on base occupies the middle of the grid, i.e. “W” (or “BB”) for walk, along with a diagonal line from the bottom center of the grid to halfway up the right side—one-quarter of a diamond.

As the batter progresses from base to base, a simple diagonal line tells the story. So if our runner moves from first base to second, a line from the original line (the one drawn thanks to the walk) is brought to the middle of the top of the grid—so we now have one-half of a diamond drawn in our grid.

And so on.

But since this is my scorecard and I have my own style, I add some wrinkles.

I utilize the space in the grid that lies between the diagonal lines and the walls of the grid. I use that space to tell me—and only me, because how dare anyone even look at my scorecard—which subsequent batter was responsible for the base runner’s advancement.

Example: the shortstop walks; diagonal line drawn, as explained above. The next batter is the right fielder. He singles, sending the runner to third base. So we draw two diagonal lines, to move the runner from first to third: one to the top middle of the grid, and the other from there to the middle of the left wall, placing him at third base.

In the space between the third diagonal line and the grid’s walls, I place a “9”, signifying that the right fielder was the one who moved the runner to third base.

But that’s just me. Others eschew the diamond altogether and simply denote a runner’s location by placing their shorthand of choice in the approximate areas of the grid marking each base’s location; no diagonal lines whatsoever.

On my scorecard, I can see runs scored at a glance because every time a runner is plated, I shade in the space in the lower right corner of that runner’s grid.

RBI are noted with dots in the batter’s grid—anywhere you can fit them, with one dot per RBI. And I also place dots next to the batter’s name, so the run producers are conspicuous.

A single is a “1”, a double a “2”, a triple a “3” and a home run is a “4”. But some may use “1B,” “2B,” “3B” and “HR.”

My dad had his own way of marking hits. He used short horizontal lines that corresponded with the hit type. So a single had one line, a double had two lines—one on top of the other—and so on. His wrinkle was that, emanating from the horizontal line(s), was a perpendicular line that was angled from left to right, depending on where the ball was hit. Pretty nifty, if you wanted to preserve forever that a player’s double in the fourth inning was driven into left field.

All hell can break loose once runners are on base: they can steal or be caught stealing; be forced out; advance on wild pitches; come around to score on a hit, walk, error or sacrifice fly; be picked off; or—God forbid—get caught in a rundown.

And every one of the above can be marked on a scorecard in a myriad of ways.

The basic language of the baseball scorekeepers of America might be one spoken by all, but the dialects are distinctly different.

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Imagine going to a magic show and the beautiful girl gets turned into a witch with a mole on her nose.

That’s what happened in Tigertown yesterday, when GM Dave Dombrowski managed to turn Placido Polanco into a journeyman left-handed reliever who’s on his third team this season.

Presto!

The Tigers’ trade of 2B Scott Sizemore to the Oakland A’s for lefty David Purcey completes the magic trick. Dombrowski is quite the magician; he’s also managed to make all the Tigers’ positional player prospects vanish, too.

The Tigers let hitting machine Polanco walk after the 2009 season and then handed the 2B job to Sizemore, no questions asked. Even after Sizemore snapped an ankle in Winter League ball, the Tigers were resolute: Sizemore would be the starting second baseman, gimpy ankle or not.

Mainly because the organization had no one else of note.

Sizemore limped around for two months last season before the Tigers wisely put him out of his misery and called up Will Rhymes, who did OK, batting .300 in about 200 AB. It looked like the Tigers might have, at the very least, some healthy competition at second base; at the worst, Sizemore would be the odd man out, given Rhymes’ performance in 2010.

Rhymes won the job in spring training from Sizemore, whom I got the feeling the Tigers weren’t quite ready to believe in, for whatever reason.

You know what happened to Rhymes—he couldn’t hit his way out of a wet paper bag, and became a bunting specialist. He became a National League pitcher at the plate, and batting second in the order, no less. So the Tigers called up Sizemore a few weeks ago.

This morning, the Tigers are on their fourth second baseman, and we’re not even to Memorial Day yet.

Manager Jim Leyland—we’ll get to him later—announced yesterday that Ryan Raburn will be the new second baseman until further notice.

Will Rhymes. Scott Sizemore. Danny Worth (don’t forget him; he was recalled this week). And now Ryan Raburn?

Raburn, who strikes out a third of the time while hitting .200 and whose glove has to be welded together, not laced, is going to be the Tigers’ everyday second baseman.

Unless this is all temporary until Dombrowski pulls off a blockbuster for a real second baseman, then you have my permission to curl up into the fetal position and sob.

Don’t forget the Tigers’ third baseman, Brandon Inge, who is playing on two bad knees, bats .200, also strikes out about a third of the time and whose power has been disconnected as if he forgot to pay his DTE bill.

Dombrowski’s MO has been to stockpile young power arms, which is fine, but position players have been an afterthought in his drafts and personnel development.

How else to explain the likes of borderline MLB players such as Raburn, Don Kelly, Rhymes, Sizemore, Worth and Clete Thomas—and I could go on and on—occupying spots on the 25-man roster in recent years?

Sometimes Dombrowski trades for or signs guys who can’t hit; he doesn’t always recall them from the minors.

Neifi Perez, Jacque Jones or Adam Everett, anyone?

Dombrowski has been the GM since early in the 2002 season. That’s going on 10 full seasons now. You can count the number of stud prospects the Tigers have produced in that time frame—not including those who toe the rubber—on one hand.

Unless Dombrowski is trading them away, like Matt Joyce and Cody Ross.

Look at the hitters who are worth a damn in the Tigers lineup. Not one of them came through the system.

Miggy Cabrera. Magglio Ordonez (yes, he still remains in this category until further notice). Victor Martinez. Austin Jackson. Jhonny Peralta.

Don’t come at me with Brennan Boesch. He’s still very much an unknown entity. I have no idea if the kid is going to be good or not. I wouldn’t wager on him with anything more than half a sawbuck, I’ll tell you that.

Dombrowski’s milieu seems to be the trade or the free-agent signing—not so much player development. And even the former has had its cockeyed moments.

Again, Jacque Jones? Edgar Renteria?

But Dombrowski, I must admit, has brought some good folks into the organization from outside it. Pudge Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Kenny Rogers, to name a few. But see the trend? Aging guys. Ordonez was signed in his prime, but usually Dombrowski brings in guys whose better days are behind them, with the distinct exception of Cabrera.

Dombrowski let Johnny Damon go because he didn’t feel that Damon could play the outfield on a daily basis, which he really can’t. But how would Damon look in the two hole right now, even if he plays a stilted left field? He is having himself a fine year down in Tampa.

The trade of Sizemore—and you can argue that it was a quick trigger—and the subsequent shift of Raburn to 2B combine to form an indictment of the Tigers minor league system. It was the white flag of surrender: we have no second baseman.

Dombrowski said after the trade that the Tigers weren’t in a “developmental situation” that would allow for Sizemore to work out the kinks in his MLB offensive game. DD said the Tigers didn’t have that “luxury.”

That’s GM speak for, “I’d better win now, because my contract is expiring at the end of the year.”

So is Leyland’s, and I’m losing faith in him by the day.

Let’s play a little game called “Which lineup looks better?”

See the below lineup:

CF Jackson
2B Raburn
LF/RF Boesch
1B Cabrera
DH Martinez
RF/LF Wells/Kelly
SS Peralta
C Avila
3B Inge

The above is a typical Leyland lineup, would you agree?

Now compare it to the following:

CF Jackson
SS Peralta
C Avila
1B Cabrera
DH Martinez
LF/RF Boesch
RF/LF Wells/Kelly
2B Raburn
3B Inge

Which one looks better to you?

Why Leyland insists on suppressing Peralta and Avila, two of the guys who can actually swing the bat, in the bottom third of the order is beyond me.

Can you imagine the increased quality of pitches Jhonny and Alex would see batting second and third? Especially Avila, who would be protected by none other than Cabrera.

The one-through-five slots in my proposed order—especially if Austin Jackson finally steps it up—certainly look better on paper, don’t they?

I heard Dennis Fithian on 97.1 The Ticket yesterday say that moving Avila to No. 3 might be a risk because the kid may not be able to handle it. And, Fithian said that if you move Avila and Peralta, what do you do if they go into a slump after the switch?

Good grief.

The Tigers have a division to win, despite their warts. The Indians, I’m convinced, are not for real—not yet. The White Sox and the Twins are down, though the Chisox are playing better as of late.

This is the time for ACTION, not for babying anyone—not for worrying about slumps that may or not even happen.

The Tigers need a shakeup, badly.

The Frick and Frack tandem of Dombrowski and Leyland are beginning to make people in Detroit look at them cross-eyed, and for good reason.

This is a team constructed from a blend of AAAA players and veterans, but it could still win the division, which speaks more about the division than the Tigers.

The Tigers have no second baseman. They have no third baseman, either, really. Nor do they have two-thirds of an outfield, as far as that goes. And they have a suspect bullpen.

But they can still win this thing, if the manager stops being stubborn and the GM gets off his duff and makes something happen. The owner isn’t getting any younger, and neither are we.

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Last week: 2-4
This week: TEX (April 11-13); at OAK (April 14-17)

 

So, What Happened?

Buzz saw, meet the Tigers; Tigers, meet the buzz saw.

MMM had an inkling the Tigers might have the kind of week they had, given the nagging feeling that a slow start was in the offing, and the fact that the opponents were two teams that were primed to cause trouble: the Orioles because of their resurgence, and the Royals because they always play the Tigers tough.

Sure enough, the Tigers found the competition to be more than adequate for their slippery paws to handle, and they stumbled to a 2-4 record for the week.

The Tigers played suspect defense (to be kind), didn’t get much from their bullpen and had their bats go silent in the last two games against Kansas City.

It all added up to another .333 week, leaving the Tigers 3-6 for the season. And they are getting exactly what they deserve.

Hero of the Week

MMM is torn, because it was only one game out of six, but Justin Verlander gets the nod.

JV was stellar in Baltimore on Wednesday in a game the Tigers needed badly. A loss would have put them 1-4, and the O’s would have been 5-0 and with confidence soaring going into the series finale. The Tigers might have come home 1-5 if not for Verlander, who shut the O’s down with eight brilliant innings.

Verlander proved his status as the Tigers’ horse and ace: He won a game the Tigers needed to have to stop the bleeding, and he did it convincingly. That’s what your top gun pitcher is supposed to do, and he did it—big time.

MMM considered Jhonny Peralta, who’s been swinging a smooth stick so far, but sadly, none of Jhonny’s hits have really produced anything, other than a sweet batting average.

MMM also liked Phil Coke’s start on Saturday.

 

Goat of the Week

MMM is going to indict Austin Jackson, who has limped out of the gate with an average that’s less than his weight—and AJ’s not a big guy.

Consider this tough love, because MMM loves Jackson.

Yet this is what was feared in this space—that Jackson would find Year 2 much more difficult than Year 1. If you recall, Jackson sprang from the starting block last year like his hair was on fire. This year is the polar opposite.

MMM is also cranky with the team’s defense, which is leaving a lot to be desired. MMM has seen Little League teams play better with the glove than the Tigers have in these opening nine games.

The Tigers have been throwing the ball around recklessly and, apparently, aimlessly—and the pitchers are throwing wild pitches and wildly to first base during pickoff attempts.

Yes, the rubber wall that is catcher Alex Avila isn’t helping, as many of these “wild pitches” are either passed balls, truthfully, or at the very least, maybe there should be a separate “assist” column for catchers when it comes to wild pitches. Because Avila would be leading the league in WPA right now.

The defense isn’t as advertised—it’s even worse.

 

Upcoming: Rangers and A’s

Ahh, nothing like an 8-1 Texas team when you’re struggling, eh?

That’s who the Tigers face starting tonight at Comerica Park.

But again, here comes Verlander, who will start the opening game against Alexi Ogando, who was excellent in his last start against Seattle on April 5; he pitched six strong, surrendering just two hits and no runs.

Once again, the Tigers need Verlander to be the horse and get them (again!) a much-needed win. It’s only April 11, and the Tigers have needed this kind of medicine twice already.

Then it’s off to Oakland with no travel day (though Wednesday’s series finale is an afternoon affair). The A’s are 4-5, but they’re no picnic in their ballpark.

The Oakland series is the start of one of those delightfully unpredictable West Coast trips that you brace yourselves for, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

This is, already, a crucial week for the Tigers. MMM knows you take comfort in seeing the Twins 3-6, and you’re not too fazed by the Indians’ 7-2 getaway, but these are seven big games. A bad week makes them 5-11 or something, and that’s not cool.

They can start by not kicking and throwing the ball around. Scoring without the benefit of the long ball would be nice too.

That’s all for this week’s MMM. See you next week!

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They are the Frick and Frack of baseball in Detroit. Some would call them Laurel and Hardy; on a good day, they’re Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

It’s gotten to the point that when you see either Dave Dombrowski or Jim Leyland, you’re half-surprised not to see them joined at the hip.

They’re two peas in a pod. Twin sons of different mothers.

Dombrowski, the Tigers‘ president, CEO and general manager—and what the heck, let’s call him the Grand Poobah while we’re at it—and the Tigers’ manager, Leyland, have been joining forces throughout various venues going on 30 years now.

When Leyland was a rookie coach with the Chicago White Sox in 1984, Dombrowski was also with the team at the right-hand of GM Roland Hemond.

After Dombrowski cut his own teeth as a GM, he found himself in Miami, running the brand new Florida Marlins franchise. Before long, there was Leyland again, as Dombrowski’s manager. In 1997, the pair won a World Series together.

In November of 2001, the Tigers tabbed Dombrowski as their new president. Four years later, Leyland and Dombrowski held a joint press conference announcing Leyland as the Tigers’ new manager.

Today, they’re into their sixth season together in Detroit, believe it or not; this is where the Frick and Frack thing comes into play.

Dombrowski and Leyland—we’ll call them “D&L” from now on because it’s easier for my lazy, fat fingers to type—are lockstep, one behind the other, walking a tightrope. Two men working without a net.

Neither has the security of a contract that runs beyond the 2011 season.

No pairing of a GM and a manager in Detroit baseball has been so closely linked as D&L. Not even Jim Campbell and Sparky Anderson, who worked together in the early-1980s before Campbell eased into semi-retirement, were fused together like D&L—and Sparky adored Jim Campbell.

Yet D&L are accepted as a packaged deal. If one goes, so should the other; same thing if one stays.

It says here that all this talk about contracts, “lame ducks” and “will they stay, will they go?” will end sometime before the All-Star break, when each is signed to a contract extension—but not as a tandem, contrary to what some would believe.

It would take a tortoise-like start by the Tigers out of the gate—the season starts next week—for owner Mike Ilitch to even contemplate a change in leadership.

Ilitch doesn’t have a history of sporting a hair trigger when it comes to rendering the ziggy. The owner’s pizza dough hasn’t always been spent wisely.

Since 2007, Tigers teams have had a fetish for going into the tank sometime in late-July. After nine years of Dombrowski having the key to the executive washroom, Detroit has made the playoffs once. Lesser teams than theirs have beaten them out in the Central Division more than once.

But Ilitch won’t fire either man because the fact of the matter is, before D&L came along, baseball in Detroit was bereft of hope and devoid of excitement.

When Ilitch brought Dombrowski in, it was like hiring Bob Vila to remodel Ma and Pa Kettle’s shack.

It wasn’t Dombrowski’s first tear down and rebuild either.

He built the Montreal Expos’ farm system into one of the best in baseball. In Florida, Dombrowski took an expansion team and had them winning a World Series in their fifth year of existence.

Read that last sentence again.

Throughout baseball history, expansion teams have been outfitted with a butter knife, squirt gun and plastic sword when sent out to battle. Expansion teams spent their first five years buried in baseball’s basement, unable to sniff the scent of the postseason until at least six years, or more, into their existence.

It took the New York Mets, born in 1962, eight years to make the playoffs. The Houston Astros, who also debuted in ’62, needed 19.

In 1969, baseball added the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots to the American League, along with the Expos and the San Diego Padres to the NL. The Royals needed eight seasons to make the playoffs; the Pilots lasted one season in Seattle and moved to Milwaukee, where they didn’t show up in the postseason until 1981. The Expos didn’t make the playoffs until 1981; the Padres, 1984.

In 1977, the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners joined the AL. Both languished. The Blue Jays made the playoffs in 1985, but the Mariners needed another 10 years before finally qualifying in 1995.

Expansion teams in every sport are stocked with the game’s dregs—players nobody else wants. The results on the field, ice, court and diamond are thus unsurprisingly bad.

Yet Dave Dombrowski, from scratch, built the Florida Marlins into a World Series winner in year five.

It hasn’t been so easy in Detroit.

The Tigers were almost an expansion team when Dombrowski took them over. They hadn’t made the playoffs since 1987, and the 1990s were mostly filled with bad baseball. The Tigers’ ballpark was old and decrepit before moving into Comerica Park in 2000. The players who performed in it weren’t old, but they were decrepit, too.

It didn’t take Dombrowski long to start cleaning house. He fired general manager Randy Smith and manager Phil Garner the same day, about a week into the 2002 season, and assumed the role of GM himself.

The Tigers were awful in 2002, historically awful in 2003 and not much more than mediocre in 2004-05. That’s when Dombrowski fired manager Alan Trammell, who was used as a stop-gap—someone the fans could reminisce with so as to distract them from the product on the field.

Dombrowski hired Leyland in October of 2005.

Hello, again.

Leyland then made a bone-headed mistake—he brought his Tigers to the World Series in his first year as manager. Expectations haven’t been the same since.

The Tigers have been stumbling in games played after the All-Star break ever since Leyland took over, including 2006. I have been one to say that enough is enough—the second half collapses must come to an end, or else the manager must go.

Yet this is inarguable: prior to the arrival of Dave Dombrowski, Detroit baseball—for more than a decade—was as enjoyable and well-anticipated every year as a root canal. The Tigers on the field prior to the Jim Leyland era were a joke.

Dombrowski essentially inherited an expansion team. In his fifth year at the helm, with Leyland as his manager, the Tigers made the World Series.

On Thursday—in March!—the Tigers open the 2011 season in New York, the sixth season of D&L. Neither man is signed past the last pitch in October.

Both will return though, barring a season more horrifying than our worst nightmares.

And let’s not go there, shall we?

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