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Monday Morning Manager: My Weekly Take on the Detroit Tigers

Last Week: 1-6
This Week: CWS (8/3-5 [DH 8/3]); LAA (8/6-8)

So What Happened?

You can blame everything on MMM.

About two months ago, I buried the White Sox in this piece. I declared the AL Central to be a two-team race.

Well, I was right—sort of.

The Central IS a two-team race, but sadly, the Tigers aren’t one of those teams.

Oh, how quickly everything has collapsed!

A pennant race can be like a house of cards for certain teams who are delicate and fragile.

A swift breeze of injuries and a certain rookie falling back to Earth blew in after the All-Star break, and the Tigers’ cards are now scattered all over the floor.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Tigers were in the thick of things. But a 4-15 spate has put them, for all intents and purposes, out of the running.

It all happened so fast, and with such force.

Brennan Boesch’s batting average continues to tumble. The bullpen is unraveling. The starting lineup is looking like the Toledo Mud Hens with a few Tigers sprinkled in, when it’s supposed to be the other way around.

Shall I go on?

Hero of the Week

You’re kidding, right?

Well, actually, the Tigers’ starting pitchers are throwing their little hearts out; they just can’t get any support of the run variety.

The Tigers are wasting quality starts as if they grow on trees.

The starters are the only thing that have been promising this past week.

Oh, and Miguel Cabrera, as usual.

Miggy’s shoulders are broad, but he’s not Atlas.

And how about newly-acquired Jhonny Peralta, with his two homers in his first two Tigers at-bats?

MMM is sticking with the starting pitchers; their efforts have been in vain, but at least they’re showing SOME promise for a team that’s skidding.

Goat of the Week

Boesch, again. Jim Leyland. The bullpen. The baseball gods. And I’m just getting warmed up.

But if MMM has to pick one (the unofficial rules of this analysis say so), the winner (loser?) is the bullpen, which wasn’t any help at all last week.

The Red Sox grabbed two walk-off wins over the weekend, and made a bid for a third. The Rays punished the ‘pen down in Tampa earlier in the week.

The bullpen has been mostly a bright spot this season, but as with everything else with this team right now, it’s sagging under the weight of all that befalls the Tigers.

The bullpen can be a saving grace when the starting pitching falters, and can be invaluable when a team is going good.

But when the bullpen is caving, the effect can be extremely demoralizing. And games get lost.

Upcoming: White Sox and Angels

This is it, folks.

If the reeling, banged up, rookie-laden Tigers have a pulse, we’ll find out this week.

That’s because the Tigers get the White Sox for four games at Comerica Park.

Those are the first-place White Sox, behind whom the Tigers sit by seven games. You know—the team I buried at the end of May.

Make no mistake: if the Tigers don’t at least split with the White Sox, they’re done.

Or maybe I’m just trying to use the same reverse hex that seemed to work so well with the South Siders when I declared them out of the race.

No, it’s the first thing.

If the White Sox take three of four, they’ll spring nine games ahead of the Tigers. Then it’ll be goodnight, nurse.

Later in the week, the Tigers entertain the wobbly Los Angeles Angels.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for the Angels. They weren’t supposed to be hovering around .500 as August dawned, some eight games behind the Texas Rangers.

They were supposed to be in control in the AL West, as usual. They finished 10 games in front of the Rangers last season.

The Angels have been so used to winning, their current situation must be untenable to them.

They, too, look like a team that will be sitting home come October.

But baseball is funny. When your team is going bad, it seems like they’ll never win another game all season. And when it’s on fire, it seems indestructible.

So no matter how much a team they’re playing is struggling right now, the Tigers have the look of a ballclub that couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

They look like a team that won’t win another game all season.

Sorry to be so bleak; MMM just calls ‘em as they’re seen.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


MLB Trade Deadline: GMs Too Chicken To Trade “Can’t-Miss” Prospects

 

The line from a pithy sportswriter was legendary in both its smarminess and its eventual inaccuracy.

“He would be a great pitcher,” the words from a now yellowed news clipping said, “if the plate was high and outside.”

Sandy Koufax barreled into the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers with a prized left arm but with absolutely no control over it. The next pitch could be a perfect strike or end up in Secaucus.

Koufax, before he became arguably the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time, started his career with six seasons of trying to gain dominion over the strike zone. It was epic in its scope.

Koufax and the strike zone was baseball’s Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.

But unlike Ahab’s elusive whale, Koufax’s demon stared him straight in the face, mocking him. The strike zone was hidden in plain sight during Koufax’s early years with the Dodgers.

Compiling Koufax’s statistics from his rookie year of 1955 thru 1960, it’s discovered that Sandy averaged 4.6 walks per nine innings pitched. You could get to first base with Koufax easier than you could with the town floozy.

Then something clicked, and from 1961 thru the end of his career in 1966, Koufax dominated National League hitters and surrendered just 2.4 walks per nine innings. Koufax had become the reverse Clint Hartung.

Clint Hartung died a few weeks ago at age 87. His legend will live on, and I’m about to make sure of it.

Hartung was a 6’5”, 210-pound pitcher/outfielder from Hondo, Texas. With a town called Hondo and in a state like Texas, being 6’5” must have been a requirement.

Hartung was a blue chip prospect, a can’t-miss kid. The Minneapolis Millers of the old Northern League signed Hartung in 1942. He was shortly thereafter drafted into WW II, where he played on military teams against other drafted pros.

As a pitcher, he went 25-0 during the war years, striking out an average of 15 batters per game. As an outfielder, he batted .567.

The New York Giants signed him in 1946 for a then-high sum of $35,000.

Sportswriter Tom Meany said, “Rather than stop at the Polo Grounds, they should have taken him straight to Cooperstown.”

Clint Hartung was supposed to make Northern Manhattan go crazy as a modern day Babe Ruth: a player whose pitching prowess was only matched by his hitting acumen.

Instead, Hartung became the poster child for the overhyped rookie.

Hartung pitched just 511 innings in the big leagues, compiling a 29-29 record and a 5.02 ERA. In 378 at-bats, he hit .238 and struck out 112 times.

Koufax was the reverse Hartung because he started as a flop and then earned his hype. The lesson? You never really know with prospects, do you?

The can’t-miss kid exists in every big league organization.

He’s somewhere—whether in the lowest of the minors, or in Double-A, or maybe even on the 25-man major league roster. He’s young and sleek and wows the scouts and general managers with his “tools.” If he’s a pitcher, he’s said to have stuff that’s “nasty” and “filthy.”

The can’t-miss kid is a blue chip prospect that holds up trades between big league teams on an annual basis—right about now, as a matter of fact.

The inter-league, non-waiver trading deadline in Major League Baseball is upon us. As I bang on my keyboard, the deadline for making trades between the two leagues without the necessity of players clearing waivers is about 15 hours away.

Big names have been mentioned as destined to be wearing different uniforms come Sunday morning. The usual pre-deadline rumor mill, churning as briskly as ever.

Whether these big names get moved will largely depend on certain GMs and their hesitancy to trade their so-called can’t-miss, blue chip prospects.

There are still a bunch of Clint Hartungs lurking in every big league organization. And they are going to determine the fate of pennant races in both leagues—either by their being traded, or by their GM’s reluctance thereof.

Matt Wieters is a catcher for the Baltimore Orioles who was supposed to be the next coming of Johnny Bench—or at the very least, Joe Mauer. Wieters’ debut with the sad-sack Orioles was looked forward to with almost biblical anticipation.

Wieters is 6’5”—there’s that measurement again—and bats left-handed. He’s 24 years old and was the Orioles’ first-round draft pick of 2007. He was touted as the organization’s designated can’t-miss kid.

Wieters debuted for the Orioles in May 2009 against the Tigers. In his second game, Wieters had a double and a triple and scored a run.

But after 28 at-bats, Wieters had just four hits.

His year-end numbers were OK: .288 BA, nine HR, 43 RBI in 354 at-bats.

Hardly numbers that make your eyes pop out.

This year, Wieters is hitting .248, striking out every five at-bats and the Orioles are still lousy.

Yet if it had been suggested a couple years ago that the Orioles trade Wieters for an established big league player, the suggester would have been tossed into the Potomac.

Hey, remember Cameron Maybin?

He was the Tigers’ designated can’t-miss kid from a few years back. Maybin, an outfielder, was said to have all the “tools” that baseball people fawn over.

Maybin was practically an untouchable prospect—a blue chip that would never be seriously considered to be played at the blackjack table.

The Tigers rushed him to the big leagues in 2007 and plopped him into the lineup in Yankee Stadium during an important August series. That’s not a debut, that’s a blood-letting.

Maybin proved to be not ready for the majors.

In December, 2007, the Tigers did the unthinkable and traded Maybin, along with pitcher Andrew Miller, to the Florida Marlins.

Slugger Miguel Cabrera wouldn’t be performing feats of mass destruction as a Tiger had GM Dave Dombrowski not played the Maybin blue chip.

Maybin has compiled very pedestrian numbers as a Marlin since 2008. Currently, he’s batting .225 with a truckload of strikeouts, while Cabrera flirts with a Triple Crown and MVP contention.

Prospects are just that, while established big league players are also just that.

Give me an established player over a prospect any day!

Suck it up, trade the can’t-miss kids if they’ll net prime time players, and go get more prospects. That’s why you’re paying your scouting staff, right?

Oh, the trades that could be made if can’t-miss kids were included in deals more often. So few GMs have the guts.

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Monday Morning Manager: My Weekly Take on the Detroit Tigers

Last Week: 3-4

This Week: at TB (July 26-29); at Bos (July 30-Aug. 1)

 

So What Happened?

Someone call Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John. See if “Hot Lips” Houlihan and Frank Burns can disengage themselves and lend a hand.

The Tigers could use themselves a M*A*S*H unit.
It’s almost tragically funny what happened to the Tigers physically last week.
First they lose their starting 3B, Brandon Inge, to a broken hand early in the week. Then in the same game on Saturday, RF Magglio Ordonez and 2B Carlos Guillen go down: Ordonez to a broken ankle, Guillen to a calf injury.
The Tigers are now Toledo North with all the rookies they’re being forced to play.
While all that was going on, the Tigers struggled—and MMM means STRUGGLED—to go 3-4 last week against the Rangers and the Blue Jays at Comerica Park.
Somehow, the Tigers are still only two games behind the front-running White Sox and one game behind the second-place Twins. It wasn’t all that long ago when the Tigers led the Twins by four games.
Hero of the Week
Miguel Cabrera—who else?
They used to call NBA great Jerry West “Mr. Clutch.” So what does that leave Cabrera?
I watched Kirk Gibson come through time and time again as a Tiger. For my money, Gibby was the best clutch hitter I’ve ever seen in Detroit, and I’ve been following the team since 1971.
But Cabrera is threatening Gibson’s status. He only has to start doing it in September and October to surpass Kirk.
When the Tigers absolutely need a run driven in, especially late in a ball game, Cabrera drives it in. Period.
He’s as reliable as tomorrow’s sunrise.
Cabrera is an equal opportunity run producer. You need a sacrifice fly? Done. A single blooped into the outfield that is playing deep? You got it. A gapper to plate a runner from first base? Mark it on your scorebook.
Whatever is needed to drive in baserunners, Miguel Cabrera gives it to you. It seems like he does it every single time. But I’ll be darned if I can remember the last time he didn’t come through.
Can you?
Cabrera saved the Tigers’ lunch, again, last week. He did his damnedest to do so in the games the Tigers lost, too. He delivered two home runs on Monday night against Texas in a losing cause and tied the Blue Jays in the eighth inning in Sunday’s Game One with a bloop single, though the Jays won in the ninth inning.
Cabrera is in his own world, playing in his own league. It’s like the baseball is placed on a tee for him to do with it what he will.
Goat of the Week
Brennan Boesch, meet your first slump, son.
It may seem harsh to make super rookie Boesch MMM’s Goat this week, but it’s out of tough love.
Boesch’s batting average is dropping like a lead balloon. We all knew this would happen; we just didn’t know when.
Now we’ll see how the young man handles it.
Boesch has pretty much had things his way since joining the Tigers in late April as a replacement for the injured Carlos Guillen. His numbers were off the charts and flew in the face of the fact that he wasn’t even considered one of the organization’s top prospects.
Now he’s in a 1-for-20-ish trough, and Tigers fans are holding their collective breath that this doesn’t spin out of control.
Manager Jim Leyland said a few weeks ago, when Boesch was feasting on American League pitchers, that he didn’t want the kid thinking. At all.
But now’s the time when he must be counseled. Hitting coach Lloyd McClendon, this is where you start earning your paycheck.
Boesch did, however, work hard for a walk in the eighth inning rally of Game One Sunday, albeit on a pitch that could easily have been called a strike. Still, it was a terrific at-bat by a free-swinging young player who’s battling a slump.
That’s why Brennan Boesch should be OK. He has shown an amazing resiliency. He can look awful for three at-bats and then smoke a laser on his fourth.
Or draw a walk.
Boesch is this week’s MMM Goat, but it’s done without malice.
Upcoming: Rays and Red Sox
Ahh, the American League East.
The Tigers just got done splitting four games with the division’s warm-up act, the Toronto Blue Jays.
Now it’s time to play the headliners.
The Rays are battling the Yankees for first place. The Red Sox are trying to stay in the thick of the wild card hunt. It’s doubtless that the AL’s wild card will come from the East.
Not only are these two of the East’s big boys, but the Tigers are also playing them on the road, where our guys would have a tough time beating the Pawtucket Red Sox.
The Tigers are a hideous 16-29 on the road, and now they play the Rays and the Red Sox at their place?
Let’s hope by this time next week MMM isn’t writing the Tigers’ obituary for 2010.
MMM won’t break the Rays and Red Sox down as is usually done in this space. You know about these teams, and what they’re capable of doing.
You think the Tigers could convince MLB to allow them to wear their home whites this week, even behind enemy lines?
Didn’t think so.
That’s all for this week’s MMM. See you next Monday!

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


Ralph Houk Bridged Gap Between Tigers Eras with Dignity, Respect

Ralph Houk managed the Tigers when the team was in suspended animation.

The Tigers were between eras when GM Jim Campbell tabbed Houk to replace the fiery but out-of-control Billy Martin.

It was just after the 1973 season.

Martin had been fired in August, the last straw being his brazen order to pitchers Fred Scherman and Joe Coleman to throw spitballs in retaliation for the ones he felt Gaylord Perry was squishing to the Tigers hitters.

Martin had been brought in to resuscitate a moribund Tigers team that had laid down shamelessly for Mayo Smith in 1970.

But after a tad less than three seasons of Martin’s bizarre behavior and insubordinate comments to the media, Detroit News sportswriter Jerry Green was sitting in the press box at Tiger Stadium one night, shortly before Billy was given the ziggy.

Green asked Campbell what Tigers owner John Fetzer thought of Martin.

“Mr. Fetzer is disgusted with Bill Martin,” Campbell told Green, the story related to me by Green not three weeks ago.

Hiring and firing coaches and managers is like experiencing a between-seasons day in Michigan. You get cold and put on a jacket, and keep the jacket on as long as you can stand it. Then you inevitably get too hot and shed the jacket, until you inevitably get cold again.

The Tigers needed some heat when they hired Martin. Then things got too hot and Martin had to go.

Campbell went searching for someone to cool things down.

Houk was a World Series-winning manager with the Yankees whose time in the Bronx was winding down. Familiarity with Houk was breeding contempt in New York. The Yankees hadn’t been to the World Series in nine years.

Houk was made available, and Campbell thought Houk’s experience and reputation for patience with younger players would be perfect for the Tigers, who were about to enter a long and painful rebuilding process.

The Tigers of 1974 were really nothing more than an older version of their 1968 and 1972 teams that won the World Series and the AL East, respectively.

A much older version.

The core was still Kaline and Horton and Cash and Freehan and Northrup and Lolich. But they were well into their 30s, and some were approaching 40.

Houk was brought in and he had the old guys and peach-fuzzed kids. No in between. For the next four seasons, losing came in bunches as the Tigers hit bottom.

Houk, 90, has died. He passed away today in Florida, dying peacefully after a brief illness.

Channel 4 sportscaster Al Ackerman used to call Houk “fifth place Ralph” for his usual finishes in the East Division. It was a terribly unfair moniker, not unusual for Acid Al.

If Houk was “fifth place Ralph,” it was simply because of the proving of a corollary: A manager cannot win if he doesn’t have any talent.

The Houk years in Detroit were a bridge—something that had to be suffered and endured in order to reach the rainbow at the end. If it wasn’t for Mark Fidrych in 1976, the process would have been even worse.

Houk was in Detroit, doing his damnedest to beat the Red Sox and A’s and Royals with the likes of Leon Roberts, Danny Meyer and Tom Veryzer, while kids named Trammell, Whitaker, Parrish and Morris were being cultivated on the farm.

By the time the new core of Tigers reached Detroit in 1978, Houk announced it would be his last year as a big league manager.

1978 would be Houk’s only winning season of the five he spent in Detroit. The Tigers didn’t have another losing campaign until 1989.

Houk retired, but that didn’t last long. The Red Sox coaxed him out two years later, making Houk one of the few men who managed both the Yankees and the Red Sox.

Houk was a rookie manager in 1961 with the Yankees when he presided over the amazing, record-breaking years of sluggers Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.

In his first three seasons of managing, Houk won 309 games.

Again, the corollary was proven, in reverse. A manager with talent has a much better chance of winning.

Houk moved upstairs to be the Yankees GM in 1964 and ‘65, then returned to the dugout from 1966-73.

Campbell had the utmost respect for Houk, even more so coming on the heels of the destructive Martin. The GM knew Houk didn’t have much to work with, but Houk gave Campbell five years in a situation where most managers would have been found dangling from the ceiling, a towel tied around their neck.

The Tigers didn’t win much when Ralph Houk managed them. They couldn’t, not with the rosters he was provided. OK, so he was “fifth place Ralph,” as Ackerman had sneered about him.

But there’s no telling how much worse they would have been without Houk’s calming guidance and patience. They would have finished south of the equator.

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Monday Morning Manager: My Weekly Take on the Detroit Tigers

Last Week: 0-4
This Week: TEX (7/19-21); TOR (7/22-25)

 

So What Happened?

Do you really want to know?

The Tigers went to Cleveland and they wished they hadn’t. That’s not unusual—Cleveland’s a great town if you want to spend a weekend but only have a few hours—but in this case it was even worse.

The Tigers came off the All-Star Break refreshed, invigorated, and hot. They were a mere half-game behind the White Sox for first place, and three full games in front of the third-place Twins.

Then they went to Cleveland and became their own worst mistake by the lake.

The Tigers couldn’t hit. Aside from Rick Porcello, they really didn’t pitch. The Indians looked like those terrors of the mid-1990s, not the pratfallers of the mid-1980s—as they have for most of this season.

The result?

An Indians four-game sweep, with the Tigers outscored 21-8 and licking their wounds.

The Twins took three of four from the White Sox in Minnesota and have pulled virtually even with the Tigers, 1-1/2 games behind Chicago.

 

Hero of the Week

Sadly, that’s an easy call: MMM chooses Rick Porcello.

The just-recalled Porcello, making his first Tigers start in weeks—after serving time in Toledo—pitched brilliantly on Saturday night. He didn’t walk anyone. He had command of his pitches, and even threw a slider on a 3-1 count—something Porcello himself could scarcely believe.

Didn’t matter; Tigers lost, 2-1.

But Porcello was very good, which gives hope to Tigers fans worried about the starting rotation’s depth. Funny how back in April, Porcello was counted on as being the solid No. 2 starter behind Justin Verlander. Now, we’re thrilled that he looked good after a stint in the minors.

That’s baseball for you.

 

Goat of the Week

Take your pick.

Nothing went right in Cleveland—save Porcello’s start.

The heart of the Tigers’ order—Magglio Ordonez, Miguel Cabrera, and Brennan Boesch—was as quiet as a church mouse all weekend. The stellar Indians pitching staff—yes, I’m being smarmy and bitterly sarcastic—shut them down, for four straight games.

The pitching was nasty, and not in the good meaning of that word.

The overall play was lethargic and trance-like.

“We weren’t ready to play, and that’s my responsibility,” manager Jim Leyland said. “Frankly, I’m shocked.”

Frankly, I’m not; Leyland’s second half Tigers have mostly been the evil twin of the first half version since 2006.

 

Upcoming: Rangers and Blue Jays

Those days of last-place teams invading Comerica Park, bringing switchblades to gun battles, are long gone.

The real big league teams will be frequenting the joint from here on out, with few exceptions.

It all starts tonight with the AL West-leading Texas Rangers.

But the Tigers won’t see lefty starter Cliff Lee, who pitched Saturday and is not scheduled to start again until after the Rangers leave town.

Still, the Rangers are formidable. They are second in the league in team batting average. They can rock you with Vlad Guerrero, Ian Kinsler, Josh Hamilton, and Michael Young. All of them are batting .300-plus this season. And don’t forget RF Nelson Cruz, who’s sailing along at .319.

An intriguing pitching matchup occurs Tuesday, when Armando Galarraga returns to the Tigers after a brief stint in Toledo. He’ll go up against right-hander Tommy Hunter, who’s 6-0 with a 2.39 ERA.

The Rangers have lost a mind-boggling 11 straight games in Detroit, which makes MMM feel uneasy; those streaks can’t go on forever, you know.

A four-game series with the Blue Jays used to make the town buzz in Detroit.

That was when the Tigers and Jays were both tenants of the AL East, back in the good old days.

But the Jays aren’t chopped liver, and here they come for a four-game set, starting Thursday.

The Jays are funny; they lead the majors in home runs, yet are batting just .243 as a team and have scored just 421 runs, which puts them in the middle of the MLB pack. So they clearly aren’t manufacturing a lot of runs.

But they can bash you—no less then eight Blue Jays are in double digits in home runs.

Jose Bautista is a great example of the Blue Jays’ all-or-nothing offense. The RF has 25 homers and 58 RBI, yet is batting only .233. Maybe those 72 strikeouts have something to do with that.

Comerica Park is no haven for right-handed hitters, and most of the Jays’ sluggers bat that way. So we’ll see which force serves to be more stubborn.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


Detroit Tigers-Minnesota Twins: July Baseball To Sizzle Again in Motown

You could feel the buzz the moment you stepped out of your car.

Whether you parked your buggy somewhere along Abbott Street or off Michigan Avenue, or in the Firestone lot across the street from the ballpark, the air was teeming with baseball electricity.

Maybe the Blue Jays were in town, or the Yankees. Perhaps those darn Orioles.

You headed toward Tiger Stadium, looming somewhere several blocks away, and you caught portions of conversations along the way as you passed peanut vendors and the old-timers waving their hankies and towels, beckoning folks to park in their lots.

“Sparky’s got the boys playing…”

“…can’t stand that Rick Dempsey. Who’s he to talk about our…”

“Why isn’t Ernie Whitt a Tiger? He’s from Detroit, for God’s sake…”

“.,..meeting them at Hoot McInerney’s; we’re late…”

You hoofed it to the old ballpark—Tiger Stadium—with its lights already on even though sundown was still a couple hours away. You couldn’t wait to get there.

Don’t start the party without me!

You made a mental note to stop at Sportsland U.S.A. afterward, maybe to pick up a New Era cap, just like the ones big leaguers wear. Or a few blocks further to down a couple of pops at Nemo’s.

Or back to the car for the short trip to the Lindell AC—simply the greatest sports bar that God ever placed on Earth.

But that was hours away. First, there was a big ballgame to witness.

It was Tiger Stadium in the 1980s, and this was a “big series” played out in mid-summer.

From 1980-1988, the Tigers posted winning seasons. In many of those years they were contenders until long after the All-Star break at least.

It was a far cry from the early Comerica Park days, when all the fun happened on Opening Day and that was it… until next Opening Day.

Not until 2006 did the Tigers begin to play meaningful ballgames at CoPa after April.

1981: The players go on strike for almost two months, return on August 9 with the All-Star Game in Cleveland. Kirk Gibson, hitting in the .230s in the first half thanks to a wrist injury, blasts out of the gate in the second half, his wrist apparently OK.

Gibby is sizzling, batting .370-ish, and leading the Tigers in a race with the Milwaukee Brewers for a watered-down second-half division championship. The Tigers come up short, but it’s the first “pennant race” in these parts since 1972.

1983: The Tigers are chasing the Orioles, who never seem to lose. The kids of the late-1970s are blossoming into bona-fide big league veterans: Parrish, Whitaker, Trammell, Gibson, Morris, Petry, et al.

There’s tension at the old ballpark throughout the summer, and the scoreboard is watched intently.

Look—the O’s just got three runs in the eighth in Chicago to take the lead.

$#!@!

It comes down to seven games against the Orioles in September, but the Tigers pretty much have to win all seven to have a shot.

Doesn’t happen, but maybe next year…

1984: The whole season is a carnival at Michigan and Trumbull. The only drama is whether the Blue Jays can get the Tigers tuned in, like a radio station far away from home. The Jays are always 8-10 games out, no matter what they do.

A trip to the ballpark that summer wracks no nerves. Most pennant races are suffered like a root canal, but not in 1984—the Tigers that year are Novocaine.

1986: The Gentleman from Virginia, Johnny Grubb, gets smoking hot sometime in July and the Tigers hop on. They’re trying to catch the Red Sox, and Grubber is Babe Ruth for a few weeks.

The Red Sox are managed by someone else named Joe Morgan that year, and they don’t seem to lose either. But Grubb gives it his best shot as a one-man wrecking crew.

Tigers fade in September. Maybe next year, again.

1987: This wasn’t a pennant race, it was a seance.

The Tigers were moribund in May, with a record of 11-19. They died a few days later.

But then they picked up a graying veteran hitter named Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock in early June.

The Tigers came back to life and began haunting the Blue Jays after the All-Star break.

This time, it was the Tigers who couldn’t lose. They charged back, hugging the rail and blowing past all the East Division teams until the only one ahead of them was Toronto.

Even a 3.5 game lead with a week to play couldn’t save the Blue Jays.

The Tigers swept Toronto in Detroit on the final weekend, capturing the division flag—still their most recent some 23 years later.

The Tigers go 87-45 after their bad start and end up with the best record in baseball.

The Twins’ mastery over the Tigers in games played after September 1 begins in ‘87, when they beat Detroit in five games in the ALCS.

1988: The Tigers pick up veteran hitter Freddie Lynn on August 31. It’s a strange race that year, with just about the whole division in it until early-September, when the Red Sox begin to pull away. The Tigers had a lead in August but frittered it away.

Still, they make a September push, but it’s like a race between two senior citizens with rheumatoid arthritis. Neither the Red Sox nor the Tigers do much winning. The Red Sox nurse a slim lead while the Tigers run in place.

The final standings show the Red Sox winning the division by one game over the Tigers, but it’s not that close; the Red Sox slump in the final week, and time runs out on everyone else, the Tigers included.

2010: This weekend, those menacing Twins hit town. It’s July baseball, with amperage.

The division won’t be decided this weekend; it’ll just seem like it.

The three games will be like legendary manager Earl Weaver once said about baseball: Each game is a series of nine nervous breakdowns.

If you’re going to the ballpark, there’ll be something extra in the air when you climb out of your vehicle.

The Twins are in town. July baseball with sizzle.

Just like it used to be.

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Kirk Gibson Gets His Shot With the Arizona Diamondbacks, But For How Long?

So how did we get here?

How did we get from a bull-in-a-china-shop football player at Michigan State University to the manager of a big league baseball team?
Well, first of all, Kirk Gibson was a bull-in-a-china-shop baseball player, too. So nothing new there.
Gibson played baseball with the temperament of a bear awakened early from hibernation. He reported to spring training every February scowling, and got crabbier. His face was affixed into a sneer from April to October.
Gibby, especially in his earlier days as a big leaguer, didn’t swing at pitches, he flailed at them angrily. The baseball was a house fly, and Gibson was trying to kill it with a hammer.
Gibson was Garfield before his cup of coffee, an infant with colic. He played the game as if someone was about to take it away from him. You could imagine him as a modern day Rogers Hornsby, who was once asked what he did during the baseball off-season.
“You know what I do?,” Hornsby said. “I stare out the window at winter and I wait for baseball season.”
Gibson played football and baseball at MSU, helping to lead the Spartans football team to a share of the 1978 Big Ten Championship. But the football program was on probation, thanks to squirrely coach Darryl Rogers. So no Bowl Game for Gibby. As if he needed another chip on his shoulder.
But he chose baseball, probably because he liked the idea of 162-game seasons. No weekly, three-month football season could ever satisfy his drive and passion.
Kirk Gibson didn’t have a Hall of Fame baseball career. His numbers don’t reach out and grab you. In any given season, dozens of players were more talented, in that God-given way.

But he was the most clutch hitter I’ve ever seen in Detroit. Ever. Ask Dodgers fans about that, while you’re at it.

Lord knows what Gibson could have done if he didn’t play half of every season hurting.

Something was always the matter with him. A wrist injury one year. His ankle, another. His shoulder, his back. His legs. Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, in a fit of boosterism, once called Gibson “the next Mickey Mantle.”

Forget that Mantle was a switch-hitter and Gibby batted left.

But Sparky was right, in a crooked path sort of way. Gibson WAS the next Mantle, when it came to the aches and pains department. Mantle played his career on one leg. Gibson would have killed to have just a bad leg to worry about most years.

Kirk Gibson is now the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, where everyone who’s not a player is “interim.” Gibby is, and so is the general manager.

No one knows how long he’ll hold the job. But pity the army who tries to take it away from him.

Already, the players have spoken. Gibson has been the boss for less than two days, taking over after the firing of A.J. Hinch. Already the colorful adjectives are coming out.

Fiery. Passionate. Tough. Hates to lose.

Gibson has been holding his tongue in big league dugouts for seven years now.

He started his coaching career as bench coach for Alan Trammell in Detroit from 2003-05. He joined the D-Backs in 2007. In that role, it wasn’t his place to say what he really wanted to say, to do what he really wanted to do.

Now it is.

May the Lord have mercy on his players’ souls.

He can’t win, of course—not in Arizona, not with this roster. But by God, his players better learn to hate losing and give it their all.

He’s the interim manager, which means he’s going to be at the helm until the end of the season and then who knows?

Gibson has a three-month tryout to prove whether he has the goods to be a big league manager—if not in Arizona, then elsewhere. Not just those who follow the Diamondbacks are watching.

I remember Gibson as a snot-nosed kid off the campus of MSU and into a Tigers uniform back in 1979. I saw him develop as a big league player and waited for the rest of him to mature. That took awhile, and he’ll admit that.

I saw him limp around the diamond and battle pain every year. I saw him grow old and get thin on top and try to hang on with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Between the 1992 and 1993 seasons, there arose some chatter.

Gibson, who’d played just 16 games with the Bucs in 1992 and who had pretty much retired at age 35, was whispered to be on the Tigers’ radar for 1993.

There was nothing to suggest he could be a serviceable player. He had 56 at-bats in ’92, gathered just 11 hits. The year before that, he hit .236 for the Royals, playing in 132 games.

He was 35 with the body of 55.

The Tigers signed him in February, 1993. It was thought to be nice of them.

Then Gibson went out and hit .261, slugged some homers—many of them clutch, and the Tigers’ charity suddenly looked very much like clairvoyance.

In 1994, Gibson hit 23 homers and had 72 RBI in just 330 at-bats, hitting .276. He was 37 years old and his career wasn’t just twitching, it was re-animated.

In mid-year of the 1995 season, Gibson quit. The Tigers’ wheels were falling off and Gibby sensed it. He wanted no part of that, and so he limped away.

He retired the same way he broke in: suddenly and forcefully.

Gibson has three months to manage the Diamondbacks. It’s a lousy job with a rotten roster, a losing culture, and uncertainty in upper management.

But don’t bet against him.

 

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Magglio Ordonez Shows He’s Nowhere Near Finished

Reputations precede you in pro sports. And they can enslave you.

It’s easy to spoil us—we who don’t play the game. We who merely watch and follow and pound out Tweets and blister athletes in 140 characters or less.

We got used to Magglio Ordonez, the Tigers right fielder. Every late winter/early spring, when the reports of how the Tigers were shaping up started to flitter in from Florida, we’d do a mental evaluation, position-by-position. When we came to Maggs, it was a simple evaluation.

A batting average north of .300, 20 to 30 home runs, threatening 100 RBI, at least.

Next!

There was no need to fret over Ordonez. He was a pure hitter, born to hit .300. He was as reliable as tomorrow’s sunrise.

Someone once said of a natural-born hitter, “He could roll out of bed on Christmas Day and slap a base hit.”

That was Ordonez. He won a batting title with the Tigers in 2007 and followed that with a strong 2008. He has a career BA of .312, and has banged out over 2,000 hits. So why worry about a guy like that?

Turn back the clock 12 months and recall, if you will, what they were saying about Ordonez.

The numbers were shocking in their lack of punch.

One year ago today, Magglio was hitting .274, with a measly three homers and but 24 RBI.

There were some factors. A nagging injury. Some personal matters. A pending contract kicker, based on number of at-bats.

They started calling him a singles hitter, a Punch-and-Judy guy. His power was gone, and so his career must be soon to follow.

Manager Jim Leyland even tried the most desperate of solutions when a hitter stops hitting: the benching.

I’ve never understood how a guy is supposed to work his way out of a slump by sitting in the dugout all day, but that’s just me.

They looked at Ordonez’s age, saw that it was 35, and that only made matters worse.

The words began to be whispered: done; washed up; a has-been.

If you need some perspective, look no further than the great Ted Williams.

You heard me.

Teddy Ballgame. The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived. Teddy’s words, by the way.

Williams was 41 years old in 1959 and suffering with a pinched nerve in his neck.

The nagging injury limited Williams to 272 at-bats and—get this—a .254 batting average.

.254?? Ted Williams?

.254 and Ted Williams go together like sardines and ice cream.

He was 41 and it looked over with.

But Williams was determined not to let his last season in the big leagues read .254 next to it.

He got healthy with his neck and came back for one more year.

In 310 AB in 1960, Williams hit .316 and slammed 29 HR—one every 10.7 AB.

He knocked one out at Fenway Park in his final career at-bat, into the teeth of a strong wind.

THEN he retired.

Ordonez is back.

He’s hitting .322, with 10 HR and 49 RBI. That’s .048, seven and 25 better than last year at this time. The ball again explodes from his bat. The swing is back to its uppercut smoothness.

It’s more, well, Ordonez-ish.

Seems like he hasn’t forgotten how to hit, after all.

And his resurgence is a huge reason why the Tigers’ 3-4-5 hitters are among the best in baseball right now.

We should have known better.

Pavarotti doesn’t suddenly start singing out of key. Wolfgang Puck doesn’t forget ingredients. Stephen King doesn’t start writing romances.

Magglio Ordonez is a hitter. It’s what he does. He’s no more washed up, at age 36, than Austin Jackson.

We should have known better.

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Monday Morning Manager: My Weekly Take On the Detroit Tigers

Last Week: 4-2
This Week: WAS (6/15-17); ARI (6/18-20)

So what happened?

You gotta love those Pittsburgh Pirates—Helping Teams Get Well Since 1993.

The Tigers were wheezing and gasping, having lost 12 of 18 after dropping two of three to the White Sox in Chicago.

Enter the Pirates…

The Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season since the ORIGINAL George Bush administration, came to town and all was good again in Bengal Land.

The Pirates are a team that you don’t wait on to show up; you dispatch limousines and a motorcade to Metro Airport. You drive them to their hotel and make sure they get checked in and have everything they need.

Then you make sure they make it to the ballpark unscathed.

The Pirates came to Detroit on a five-game losing streak. They’re always on a five-game losing streak, at least. They’re the Washington Generals to the rest of baseball’s Harlem Globetrotters. Any team that doesn’t take a series from the Pirates ought to wear dunce caps instead of their regular lids.

The Tigers didn’t make it easy—they hardly ever do—but they swept the Bucaroos to suddenly be 6-4 in that wonderful “Last 10″ column in the standings.

God Bless the Pittsburgh Pirates!

 

Heroes of the Week

Tigers’ starters not named Rick Porcello and Miguel Cabrera (yawn) again.

The Tigers are getting strong starts from everyone except Porcello, who will be skipped in his next start in an attempt to rediscover his sinker.

Justin Verlander is, well, Justin Verlander. Jeremy Bonderman is looking more and more like the Bondo of 2006-07. Max Scherzer’s demotion to Toledo has apparently done wonders for him. Armando Galarraga is pounding the strike zone and has an ERA of under 3.00 since being recalled.

That leaves Porcello as the rotation’s sore thumb.

As for Cabrera, he’s simply on another plane of clutchness. He’s making Kirk Gibson look like a choke artist.

Another three-run jack in “nut-cutting time” yesterday, turning a 1-2 deficit into a 4-2 lead in the eighth inning. Another ho-hum, 400+ foot drive to the opposite field, with one flick of his wrists.

Cabrera isn’t a baseball player, he’s a force of nature, and a freak of it, too.

 

Goat of the Week

Ryan Raburn is, I’m sure, a nice guy and everything. But he doesn’t belong in the big leagues—not even with the Pirates. Maybe the Orioles, but that’s about it.

Though I’m not sure who’s the bigger goat: Raburn, or manager Jim Leyland, for writing Raburn’s name beside the number “three″ in the batting order.

Raburn has regressed as a ballplayer.

To paraphrase legendary Tampa Bay Bucs coach John McKay, Raburn can’t hit—but he makes up for it by not fielding.

Raburn was at it again last week, either ending innings or functioning as a wet blanket on the Tigers’ developing fires. Thank goodness for the guy hitting behind him—Miguel What’s-his-face.

I’m not sure what Raburn’s value to the team is right now.

And I’m not sure where Leyland’s head is at, penciling Raburn in the number three hole in Magglio Ordonez’s absence.

 

Upcoming :

 

Nationals, D-Backs

It’s Homecoming Week at Comerica Park.

First, Pudge Rodriguez returns to Detroit as a member of the Washington Nationals.

Pudge came off the DL literally hours before catching Stephen Strasburg in the kid’s MLB debut last Tuesday night.

Rodriguez proclaimed Strasburg amazing. And he should know.

Later this week, Dontrelle Willis and Edwin Jackson return, and both will start this weekend.

Dontrelle won’t get to bat, though—and that’s almost the best part of his game.

Jackson has struggled in Arizona, continuing a trend that began after last year’s All-Star break.

The Tigers will miss Strasburg’s next start by a day. Tough luck—for the fans—I’m sure the hitters aren’t crying about that too much.

Speaking of the Nats, they’re flirting with .500—and respectability. Having Strasburg start every five games certainly won’t hurt that continuing effort.

More Homecoming stuff with the D-Backs: they’re managed by former Tigers catcher A.J. Hinch, and don’t forget Gibson, who’s the bench coach.

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

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Dave Pallone: MLB’s First Gay Umpire Now Preaching Respect

How many dreams come true in Pittsburgh?

On Friday, April 6, 1979, a 27-year-old man from Waltham, Massachusetts crouched behind Pirates catcher Ed Ott and prepared to call balls and strikes in Three Rivers Stadium in his first game as a big league umpire.

Whether the first pitch from Bert Blyleven was a ball or a strike has long been forgotten.

What is irrefutable from that day is this: Dave Pallone pulled his mask over his face, and he left it there for the next 10 seasons.

Pallone was a big league umpire but he wasn’t, in the eyes of some. He was an opportunist or he was a scab. He was part of the fraternity yet he wasn’t.

You think that’s some confliction? You have no idea.

Pallone, for 10 big league seasons, was two people.

There was the tough, talented umpire Pallone, who toiled in the minor leagues for eight years before getting his chance in the wake of the infamous big league umpires strike of 1979. There was the guy who wouldn’t be shoved out, despite atrocious and reprehensible treatment by his so-called brethren who looked at him and saw scab.

Then there was the “other” Dave Pallone—the one who told bold-faced lies regularly. The one who didn’t want anyone to know what he was really up to. The one who lived in daily fear of being found out.

That Dave Pallone was gay.

Actually, both Pallones were gay. But only one of them let anyone know it. The other lived as a straight man, pretending to have girlfriends and telling illogical falsehoods at even the most innocuous questions.

“Hey, what did you do over the weekend?”

Pallone might have lied—might have given you a whopper of a fish story, to keep himself cloistered in the closet. He might have rattled off a laundry list of things he had done—some involving members of the opposite sex. And all would have been a bunch of horsepucky.

Pallone led that double life for 10 big league seasons (1979-88).

“You lived in daily fear that you’d be found out,” Pallone was telling me over the phone, his easy accent still tinged with New England.

Pallone is 58 today. He’s a diversity trainer and motivational speaker. He preaches a message: always respect yourself, and others.

Ironic, because for years, Dave Pallone tried to run away from who he was. And he didn’t always respect himself.

“I knew I was different,” he says. “But it wasn’t until my first sexual encounter with another man, in Puerto Rico when I was 25, that I knew for sure.”

It was a bittersweet discovery. Pallone had finally solved his mystery, but he didn’t dare tell anyone.

Besides, there was a career dream to pursue.

Pallone told me that he was watching Curt Gowdy announce the MLB “Game of the Week” one Saturday afternoon, circa 1969. Sometime during the broadcast, Gowdy read a promo, soliciting young men to consider becoming umpires.

“It was like he was talking to me,” Pallone said. “From then, I wanted to be an umpire.”

His sexual orientation providing a constant, confusing backdrop, Pallone set out to be a baseball arbiter. He did the bush leagues and rode the buses, just like the players in the low minors. He ate the bad food and slept in the dirty motels. He was just like the guys with the gloves and bats—he was waiting to be discovered.

For his umpiring.

After the Puerto Rico encounter, Pallone would have been mortified to have been discovered as anything else.

The double life was on.

Pallone kept getting promoted for his umpiring. By 1978, he was entrenched in the International League—a Triple-A circuit just one step below the bigs.

Then the big league umpires went on strike.

It began in spring training, 1979, and there was no agreement by the time the regular season dawned.

Pallone was one of the umpires plucked from the minors to fill in.

It was his chance to fulfill his dream of rendering judgment on a big league diamond. He knew there’d be fallout—especially when the strike was settled and Pallone was one of the handful of umps who stayed.

“Scab” is an awful, sneer-inducing word. But in organized labor parlance, it fit Pallone like a glove. By accepting a full-time assignment to stay in the majors, Pallone in essence became a union buster. Of all the lines a man can cross, a picket line is among the most perilous.

When the “real” umpires returned after their labor dispute was settled, Pallone hunkered down. He knew it would likely be Hell for him.

He was wrong.

It was worse.

“There was absolutely no camaraderie,” Pallone said. “If I asked for help, like on a checked swing, they’d turn their back to me. They wouldn’t even walk out onto the field with me.”

This childish, overtly disrespectful treatment continued, Pallone estimates, for at least his first three seasons in the majors. It got better after that, but for his entire 10 years in the big leagues, he was never truly accepted—although Pallone’s three years spent on a crew with Bob Engel and Paul Runge (1983-85) were the least stressful.

And oh yeah, there was that double life thing happening, too.

It was so ironic—Pallone was ostracized, but not for what he feared would be the reason: the revelation that he was gay. If his fellow umpires only knew!

Dave Pallone kept wearing his mask, kept looking over his shoulder. At any moment he’d be found out. How long could a man keep such a secret?

Pallone made an analogy for the straight man. He likened it to being at a perpetual party, drinking underage, and living in constant fear that someone would find out that the ID you had was fake.

Yet Pallone pulled it off, year after year. Not once did he think of quitting—not when the other umpires treated him like excrement. Not when paranoia threatened to engulf him.

“This was my dream,” Pallone explained. “I worked hard to be a big league umpire. I wasn’t going to be driven out.”

Until the day that he was.

It wasn’t true, Pallone said then and says now of a story that was reported in 1988. It wasn’t true that he was part of some prostitution ring involving young men and boys. The facts agreed with him. The law absolved him.

But the damage was done. He had finally been “outed” as a gay man.

Major League Baseball paid him to leave. Never before had one of their men in blue been a confirmed homosexual. After some soul-searching, Pallone took the money and ran.

Ten years and out.

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taken the money, and I had fought (baseball) in the courts,” Pallone told me. “But that would have been very costly and taken a very long time.”

He came out with a book, “Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball,” in 1990. Shortly after leaving the game, he started on the speaking circuit.

Today, Pallone estimates that his speaking engagements are “60/40—60 percent college campuses, 40 percent corporate stuff.”

He talks of diversity and the respect thing and will lighten things up with some funny anecdotes about baseball.

Pallone and his partner, Keith, live in Colorado.

He doesn’t have to lie about that anymore.

 

Dave’s website is www.davepallone.com

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