Kuzul

Forget Copperfield, Henning and Houdini.

Don’t come at me with Penn and Teller or Blackstone or even Mandrake.

The Tigers are trying to outdo all those cats.

They’re trying to win the AL Central with one-third of their batting order tied behind their backs.

Who needs nine hitters? The Tigers are trying to prove that you can win a division with only six.

The Tigers’ lineup is two-thirds thunder, one-third summer breeze.

Somehow, GM Dave Dombrowski has managed to assemble a team that trots three straight pitchers to the plate, essentially.

The Nos. 7-thru-9 hitters are interchangeably bad. Whether it’s Gerald Laird or Alex Avila, Ramon Santiago or Brandon Inge, you have anywhere from a 77 to 85 percent chance of seeing an out being made.

You’d make a mint at the casinos if you could walk in with those kind of odds in your favor.

The Tigers have struggled to a 30-29 record by doing their darndest to score all their runs before the number seven hitter steps into the batter’s box.

Brennan Boesch, the rookie sensation who’s been hitting lasers ever since joining the team in early May, is batting .338, slugging .626, and is getting on base at a .384 clip. Yet, the only time he scores is if he hits a home run.

This is because Boesch typically bats sixth, which for the Tigers is like batting eighth in the National League.

Boesch has 23 extra base hits in just 139 at-bats, and yet has scored just 15 times.

He’s been stranded more than the casts of “Lost” and “Gilligan’s Island” combined.

Maybe that’s why Boesch sometimes says “Enough is enough” and slugs homers, like he did off White Sox lefty Matt Thornton on Tuesday night in a ridiculous at-bat of 10 pitches after striking out in his first three trips to the plate.

The Tigers have two catchers hitting a combined .170 with a combined nine RBIs.

Miguel Cabrera can get nine RBIs by just showering.

They have a third baseman hitting .242, a shortstop with seven RBI in 126 AB, and a bench that is typically Ryan Raburn, Don Kelly, Avila or Laird and Santiago or rookie SS Danny Worth.

So what is the opposite of Murderer’s Row?

Yet with this ragtag group of guys swinging cooked spaghetti for bats dragging them down, the Tigers are nonetheless going mano-a-mano with the Minnesota Twins for AL Central supremacy.

The Tigers are showing up to this gunfight with a switchblade. And it’s starting to show.

The Twins haven’t run away and hid yet, but they’re inching further ahead of the Tigers every week.

These divisional deficits can sneak up on you. One moment you’re only trailing by a couple games, and the next time you look up you’re seven back. Then 10.

The Tigers just finished a 4-5 stretch against the three teams below them in the standings. The way they’ve been scoring runs lately makes pulling teeth look easy. And less painful.

With the Tigers’ unbalanced offense, if you’re a baserunner and No. 6 hitter Boesch hasn’t driven you in, you’ll have better luck trying to steal your way home.

And who knows how long rookie leadoff hitter Austin Jackson can keep his average above .300? The kid is starting to show some signs of something I like to call “coming back down to Earth.”

Let’s face it: The Tigers are only on the north side of .500 because of their bullpen. And Cabrera.

They didn’t get there with an abundance of clutch hitting or with dominant starting pitching. And they certainly didn’t get there by catching the ball.

The Tigers are more error-prone than an infected piece of software.

Former Tigers and Twins (and Blue Jays and Indians) pitcher Jack Morris, who now does some radio work for the Twins, thinks the AL Central race will be interesting, but Jack likes the Twins because he feels they’re more fundamentally sound and they “catch the ball better.”

Pretty astute for a hot-headed pitcher.

Morris is right, of course. The Twins are the better team. Probably a LOT better.

The Tigers will be scavenging for offense at the trade deadline. Again. Let’s hope it works out better than last summer. I wouldn’t wish Aubrey Huff on my worst enemy.

The Tigers are trying to win the division— or at least make things close— with 2/3 of a batting order.

Those 7-thru-9 guys are pretty talented.  Watch closely: At no time will the baseball leave the infield.

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Armando Galarraga was robbed of a perfect game, but won. Harvey Haddix pitched a perfect game, but lost.

Baseball is a funny game, Joe Garagiola liked to say, and he even wrote a book with that as its title.

Tigers pitcher Galarraga has been nothing but smiles since umpire Jim Joyce fleeced him in front of some 18,000-plus witnesses at Comerica Park Wednesday night, taking a perfect game from him in the biggest miscarriage of justice since Conan O’Brien got sodomized by Jay Leno and NBC.

Galarraga smiled the instant that Joyce called Cleveland’s Jason Donald safe at first base, wrecking Galarraga’s perfect game after 26 hitters failed to reach that same bag.

There Galarraga was, holding the baseball that should have been on its way to Cooperstown the next morning, smiling as even Donald put his hands on his head in disbelief.

After the game, talking to reporters and the TV people, Galarraga smiled, almost involuntarily. He should have been filing a police report.

Deeper into the evening, Tigers manager Jim Leyland tapped his pitcher on the shoulder and said that Joyce, the perp himself, wanted to speak with Galarraga.

Moments later, Galarraga came back from that little encounter—smiling.

By the end of the night, Galarraga’s plight was all over the Internet. Even people who think a squeeze play is something done between lovers were taking sides in the matter.

The next morning, ABC’s “Good Morning America” was chatting about it. Even the four ladies of “The View” got into the act. The White House spoke out on it.

Until Wednesday night, Armando Galarraga was only known by Tigers fans, and not even by all of them. He was pitching in Toledo mere weeks ago. Then on Wednesday, the baseball gods plucked his name from the hat and look what happened.

When he came to the ballpark the next morning and again met with reporters, Galarraga was—you guessed it—smiling. From ear to ear. You started to wonder whether he knew something we didn’t.

He spoke of forgiveness and how nobody’s perfect and how he was just happy to be in the big leagues and how proud he was of his performance.

He should have been wearing a Hindu loin cloth, not a baseball uniform.

The nation was in an outrage over the events from Wednesday night. Joyce’s family received death threats, as once again this country proved how scummy its lowest forms can behave. Even normally rational folks called for Joyce’s firing. Others wanted Commissioner Bud Selig to overturn Joyce’s call and make the world right again.

Instant replay was called for like Old King Cole demanding his pipe and his fiddlers three.

Everyone was out of sorts except for the guy who was victimized—Galarraga.

General Motors presented Galarraga with a Chevy Corvette before Thursday’s game, and then he REALLY smiled. Finally, a reason!

Then, acting on a gesture suggested by Leyland that ramped up my respect for the manager immensely, Galarraga delivered the lineup card to the umpires. Joyce, assigned to home plate that day, couldn’t keep the tears from flowing.

Galarraga smiled.

After the game, after Selig’s office announced—unsurprisingly—that Joyce’s call would stand and the perfect game would, indeed, only exist in our minds, Galarraga once again met up with reporters.

He was still smiling.

Maybe the thing Armando Galarraga knew that we didn’t—until now—was that by taking the high road, his story would be more lasting and have way more impact on the game than had he joined us in our apoplexy.

Someone did a great job with that kid.

I wrote the day after the imperfection that had Joyce made that call when Jack Morris was pitching, Jack would be behind bars and Joyce’s next of kin would be notified.

Or maybe Galarraga was grasping the situation at its simplest level: he and his team won the baseball game. It was his first complete game in the big leagues. That’s like a guy’s first date being with Jennifer Aniston.

Galarraga and the Tigers won the game Wednesday night—and the team needed a win in the worst way, having dropped eight of its last ten games.

Haddix, who I referenced way back at the beginning of this column, wasn’t so blessed.

Harvey Haddix was a lefty of moderate ability who pitched 14 years in the big leagues, from 1952-65. He won 20 games in his first full season, but for the most part he was average.

Except for May 26, 1959.

Haddix’s Pittsburgh Pirates were in Milwaukee to take on the Braves. It was a Tuesday night, the day after Memorial Day was celebrated around the country. It was appropriate, for what happened that evening would forever be etched in baseball history.

Haddix, like Galarraga on Wednesday night, didn’t do anything fancy—except retire batter after batter.

1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.

As Haddix kept setting the Braves down in order, his own team wasn’t doing much better. Milwaukee’s Lew Burdette was matching Haddix goose egg for goose egg. Burdette wasn’t perfect, but he was tossing a shutout, too.

Haddix was perfect through six innings, then seven, then eight.

But the Pirates still hadn’t scored off Burdette.

In the bottom of the ninth, the game still scoreless, Haddix set the Braves down, 1-2-3. He had thrown a perfect game.

But the game wasn’t over.

I wonder if Haddix paced the dugout, screaming, “What does a guy have to do to get a WIN around here?!”

The game droned on. Burdette was still on the hill, keeping the Pirates scoreless, though in an imperfect way; he was surrendering hits, but no walks and no runs.

Through 12 innings—TWELVE— Haddix was perfect. Thirty-six batters up, 36 down.

He wasn’t pitching against chopped liver, either; the Braves lineup included Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, and Del Crandall. If you don’t know all the names, trust me—it was a Little Murderer’s Row.

Burdette, unbelievably, pitched his 13th scoreless inning for the Braves. He had surrendered 12 hits, but no walks and no runs.

Haddix worked on his 37th hitter, Felix Mantilla, who reached base on an error. The perfect game was gone. But not the no-hitter, and not the win.

Mathews sacrificed Mantilla to second. An intentional walk was issued to Aaron.

Then Adcock drove a Haddix pitch into deep left center field for the Braves’ only hit. Mantilla scored. Game over.

Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings but lost.

There’s a photo of Haddix leaving the mound, being consoled by Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh.

Haddix wasn’t smiling.

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Jim Joyce picked the worst possible time to be human.

Don Denkinger, move over—we’re seating a second at your table.

Armando Galarraga lost a perfect game but gained the respect of the entire country. Hell, the world.

At the precise moment when most mortal men would have collapsed or thrown a temper tantrum, Galarraga stood holding what should have been a baseball headed for the Hall of Fame this morning and smiled.

Smiled!!

Joyce, the first base umpire in last night’s Tigers game that now has its eternal place in history, made a call that he probably nails 99,999 times out of a 100 grand.

This was the 100,000th.

It’s tragedy of the highest order when the sole individual charged with getting a call of the highest magnitude right, is also the last one to find out that he blew it.

It’s cruel irony, too. Shakespeare couldn’t have thought this one up.

Joyce took what was, in his words, “the biggest call of my career” (22 years), and again in his words, “kicked the **** out of it.”

Joyce called Jason Donald of the Cleveland Indians, the 27th batter of a bourgeoning perfect game, safe at first base on one of those “bang-bang” plays on which video replays, by far, vindicate the umpires.

Except this time.

It was a bang-bang play that went BOOM! in Joyce’s face.

We learned some things last night.

One is, the only thing that is more newsworthy than a perfect game is a perfect game denied.

The shame of what Joyce did last night is that it was, for an umpire, a relatively routine play. You see that first baseman-to-the-pitcher play innumerable times on any given day throughout MLB.

If the call in question had been a flare to the outfield, and the decision at hand was whether the fielder caught or trapped the ball, that’d be one thing.

But Joyce, as he said so well, kicked the **** out of a routine call. At the doorstep of history.

The aforementioned Denkinger, in case you forgot or are too young to know, blew a similarly routine call at first base in Game Six of the 1985 World Series. Denkinger called Kansas City’s Jorge Orta safe when Orta was clearly out, triggering a ninth inning rally that enabled the Royals to overtake the St. Louis Cardinals and live to play a Game Seven, which the Royals won.

Yes, Denkinger’s gaffe came in the World Series, and Joyce’s blunder occured in a game played on June 2.

But perfect games happen, by average, once every five years in major league history—this season being an anomaly. Galarraga’s gem would have been the third perfecto twirled in 23 days, which is mind-boggling.

So Don Denkinger and Jim Joyce now sit at the same table.

Both were well-vested, respected umpires at the time of their brain freeze. They are the Bill Buckners of umpiring.

Joyce, like Denkinger, now has to work the rest of his career with Armando Galarraga grafted onto his hip, and King Kong on his back.

There’s not much to be happy about this morning if you’re a Tigers fan, or a fan of justice for that matter.

But there’s this.

At least Jim Joyce didn’t hide. At least he didn’t take the attitude too often chosen by his brethren—that smarmy, arrogant “he’s safe because I said so!” thing.

Hey, at least he talked to reporters.

And he apologized to Galarraga afterward, who said the umpire had “watery eyes” when he did so.

You think umpires apologize to players everyday?

This is a play, in Detroit, that we’ll look at for years and cringe every time. It joins the Larry Bird steal of Isiah Thomas’s pass in Detroit sports history—a play that even today, some 23 years later, I hope turns out differently when I see it.

They’ll queue up the tape of last night’s play and run it, and a tiny piece of us will hope that Jim Joyce, this time, gets the call right. For years.

I still watch Buckner in the 1986 World Series and hope that he fields the ball cleanly.

It’s irrational. But that’s how it goes with these kinds of things in sports.

Galarraga stood as tall as a Redwood last night.

There was the smile after Joyce made the call. There was the calm, casual manner in which he handled post-game interviews. There was the acknowledgement that we’re all human. There was nothing but grace and class, at a time when no one would have faulted him for being too broken up to speak.

“He never said a word to me,” Joyce said of Galarraga, and you can bet he said it with awe and respect.

Can you imagine if Joyce had done that to Jack Morris? Or Bob Gibson? Or Don Drysdale?

They’d be preparing a funeral and calling in prosecutors this morning.

Yet this is also the beauty of baseball, in a horrific way.

When Don Larsen pitched his perfect game in the 1956 World Series, a famous lead in the papers the next day read, “The imperfect man pitched a perfect game yesterday.”

Galarraga was in the minor leagues less than a month ago. He was less-than-spectacular in his last start, nearly two weeks ago. Yet after seven innings last night, he had thrown 64 pitches, only 14 of which were balls.

Fourteen balls in seven innings? Are you kidding me?

Another thing we learned last night is that a guy can channel Willie Mays and it gets forgotten about in a matter of minutes.

Austin Jackson made the play that we SHOULD be talking about today, and until time ends.

Cleveland’s Mark Grudzielanek shot a rocket out to deep left center to lead off the ninth inning. Correction: he hit the ball to Highland Park.

Yet Jackson ran it down. He ran and ran and ran, fully aware of the impact if the baseball touched the grass. The ball was in the air longer than Magic Johnson’s TV show was on it.

Jackson wouldn’t be denied. He made the catch, his back to the diamond, a la Mays in the 1954 World Series against Vic Wertz—of the Indians, by the way.

Fox Sports Detroit’s Mario Impemba got as excited as I’ve ever heard him, calling Jackson’s perfect game-saving (for the moment) catch.

“He….MAAAKES the CATCH!!!” Impemba screamed. You could hardly blame him.

Jackson saved the baby from the burning building, only to hand it off to a fireman, who promptly dropped the infant on his head, killing him instantly.

Jackson made the play of his life. He won’t make a better one, and he’s just a rookie. I don’t know if there’s another player alive who could make that play.

Too bad it just got buried in the Jim Joyce avalanche.

The catcalls are out now for instant replay in baseball, beyond its current use for home runs. Jason Stark of ESPN.com, who I respect, is calling for an NFL-like system whereby managers would each get one challenge per game.

Seems reasonable.

What’s less reasonable is the call for Commissioner Bud Selig to be heard, specifically that he should utilize some sort of power that I’m not even sure that he has, and reverse Joyce’s call.

So what do you do with the at-bat of Trevor Crowe, the next hitter after Donald? Erase it?

Reversing Joyce’s call is Adam’s apple; it’s tempting, but shouldn’t be consumed.

MLB would be making a colossal mistake if they did that. It would be Pandora’s Box times a million.

Where would it end? How could you justify reversing Call A but not Call B?

Besides, Galarraga and his teammates, to a man, know that he threw a perfect game. It won’t go down in history as one, but the kid did it.

I tell you, it’s a hell of a story for him to tell someday, isn’t it?

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Somewhere, sometime in the history of the baseball world, it was deemed that the Fourth of July holiday should be the benchmark to determine whether your team had a snowball’s chance in Hell of waving the pennant at the end of the season.

Not sure why July 4. Why not Flag Day, June 14? Seems appropriate; the pennant is sometimes called the “flag.”

Labor Day is cheating; there’s less than a month left, so that’s hardly a step out onto the limb.

Even the All-Star Break, in mid-July, is considered less sexy as a milestone than Independence Day.

I suppose Independence Day makes sense, in a way; the goal is to be in first place, independently, when the last pitch is thrown.

So it was determined: the team leading its division on July 4 is the odds-on favorite to be leading it when all is said and done.

Somewhere, sometime this postulate was devised.

Postulates, though, have exceptions.

For in this 2010 baseball season, you won’t have to wait until July 4 to declare the following to be true.

The American League Central Division will boil down to two teams and two teams only—and neither of them are the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, or Kansas City Royals.

The Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers will be duking it out all summer for Central supremacy.

This is going to be a doozy, my friend. Consider yourself warned.

The Central Division, once again, isn’t much this year. Aside from the Twins and the Tigers, the teams in it are baseball-challenged. You have the Twins, the Tigers, and three also-rans.

It’s like you have the Democrats and the Republicans, and then you have the Independents, the Libertarians, and in the Royals’ case, the Whigs.

If your team doesn’t play in Minneapolis or Detroit, it’s playing out the string—before Memorial Day.

But if you’re a fan of the Twins or the Tigers, hunker down.

This is going to be a tug of war of the highest magnitude. Neither team is good enough to run away and hide from the other.

Now, it must be emphasized that a proper pennant race used to be the ones that the Dodgers and the Giants played out with so much dramatic flair, back in the day.

Those weren’t pennant races, they were battles of attrition.

Whether they played in New York or in California, Dodgers-Giants was the ultimate baseball rivalry, because unlike Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants meant that every year, both of those teams were going to be good.

Starting in the 1950s and plowing through the ‘60s, Dodgers-Giants was the most consistent of all the rivalries. The Red Sox were down in many of the years when the Yankees were winning American League pennants during the same time frame—down more often than not, actually.

It all started in 1951, when the Giants came back from the dead—over 15 games back at one point—to overtake the Dodgers thanks to Bobby Thomson’s mildly dramatic home run.

These were teams who spat venom at one another. They’d almost take turns, it seemed, winning the National League. Only, you didn’t actually win the NL Pennant in those days—you leased it.

It was in the throes of yet another bitter, nasty Dodgers-Giants tussle when, in the heat of the ’65 race, Giants pitcher Juan Marichal bludgeoned Dodgers catcher Johnny Roseboro with a bat—cracking big John on his melon several times before being pulled away.

Now THAT’S a rivalry!

The Tigers and Twins of 2010 might not engage in such barbaric behavior, but these teams aren’t friends.

Buckle up, folks. Make sure your tray is in the upright position. This one’s going to be turbulent.

The Twins have the better offense; the Tigers have the better bullpen. The Twins have Justin Morneau; the Tigers have Miguel Cabrera. The Twins have well-respected manager Ron Gardenhire; the Tigers counter with grizzled Jim Leyland.

This race won’t be determined on talent, though. In fact, the next time these two play, they ought to eschew the game and just dump a path of burning coals from home plate to second base.

Whoever has more players willing to walk those coals, barefoot, wins the division.

Don’t laugh; that’s the kind of mentality it’s going to take to call yourselves Central Division champions.

Really, Twins-Tigers is becoming a nice little Hatfields-McCoys thing in baseball.

It started in 2006, when the Twins came from way behind to yank the division right from under the Tigers’ noses on the last day of the season.

That time, the Wild Card was there to catch the Tigers, like one of those gigantic trampolines the fire department uses.

There was a new chapter written last season, when the Twins again came from way behind to yank the division right from under the Tigers’ noses.

Even the last day of the season didn’t settle the issue; a 163rd game was needed. No Wild Card to save the Tigers that time.

I hope you’re loaded up with Pepto-Bismol and bicarbonate of soda at home. Make sure you have plenty of refills on your blood pressure meds.

This Twins-Tigers thing in 2010 is going to just about kill you, I’m certain.

They’re going to be so close to each other all summer, one will know what the other had for lunch. You won’t be able to get anything thicker than a credit card between them.

It’s going to be like this from now until the end, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Oh, someone will edge in front by a few games, beating their chest as the king of the hill. Then the other will yank them by the ankle, and down they’ll go.

It’s going to be a back-and-forth, I got it-you take it sort of affair. Morneau will get as hot as a firecracker and the Twins will jump on board his shoulders for a week or two. Then Cabrera will see that and raise it a sawbuck.

Justin Verlander will equal a Tigers win every five games for a month, and fans in Detroit will feel like they have everything figured out.

And they will be wrong.

I tell you, it’s going to be a doozy.

You don’t need to wait until July 4 to figure that one out.

The fireworks have already begun.

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(please take a moment to answer the accompanying poll re: MMM; thanks!)

Last Week: 3-3
This Week: at SEA (5/25-26); OAK (5/28-30)

So what happened?

The Tigers’ mastery over National League teams took a bit of a hit. 

Since 2006 especially, the Tigers have done amazingly well in interleague play. They’ve treated NL teams like redheaded stepchildren, annually.

But the magic ended in Los Angeles over the weekend, where the Dodgers took two of three from the Tigers. Included in the trio of games was another Dontrelle Willis implosion.

Overshadowing the games, to a degree, was the tragic news of the death of former big league pitcher Jose Lima, dead of an apparent heart attack Sunday morning at age 37.

It was morbidly fitting that Lima should pass away when he did, with the Tigers in L.A. to play the Dodgers—both former teams of Lima’s.

The news was even more shocking considering that Lima attended Friday’s Tigers-Dodgers game and was acknowledged with a big ovation between innings.

On the field, the Tigers got washed out on Monday, lost to the White Sox on Tuesday, and steamrolled over the A’s in Oakland on Wednesday and Thursday. Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman led the way, each pitching magnificently.

Then came the speed bump at Dodger Stadium.

Hero of the Week

If Bonderman is back, the Tigers will be in the hunt with the Minnesota Twins for AL Central supremacy all summer.

That’s not to put all the pressure on Bondo, but a healthy, productive Bonderman makes the Tigers’ rotation immensely better.

Seeing Verlander and Bonderman be wet blankets to the A’s offense on back-to-back days was heartwarming—evoking memories of 2006.

You expect great things from JV, but Bonderman has been another story, coming back from surgery and rehabilitation on his right arm/shoulder.

Bondo went six innings, giving up just three hits and one run. He struck out eight.

Bonderman is now 2-2 on the season with a very acceptable 4.43 ERA. He has 37 Ks in just over 40 innings. Opponents are hitting just .239 against him. He’s only surrendered two homers all season.

He might—just might—be back.

Whether he’s back or not, Bonderman is MMM’s Hero for last week, mainly because of the hope his season is providing.

He’s the world’s oldest 27-year-old. The goal is for him to be a young 28.

Goat of the Week

I Twittered shortly after Dontrelle Willis’s outing in Los Angeles ended.

“It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion,” I rapped out.

This is simply what we’ll have to expect from the D-Train every five days: smooth sailing, and then sudden horror.

Willis was holding his own against the Dodgers on Friday night, shutting them out, when his wildness reared its head in the fourth and fifth innings.

Suddenly, batters were being walked and hit, and three runs crossed the plate. The Dodgers never looked back after that.

Watching Dontrelle Willis pitch is like turning the crank on a giant Jack-in-the-Box; you know the scary clown head is going to pop up—you just don’t know when.

Upcoming: Mariners, A’s

I think MLB should make the Tigers honorary members of the Wild West.

Seems like the only teams they play anymore are from up and down the Pacific Coast.

If you’re not sick of the Mariners and A’s by now, you will be by the end of this week.

The Tigers’ foray against teams who play three hours behind them continues this week.

The Mariners will be first up, in Seattle—already the Tigers’ second visit to the Emerald City this season, and it’s not yet Memorial Day.

The Tigers will have to go at it with the M’s minus All-World first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who will be with his wife for the birth of their next child. This means Ryan Raburn will likely play 1B.

Who will bat cleanup? I suspect Magglio Ordonez will, with someone like Raburn moving up to third in the order.

Cabrera will be back in time for the holiday weekend, when the A’s visit for four games.

But back to the Mariners.

At first blush, it would appear that RF Ichiro Suzuki is having another Ichiro-type year. He’s batting .354, after all.

But Ichiro has only scored 21 runs, and he’s already been caught stealing six times—after being caught just 13 times in 2008 and 2009 combined. He has just nine RBI, which for even him is low.

Still, he’s the king of the multi-hit game, and despite what I just quoted, I don’t relish it when he’s in the batter’s box.

The A’s have a popgun offense that was totally overpowered by Verlander and Bonderman last week. They’ll see them again on Sunday and Monday, if the rotation holds as is.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Who is Brennan Boesch and why is he being mean to American League pitchers?

Boesch, pronounced “BOSH,” as in the pro basketball behemoth, wasn’t called up by the Tigers, he was unleashed.

For several seasons, Tigers fans have cried for a hefty lefty in their batting order.

Now here comes Boesch, 25, as if dropped from the heavens.

Boesch is a California kid, where they play baseball 12 months out of the year. It’s no wonder that so many of our greatest American ball players have come from the Golden State; they can break out the gloves and bats in January and only pause for meals.

What Boesch is doing to the American League is nothing short of ridiculous.

Boesch showed up a few weeks ago, when Carlos Guillen began his annual trip to the DL.

This is supposed to be a hard game. Ted Williams, no less, has called hitting a baseball the most difficult feat in all of sports.

“They give you a round bat, a round ball, and tell you to hit it square.”

It’s a job where they put you in the Hall of Fame if you’re successful 30 percent of the time. Sometimes they’ll sneak you in for less than that.

Boesch has traipsed to the plate for 82 official at-bats and he has 29 hits. That’s a 35.4 percent success rate. So where’s he going, the Super Duper Hall of Fame?

It’s not just that Boesch is getting hits at a robust clip. He’s treating the baseball as if it took his dog away.

Boesch takes his round bat, swings at the round ball, and hits the ball square. We’re talking four right angles worth of square.

They ought to check the cover of the ball after Boesch hits it, because it just might need re-lacing. If you listen closely, you can hear it scream in pain.

Or maybe that’s the pitcher.

I haven’t seen a raw rookie come to Detroit and hit the baseball with this kind of ferocity since, well, I don’t know if I’ve EVER seen it.

Boesch is a 6′6″ beach bum from Santa Monica. He went to Cal University. He grew up watching the Dodgers. At age five, he says, he knew he wanted to be a big league ballplayer.

That was when he was 4′5″.

He calls Brett Butler one of his idols, which is funny because he could fit Brett in his back pocket and take him out every once in a while to look at him.

Boesch hits righties, which you would expect. But he’s all but laughing at lefties.

The percentages of baseball say that lefty versus lefty is supposed to be a distinct advantage for the pitcher.

HA!

Boesch has six hits in 13 at-bats against southpaws, including a monster home run. That’s a .462 batting average.

So much for your percentages.

Now, let’s pause for a dose of reality.

Will Brennan Boesch keep this up? Will he still be in the rarified air of .354 when, say, September rolls around?

I don’t know—he’s 6′6″ and 210 pounds. YOU tell him no.

Boesch was drafted in the third round by the Tigers in 2006, which means that 80+ players were selected ahead of him, which either means that he’s a diamond in the rough, or that baseball’s scouts and GMs had their heads between their butt cheeks for almost three rounds.

How do you miss a guy with the height and weight of a power forward, who swings a left-handed stick, and who played baseball in California, where you can’t exactly hide?

Tigers manager Jim Leyland inserted Boesch fifth in the order when the kid arrived, behind Miguel Cabrera—essentially taking Guillen’s place.

I mocked the decision.

Put a rookie behind an MVP candidate? Where’s the protection in that?

Boesch is protecting Cabrera better than a 24/7 bodyguard.

The Tigers’ lineup, from one through five, is beginning to look like poison.

Things get started with another rookie who’s thumbing his nose at the big leagues, Austin Jackson—A-Jax. Then you have Johnny Damon with his 2,500 hits, followed by Magglio Ordonez, who won the batting title three years ago. Then comes Cabrera, who’s making pitchers curl into the fetal position, sucking their thumbs.

Followed by Brennan Boesch, whose last name ought to be a verb.

“He Boesched that ball into the gap!”

Of course, once you get past the first five Tigers hitters, you can make hay again with your earned run average. But one through five might Boesch the ball better than any in baseball.

The Tigers are in Los Angeles this weekend to play the Dodgers, Boesch’s team of choice as a youngster.

He says he wants to meet the legendary Vin Scully.

I have to think that the feeling is mutual.

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Last Week: 5-2
This Week: CWS (5/17-18); at Oak (5/19-20); at LAD (5/21-23)

So what happened?

A slap in the face of the East Coast bias when it comes to its death grip on big league baseball. 

The Tigers entertained baseball’s two Goliaths last week—the Yankees and the Red Sox—and they sent both teams out of town with a spanking.

First was a nifty 3-1 series win over the Yankees, which featured not one but TWO shutouts of the Yanks’ mighty bats.

Then the Tigers came back and took the last two games from the Red Sox after dropping Friday night’s opener.

Take that, ESPN! And Ken Burns!

The Tigers showed that teams sometimes can play a good brand of baseball outside of the Bronx and Beantown, contrary to urban myth.

The good week leaves the Tigers 14-5 at Comerica Park, which is suddenly a House of Horrors for visiting clubs.

Hero of the Week

First, an apology.

A few weeks ago, on “The Knee Jerks” podcast I co-host with Big Al Beaton, I mocked manager Jim Leyland and took him to task for simply inserting rookie OF Brennan Boesch in the No. 5 hole left vacated by injured Carlos Guillen.

Why is he (Leyland) putting a rookie behind MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera, I fussed.

I fuss no more.

Boesch is MMM’s Hero because whenever he hits the baseball, the cover threatens to tear away from the core.

Boesch is driving in runs in Cabrera-like fashion, and his left-handed stick is giving the Tigers as good a 1-thru-5 batting order as any team in baseball.

Boesch is hitting .380 with 19 RBI in 71 ABs. He went 4-for-6 in Saturday night’s win over Boston. He already has two triples.

So wonderful has Boesch been that when Carlos Guillen returns from his injury, Guillen will play 2B, just so Leyland can keep Boesch, 25, in the lineup.

Sorry for all the fuss.

Goat of the Week

Tie: Max Scherzer and his battery mates. 

Last week, MMM was getting annoyed with Scherzer because his starts were beginning to resemble crash landings. Friday, Scherzer stunk up the joint again and was optioned to Toledo to get his act together.

The men catching Scherzer and the rest of the staff are wearing MMM’s patience thin, too.

Gerald Laird and Alex Avila, combined, make one Adam Everett.

I don’t expect Johnny Bench, but these guys are making me long for Vance Wilson.

I won’t disclose Laird’s and Avila’s batting averages before notifying their next of kin.

More Tigers rallies this season have ended or stalled with the bats of Laird and Avila than with anyone else on the roster by far. They may as well be lugging fire hoses up to the plate the way they’re dousing potential big innings.

The Tigers need more offensively from their catchers than what Lairavila are giving them. And I have just won the Understatement of the Year Award.

Upcoming: White Sox, A’s, Dodgers

Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies! It’s Brother Leyland’s Traveling Salvation Show!

The Tigers once again will criss-cross the country more than a presidential candidate on the last leg of a campaign.

It starts in Motown with a couple quickies against the stumbling, limp noodle bats of the Chicago White Sox. Then it’s on to Oakland for two with the A’s, then since the American League is running out of Left Coast teams for the Tigers to visit, the Dodgers welcome our Bengals this weekend.

As usual, all will occur sans a day off. Heaven forbid.

The White Sox offense is Paul Konerko and…waiting for Paul Konerko to come up again.

Konerko has 13 home runs, but the rest of the White Sox’s offense is horrendous. Their team BA is .230. They have just 152 runs (4.1 per game) and 279 hits (7.7 per game).

The A’s have lost five in a row, are 18-20, and they’re no offensive juggernaut, either. No one on the A’s has hit more than four homers. The team BA is .248.

The Dodgers are another story.

They’re red hot—winners of seven straight. And they boast OF Andre Ethier, who’s leading the majors in hitting (.392), and who has 11 HR, 38 RBI, and who has scored 25 runs.

Ethier is 18 for his last 40 with 12 RBI.

He’s a little warm.

Fun fact: He’s on the DL, but the Dodgers have 41-year-old catcher Brad Ausmus on their roster, the former Astro/Tiger/Astro/Tiger.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Maybe someone with Ph.D. after their name can shed some light, but it sure seems like the pro sports specialist has an affinity for—and pardon my laymen’s term here—playing his game of life with something less than a full deck.

There’s the hockey goalie, whose career at said position surely must have started as either the loser of a bet or because all the regular sticks were taken.

For no one with all 52 cards would volunteer to be pelted with discs of vulcanized rubber being fired upon them at speeds that would make a Lamborghini blush.

Glenn Hall, the Hall of Fame netminder who broke into the NHL with the Red Wings in the early-1950s, holds the league record for consecutive games played, with 502.

Which makes it easy to calculate the number of consecutive upchucks from Hall’s tummy.

Hall famously—or infamously—included as part of his pre-game routine, a trip to the loo to empty the contents of his stomach. Through his esophagus.

Another Red Wings goalie, Roger Crozier, had to be hospitalized several times during his career because his job proved too much for his queasy tum-tum.

Bet losers, those goalies are. Or something.

The hockey goalie is looked at cross-eyed by his teammates, and by those covering the game. Crazy people might snap at any moment, you know.

Football kickers—that’s another group of folks that marches to the beat of a different drummer.

Think about it: these are dudes who spend several hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, on a life that revolves around thumping a football with the side of their foot.

The football kicker is harmless, pretty much, but he’s not all there, either.

Which brings us to the closer in baseball.

They’ve gone by different names throughout the years.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, they were “firemen,” so named for their charge to put out fires in late innings.

By the 1980s, they had developed into “stoppers.”

Now they’re called “closers.”

Call them whatever you like, they have one common denominator.

They’re all a little nuts.

The baseball closer—that late-inning relief specialist who either saves the game or blows it, with no in-between—has to possess the fearlessness of a man guessing his wife’s weight and the eccentricity of Howard Hughes. Or so it seems.

The Red Sox had a guy named Dick Radatz back in the 1960s. They called him “The Monster,” which wasn’t a nickname; it was a fact. Radatz was born in Detroit and he was 6’6” and 230 pounds and as bad as Leroy Brown.

There was Al Hrabosky, the Mad Hungarian. Hrabosky wore a Fu Manchu and had eyes that bore through hitters like lasers. His ritual included standing behind the mound, his back to the hitter, as he psyched himself with silent mantras.

Then Hrabosky would slam the ball into his mitt and spin toward the mound. You could almost see the smoke pouring from his nostrils.

There was Roger McDowell, who pitched for the Phillies and the Mets, and who would have made a great thesis subject for someone studying human psychosis.

The roster of off-kilter closers through the years would dwarf any grocery list.

The Tigers have had some decent closers in their glorious history, but they’ve been weird in that they’ve been relatively sane individuals.

John Hiller was probably normal because he wasn’t just a closer. Hiller could start, middle relieve, and close—all in the same week.

Aurelio Lopez was Senor Smoke, but he wasn’t particularly strange. Just fat.

The most eccentric thing about Willie Hernandez was that he changed his name to Guillermo.

Mike Henneman resembled a California surfer with his ruggedly handsome, blond looks and was a pretty normal guy in his own right.

Todd Jones looked nervous but never really was. Jonesy paced around and on the mound like an expectant father in the maternity ward.

He chewed his gum at a rate of 600 per minute. He looked as comfortable out there as a man whose shorts were two sizes too small. Jones was the Don Knotts of closers.

But the Tigers have employed a couple of doozies, one of whom is working for them presently.

In 1981, a one-hit wonder named Kevin Saucier dazzled us in Detroit.

Saucier was called “Hot Sauce.” The moniker was a play on his last name, but it could also have been because Saucier bounced around the mound like someone who’d just consumed a gallon of the stuff. He was a cat on a hot tin roof out there.

Saucier was a lefty, which only added to his weirdness factor. When he closed a game, Hot Sauce leaped off the mound and looked like a Mexican jumping bean, slamming his hand into his glove and shaking hands with anyone he could get his mitts on.

I once even saw him exchange handshakes with one of the grounds crew. No joke.

Hot Sauce was diluted the next year, however. He lost his control—literally and figuratively. He began to walk people, then hit them. The more it happened, the more it played with his head.

Saucier quit the Tigers, and baseball, in the middle of the 1982 season.

“I’m afraid I’m going to hurt somebody,” Hot Sauce said of his sudden control woes.

A closer afraid of hurting someone? Now that’s different.

The other strange cat who has closed games for the Tigers is the free spirit who’s doing it for them currently.

Jose Valverde, “Papa Grande,” is a man overloaded with ritual and superstition. It’s in the way he drinks water in the bullpen, the manner in which he puts on his glasses, and that’s just the tip of his iceberg.

Valverde was signed by the Tigers in the off-season as a free agent, essentially replacing Fernando Rodney. It’s been like swapping out Tony Bennett for Lady Gaga.

Valverde is 6’4”, 220 pounds and with his glasses he looks like a nerd on steroids.

Some closers give you a real show after every closed game. Valverde entertains after every strike .

He fist pumps. He looks skyward. He shakes. He points. Then he asks for the ball and gets his next sign.

Valverde cast his lot as a Tigers closer last week when he struck out, in order, the Yankees’ Nick Swisher, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodriguez to preserve the Tigers’ 5-4 win on Monday night. It was sort of impressive.

Afterward, Valverde’s antics were served up to the Yankees by the New York media trying to get them to bite. Was it showing them up?

Not one of the guys Valverde struck out took the bait.

Maybe they just resigned themselves to the fact that Valverde is a closer, and closers are a little nuts anyway.

Whatever gets them through the night.

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Is there a Dr. Jack Kevorkian for baseball?

Someone you go to if you want a career euthanized?

I have a candidate for Doctor Death, but bear with me first.

I’m getting flashbacks, and they aren’t good.

I’ve been remembering Willie Mays lately, but not in the way you’d think I would remember him.

The Mays memory that keeps coming to my mind these days is not the one of him running down Vic Wertz’s drive in the vastness of the Polo Grounds in the 1954 World Series—the one where he gets shot out of a cannon, catches Wertz’s rocket with his back to home plate, and spins 360 degrees while throwing the ball back to the infield.

No, not that one.

I’m having flashbacks of Mays in the 1973 World Series—a 42-year-old has been who, if he was hellbent on showing up at the Fall Classic, should have done so as a paying customer.

Mays was with the New York Mets in ’73, some 22 years after debuting as a big leaguer with the New York Giants. He was brought back in a 1972 trade largely to sell tickets at Shea Stadium.

Mays couldn’t play anymore by the time he returned to New York. The Say Hey Kid was the Say What? Kid.

Never was that more apparent than in the ’73 World Series, in one of the games in Oakland. Mays was patrolling center field, his old haunts, when a routine fly ball was driven to his right.

Mays, far removed from his days as the best center fielder on Earth, played the ball like he was standing on a water bed.

It was sad, seeing Willie Mays stumble around center field—once his domain—under the biggest spotlight of the year.

Fast forward 37 years, almost, to 2010. More sadness.

Call Kevorkian. Strap Ken Griffey Jr.’s career to the machine and put it out of its misery.

Junior is a senior now. He’s 40 years old and is Ken Griffey Jr. in name only. If it wasn’t for a birth certificate, I wouldn’t believe it.

He’s fading fast, in this last go-round with the Seattle Mariners, the team he put on the map.

Griffey hasn’t been a force at the plate for several years. He still has the stance and the sweet upper-cut swing—except that while the swing looks good it is late in arrival.

Junior is hitting .208 in 77 at-bats with the Mariners, with no home runs and two doubles—and 14 strikeouts.

Now there are reports that Griffey wasn’t available for a recent pinch-hitting opportunity because he was napping in the clubhouse.

“He was sitting in his chair, fast asleep,” an anonymous player said about Griffey, who had retired to the clubhouse in the fifth inning to grab a jacket. Two innings later he was discovered in his chair, snoozing.

That ought to be the final straw. And by the looks of it, it will be.

Reports are surfacing that the Mariners are close to cutting Griffey. It would be the highest-profile mercy killing since they shot Old Yeller.

Griffey can’t play. Just like Mays couldn’t play and had no business being in uniform during the 1973 World Series. The falling asleep thing is the exclamation point.

Griffey is coming off more offseason knee surgery, and he was on the decline even before that.

It doesn’t look like he’ll retire, so the Mariners will have to retire him themselves.

Mike Schmidt did it right, though painfully for him.

Schmidt got off to a rotten start in 1989 with the Phillies, at the age 39. By the end of May, Schmidt was hitting just .203 with six home runs.

A press conference was called, just like that.

Through tears, Schmidt said he couldn’t do it anymore. His presence on the roster was doing more harm than good. He was quitting, just like that.

Schmidt is the exception; normally someone from the front office has to tap these guys on the shoulder, nod for them to come into the office, and the news is delivered.

“We’re going in a different direction.”

That, unfortunately, appears to be what the Mariners are preparing to do. The end of Junior’s career, they say, could come any day now.

Griffey was the modern-day Mickey Mantle, who played much of his career on one good leg. If injuries hadn’t ravaged him, Griffey might have hit 800 home runs. No joke.

He’s got a bum leg again, but that’s not all that’s wrong with Ken Griffey Jr. He won’t, or can’t, pull the trigger on his own firing.

He can’t play anymore. Everyone seems to know that but him.

Ain’t that usually the way?

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Last Week: 1-4
This Week: NYY (5/10-13); BOS (5/14-16)

So what happened?

Minnesota—that’s what happened.

The Tigers’ sweep by the Twins at Target Field, after years of being tormented in the Metrodome, reminded me of a quip from long ago Tampa Bay Bucs coach John McKay.

McKay was explaining away yet another loss in his team’s infancy—when the Bucs were in the throes of their 0-26 start to their NFL career. The loss in question had come at home.

“We will attempt to come back next week in front of our home crowd at Tampa Stadium and get a win. We’ve now proven that we can’t win on the road OR in front of our home crowd. So we would like a neutral site!”

The Tigers proved last week that they can’t win at the Metrodome OR at Target Field. So they, we would surmise, would like a neutral site.

The Metrodome had its booby traps, and it looks like Target Field has wind issues.

Regardless, the Tigers went 0-3 in Minnesota last week, obliterating the hard work they had done to pull within 1/2 game of the Twins.

The Twins’ lead is back to 3-1/2 games, as it was before the Tigers’ 6-1 run of two weeks ago.

Hero of the Week

Miguel Cabrera carries the Tigers even when they lose.

That’s not a slam—that’s a fact.

Cabrera has, as manager Jim Leyland said the other day, been locked in all year.

Has he ever.

Cabrera continues to horde RBIs like they’re a Blue Light Special.

He delivered in Minnesota, despite the sweep—slamming two homers in one game, to boot. He had another dinger wiped out by Cleveland’s rain on Friday night.

Cabrera has 33 RBI. The Tigers have played 31 games. You do the math.

Oh, and he’s hitting .370 with seven home runs, 20 runs scored, an OBP of .457, and a slugging pct. of .639.

You could rightly make Cabrera Hero of the Week every Monday in this space; it’s hardly stepping out on a limb by doing so. But my goodness, the guy just keeps driving in runs and his batting average is Ty Cobb-like.

Honorable mention: reliever Joel Zumaya, who’s looking better and better and distancing himself from his recent spate of injuries.

Goat of the Week

Calling Max Scherzer! Paging Max Scherzer! Report to MMM at once.

MMM is growing impatient with Mr. Scherzer, who’s been soiling the mound for three starts in a row now.

Scherzer’s latest adventure came yesterday in Cleveland: five innings, five earned, nine hits. In his last three starts, Scherzer’s ERA has ballooned from 2.62 to an unsightly 6.81.

If it makes you feel any better, Edwin Jackson, who was essentially shipped to Arizona for Scherzer, isn’t doing much better with the D-Backs.

If that DOESN’T make you feel any better, you’re not alone. Scherzer is supposed to be a top three guy in the rotation, and he’s nowhere near that yet. Opponents are slapping the baseball around on him to the tune of a .327 batting average.

Egads!

Upcoming: Yankees and Red Sox

Biggest week of the season at Comerica Park if you’re a marketing person.

Two of baseball’s most storied franchises visit Detroit this week.

The Tigers have seven games to see how they size up with the torrid Yankees and the lukewarm Red Sox. The Bengals’ 9-3 record at home will be put to the test.

Seriously, what a great week at the old ballpark. It kicks off with the team’s tribute to Ernie Harwell tonight, which includes a special flag raising ceremony. Then the Yanks and Red Sox invade through Sunday.

Good stuff.

The downer? No Curtis Granderson for the Yankees in their only visit to CoPa. Grandy continues to nurse a groin injury.

The Red Sox are a mystery. I mean, they were swept by the Orioles.

The Bosox are 16-16 and are in fourth place. They haven’t been able to capitalize on a schedule that saw them play 20 of their first 32 at home; they’re 10-10 at Fenway Park, 6-6 on the road.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com