'Oh, Baby', What A Weekend
By: Eric Thomas
Whenever out of town writers document Detroit, the same words slide out of a PEZ dispenser and are deposited to the page. Words like 'downtrodden', 'dismal' or 'depressed' litter the margins. Whoever writes those words were not in town this weekend. There is a Tigers fever spreading and for very good reason. Time will tell how far this team goes but one thing is for certain: This is a really fun team to watch.
This weekend was awesome at Comerica Park. Who knew that the people with tickets on opening day were the unlucky ones in the lot? The game Saturday against the Red Sox had beautiful weather and excellent pitching from the bullpen. Oh, it was also an execution by home run. Miggy and Prince went back to back twice. The Tigers pounded the Red Sox, in a game tailor made for beer swilling bleacher creatures.
Opening day was a tougher slog against a really good pitcher. The pitchers were also good in games two and three of the series but the Tigers shredded them. Two of the wins were the best kind, where the team has to come together and gut it out under pressure. Those are the kind of wins that turns good teams into great teams and there were two of them on opening weekend.
Miggy and Prince in the very first weekend have become exactly what we hoped they would be. They are the nucleus of the lineup and their radiation seems to be spreading. Suddenly Austin Jackson is a legitimate lead off guy (we found one!) and Alex Avilla is back to late game heroics and off the nasty slump in the playoffs. There are obviously areas that are going need to improve but the cement is certainly drying. Oh, and this is way too early to feel this way and I don't care. I still believe that you can't buy a world series but I am intentionally forgetting that now.
This is no place for rational context. Not right now. That's like running up to a really fun party at a frat house and handing out flyers about liver damage. There is a time and place for that message and it is not here nor now. Let fans take their shirts off and do the truffle shuffle while people sing a boozy rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". Writers call us downtrodden because it has been a while since the future looked this bright in Detroit. There are actually people moving here because the of auto industry renaissance. So we have a bright future and a baseball team that is worth every ticket sold.
It's hard to preach context right now, and who really wants to? At Comerica on Saturday the crowd was overjoyed. After the game they came out of the ballpark in waves before tide pooling on the sidewalk to review their work schedules, so that they can be at as many games as possible. The Tigers have given fans their first taste and they are already hopelessly hooked. It's of course ridiculous to think that the Tigers can have performances this good every weekend but fans want to hear none of that. We want to keep believing in Santa Claus.
How can you blame us? Home runs, gutty at bats and the best pitcher in baseball have made us a bit spoiled. But that's the thing about being spoiled rotten. When it's going on, it sure is a whole lot of fun.
