Inaudible for two decades, the Tigers are roaring into fall!
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
I couldn’t believe the spectacle before me. Late-August was upon us and almost 50 pairs of eyes at a rodeo-packed Art’s Tavern in Glen Arbor were fixated on the television screen above the pinball machine, watching Detroit Tigers baseball.
The Tigers, you say? The sorry team that has become the butt of professional sports jokes: the summer-long yawn that draws about as many fans as the week-long Traverse City Cherry Festival; the perfect metaphor for a city battered and abandoned by race riots? It couldn’t be.
But it was true. The eyes of hungry Michiganders from Motown to the Soo Locks, from the Crystal River to the Big Two Hearted River, and yes, from Hell to Paradise, were watching their sandlot nine — the owners of the best record in baseball — take it to their thuggish rivals from the south side of Chicago. (As of press time the state’s more traditional tourism destinations including Cherry Republic, the Michigan Boaters Association and Mackinac Island were filing a joint lawsuit against the upstart Tigers for stealing their summer recreational attention — Editor)
There was Justin Verlander, the tall and lanky rookie with the grit and poise of a third-shift autoworker, firing fastballs past the heart of the White Sox order. There was slugger Craig Monroe belting a homerun with so much velocity that the ball was still rising when it reached the bleachers. And there was Jim Leyland, the skipper with a face like worn leather, trudging along the pasture he knows so well between the dugout and the pitcher’s mound. He reminded me of an old northern Michigan farmer surveying his land.
And here at Art’s were a school bus load of tourists and locals alike, forsaking campfires on the beaches, fine dining at La Becasse, early morning tee times on the golf course, even forsaking the Art’s shot-ski full of Jaegermeister to concentrate and cheer for their baseball team as the all-important fall days loomed closer.
The Detroit Tigers have been on a roll all season, and even though previous teams hadn’t won as many games as they’d lost in more than a decade and hadn’t made the playoffs in almost two, merely creeping into October with a pulse wouldn’t be good enough for their newfound faithful — not after posting the best record in baseball most of this summer, not with the talented young pitching staff Leyland holds in his deck of cards, and certainly not with the still pitiful Detroit Lions about to kick off their season.
We want more. We want an American League pennant and a World Series appearance. We want to send the arrogant New York Yankee fans vacationing in our midst back to the Big Apple humiliated. We want Dimitri the young waiter in Greektown, just around the corner from Detroit’s Comerica Park, to burn his hand on the flaming cheese and yell “Opa!” extra loud because, his Athenian boss will tell him, “The Tigers are gonna win the whole damned thing this October. They’re gonna fly back from La Guardia having trounced the Metropolitans 3 games to 2 in the Fall Classic, and they’re gonna cruise down Woodward Avenue in a parade to end all victory parades. Tigers owner Mike Llitch will be there, pouring champagne over the head of his prized architect, General Manager Dave Dombrowski, and yelling “Opa!” himself. Llitch may even forget about the other team he owns in town: the Red Wings.”
We’ve waited so long for this, haven’t we Ernie Harwell, you sweet old voice of solace. God willing, you’ll get to see the Tigers win it all again before you return to the Georgia soil, the same ground where the Tiger great Ty Cobb walked while in the bush leagues. For the first time since 1984 you’ll get to use your catchphrases in October: “He stood there like the house by the side of the road and watched that one go by” … or “That ball is LONG gone” … or “The Tigers win it! The Tigers win it!” You deserve this more than any of us.
Stick around, Ernie Harwell. Stick around baseball fans. The leaves are turning colors and it’s getting cold outside. But summer isn’t over yet, for the Tigers are roaring.