The Tigers are going to the World Series.

illustrations by Samara Pearlstein

It started on Wednesday in a rain delay without rain and ended on Thursday in a screaming victorious Phil Coke glove slam behind the mound. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

CC Sabathia was never the Sabathia that we feared, and came out of the game in the 4th. Max Scherzer struck out 10 over 5.2 innings. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

Phil Coke pitched two innings to close out the game. Valverde and Benoit were warming, but neither was needed. Phil Coke owned the back end of the bullpen in the ALCS. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

During the trophy ceremony after the game, Mike Ilitch stood there supported by Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland. The president of the American League said some dumb things, very poorly. Mr. Ilitch described the team as not having “one hot dog in the bunch.” The Tigers are going to the World Series.

The offense finally decided to put in a decent night’s work. Miguel Cabrera homered. Austin Jackson homered. Jhonny freakin’ Peralta hit TWO home runs. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

It didn’t rain even a little bit. The game was not at all delayed. The park was full. The cold weather encourages fans to show up in fuzzy costume tiger suits. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

The Tigers beat the Yankees. The Tigers swept the Yankees. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

The Tigers are champions of the American League in 2012. The Tigers are going to the World Series.

The Tigers are going to the World Series.

Phil Coke leads to victory and other oddities.

illustrations by Samara Pearlstein

First things first: we are up 2-0. We are up 2-0 in the ALCS. We are up 2-0 in the ALCS against the Yankees and the first two games were in New York. We are up 2-0 in the ALCS, against New York, in New York, and Justin Verlander has yet to pitch in the series. Can I just take this moment to gesture in astonished mute hysteria? Yes? Thank you.

Secondly, the facts.

–Phil Coke had a two-inning save. In New York. In the ALCS. In place of our nominal real closer, who suddenly cannot be trusted with a hard-boiled egg in a wet paper bag, let alone anything less than a 10-run lead in a playoff game. In a crucial Game 2, when the Tigers desperately needed someone to step into that bullpen void, someone did step in, and that someone was freakin’ Phillip Douglas Coke, our noble knight of tonsorial mutability and carbonated beverages. Wow.

–Jhonny Peralta has been doing some crazy fielding of the baseball.

–Anibal Sanchez shut the Yankees out over seven innings. The useful formulation of that statement would be: A Tigers pitcher not named Justin Verlander shut the Yankees out over any significant number of innings. That is absolutely crucial, because Verlander is going to do what Verlander is going to do (Paws willing), but if nobody else in the rotation is able to operate on a comparable level, it’s just not going to go well.

–Hiroki Kuroda was throwing a perfect game for way too long to be considered polite.

–Even when there are a dozen umpires on the field, they are still going to screw things up. This is fine when it negatively impacts the Yankees and a travesty against every aspect of human decency when it negatively impacts the Tigers, obviously.

–Everybody likes to say Avisail Garcia’s name, and everyone likes to see him standing around with Miguel Cabrera so that all can marvel at how they are actually the same person and one of them is clearly just a time traveler.

–Meanwhile, in the TBS studios:

The Tigers are trying to kill me.

illustrations by Samara Pearlstein

These Terrible Cartoons are old, but still applicable today. Not that this is a good thing, mind, but it is definitely a Thing, because the Tigers must have been trying to kill me then, and now they have renewed their efforts.

Jim Leyland is trying to kill me with his (non)decision-making. Doug Fister is trying to kill me with his comebacker off the wrist. Delmon Young is trying to kill me with cognitive dissonance. Papa Grande is plain old trying to kill me, just straight up murderous intent and all that. By the end of the game I felt like I had run a marathon and been hit over the head with a large mallet. I needed a pile of kittens and probably a hug. It was not passive baseball viewing; the Tigers made sure that was not going to be possible.

If they’re all going to be like this, I may not survive the week. Fair warning.

Apparently the Tigers are not quite dead yet.

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

–Justin Verlander threw so many pitches. So many pitches. I recall at one point Joe Buck and Tim McCarver were talking about the bullpen and how it should get going right away. I looked up at the score bug and realized it was only the 6th inning. What the heck, FOX? Why would you be turning dewy eyes to the scandalously thin Detroit bullpen this early? And on a day when Justin Verlander is starting, no less!

Then they showed Justin’s pitch count, through 5-and-a-bit. I think it was 110 pitches or something like that. Definitely over 100.

He ended up going 7.1 innings and throwing 133 pitches, because of course he did. Of course. Justin Verlander is secretly pitching in the NPB inside his own heart.

–Miggy doubled. Victor tripled. Avila, Delmon, and the Rhino homered. All of this came off of CJ Wilson, except for the Rhino’s contribution. Is good. Alex has been struggling so much lately, his homer was especially special and generated all sorts of warm happy feelings.

–Delmon actually homered TWICE, and this with a strained/busted/sore/otherwise-wonked oblique. Has there ever been a player so manifestly relieved to not be playing for the Twins anymore?

–The rain more or less held off. Also good. Further rainouts or rain delays are no longer the fault of Detroit.

–THANK YOU PHIL COKE. He was far from perfect, but he was good enough to stay in the game and not give it away. This preserved the rest of the bullpen, which was extra important today because there was actually nobody else available in the bullpen.

Well, there was Brad Penny, but that doesn’t count. We’re only considering viable options here.

–I HAVE A RALLY TOWEL. MetsGrrl had a family connection to one and offered to send it along, because she is made of cupcakes and kittens and magic. It arrived this afternoon, prior to the game. RotT gets a rally towel; Tigers win a game. Coincidence? I SUSPECT NOT.

Extra bad things happening in extra innings.

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

I don’t like it. No, I don’t like it one bit.

Tigers still win at injuries, with a real win thrown in as an extra.

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

Wins are good. Immensely successful Doug Fister outings are good. Austin Jackson, Strikeout Machine, going 3-for-5: good. Home runs from Victor Martinez, Jhonny Peralta, and Miguel Cabrera: wicked good. Sending a sell-out Comerica crowd home happy: super wicked good.

INJURIES: NOT GOOD.

Magglio, as we said last time, is done for the season/forever. Delmon Young has a strained oblique, but was given Magglio’s roster spot for occult reasons known only to the Detroit training staff. He was scratched from tonight’s lineup because he was so sore that he could not play. Shocking that he’s sore, what with his strained oblique and all. I don’t understand how the one follows from the other. It just doesn’t make any sense!

You would think that was it. You would think that was enough– surely the Tigers and by extension Tigers fans have suffered enough for one series. But no. Tonight Victor swung for the fences, and yay! it was a home run! And yay! it was the tying run! But he made his way around the bases gingerly, and went storming unhappily down the clubhouse steps as soon as he got into the dugout. Why?

Because he had strained his oblique.

NOW LOOK HERE, UNIVERSE. I know that the Tigers have a bit of history with oblique injuries. I know– we all know– that obliques have it in for the Tigers, and the Tigers in turn can never trust an oblique. But this particular beast had not reared its unattractive head for a while. We managed to make it through almost the entire season without being repeatedly struck down via oblique, right up ’til now. The ALCS. The playoffs. When suddenly all the obliques realized, Hey, we still have to torment the Tigers this year! Better get on that right away! LOL! We’re obliques!

Then, after ALL THAT, you have Alex Avila, The Most Abused Catcher in the Majors. He is hurt and hurting. What is his precise injury? Who knows. He won’t acknowledge it and the team certainly won’t acknowledge it. His knees are definitely going to be causing him pain. Probably his back hurts. I’m sure he has some giant hideous contusion-y bruises on his body that hurt like hell right now. Maybe he has jammed fingers, foot problems, jaw pain from tension tooth clenching or whatever.

Does he have a strained oblique? Who knows! Why not?? STRAINED OBLIQUES FOR ALL! It’s not like it would make a difference. Alex Avila will play through Hell and high water and pain, sickness, exhaustion, the stench of unwashed Lloyd McClendon underpants, etc, so long as Leyland keeps running him out there and telling him to get behind that plate.

But hey… Doug Fister, right? Great stuff. So much fun to watch a Tigers pitcher do something OTHER than look totally lost out there. So nice to see the team win by more than one run. And there was another save for Papa Grande, of course. Yay. Yaaaaay. Happyface. Honest.

ETA: Injury quotes!

“You want to be limping,” Avila explained. “You don’t want to be completely out. You want to be on crutches. That’s the thing.”
Jason Beck/DetroitTigers.com

If you’re a non-Tigers fan who happens to be reading this blog right now, you may think I’m kidding when I talk about what Avila will play through in the service of his team. No. I’m not kidding.

“The only way I don’t play [in Game 4],” Martinez said, “is if I wake up and I’m dead.”
Jason Beck/DetroitTigers.com

Don’t wake up dead, Victor.

the Tigers win at injuries

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

It is truly a remarkable thing. First Delmon Young strained his oblique. Then Magglio Ordonez rebroke his ankle. The Tigers found themselves suddenly lacking in outfielders, since Brennan Boesch is out with his thumb thing. Ryan Raburn was already going to get playing time because of Delmon. Don Kelly was already on the roster, and needed to be free to sub in all over the place. Andy Dirks should not get regular postseason at-bats at this point in his career. So who would step in for Magglio?

DUH. Just reactivate Delmon! He can swing but not throw, so it’s basically business as usual! That totally makes sense! It’s not like he was injured wicked recently or anything! He’s had plenty of time to heal up! We all know how quickly and thoroughly oblique injuries heal, especially when you start playing on them again as soon as possible!

I don’t blame this for Game 2. Many things factored in, and the game did go to extras, so the Tigers were playing things close. In the ALDS, they were winning very close games. Now they are losing very close games. Nobody can count on always getting the win when the win depends on a single run; that leaves far too much room for luck to come into it, and in short (non-162 game) series, you want to eliminate the element of luck as much as you possibly can. The Tigers have not really done that. The absence of Delmon and Magglio was felt, but not intrinsic to the gut-wrenching walkoff loss.

Ugh. Magglio may be done. Like, maybe forever this time. He thought his ankle was healed, but clearly that was not the case. Then again, if his ankle felt fine, and all his tests came back clean, how long was he supposed to wait before playing on it again? His body apparently wants him to wait FOREVER. His bones have become brittle and unreliable. I find it hard to believe he can come back when his ankles are literally snapping beneath him on the field. Behold as he limps off into the sunset.

Please do not let this become a metaphor for the season, Tigers. Please.

ALCS-bound

illustrations by Samara Pearlstein

If you watched that entire game and survived the experience, congratulations. You have been through your Trial by Fire, or more precisely Trial by TBS, and you have emerged all the stronger for it. Unless you’re viciously hung over today, that is, in which case you have let TBS win. I’m sorry.

It was as if that game was specially tailored to torment everyone watching it. You want a quickly resolved, emotionally easy Game 5? NOPE. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. You want clean plays and pleasingly paced innings? NOPE. NONE FOR YOU. You get instead AGONY and the fine sensation of YOUR HEART TRYING TO ESCAPE YOUR CHEST CAVITY VIA YOUR MOUTH and TENSENESS AS YET UNKNOWN TO MODERN-DAY ENGINEERING and any number of other things carefully constructed to raise your blood pressure, induce the emergence of bile, and melt key portions of your brain so that it subsequently leaks out of your ears and possibly eyeballs.

Good times!

It seemed like none of this was going to be the case at the very start, because Don freaking Kelly and Delmon Young hit back-to-back homers early to put the Tigers up on Ivan Nova. It was basically magical and full of wonder, like so:

Nova was out of the game after two innings. Hooray, one would think! But the Yankees REALLY wanted this one, and managed their pitchers accordingly. They didn’t want to give Nova any room to deepen the sinkhole, so we were treated to the spectacle of, at various points, both Phil Hughes and CC Sabathia in relief. Le eek.

Doug Fister only went 5 innings, but he also only gave up one run, so compared to the Yankee starter he was positively masterful. Like so:

Not one to be outdone in Taking This Game Seriouslyness, Jim Leyland had Max Scherzer come on in relief of Mister Fister. Although he was technically responsible for the second Yankee run (the first was a Cano homer off Fister), his only real contribution was a Derek Jeter single. Unpleasant, certainly, but not unforgivable… except for the fact that this single prompted Scherzer’s removal from the game, to be replaced by Joaquin Benoit.

When he came out to the mound, Benoit had a large band-aid on the side of his face. The band-aid, like most (especially at that size), was peach-colored. Joe Girardi came out and demanded that he remove said bandage, because it was “distracting”. Quote:

“I’m not trying to play a mind game or anything, but it was a pretty big Band-Aid and it was somewhat distracting, I think, it’s hard not to look at,” Girardi said. “I’m sure he had a legitimate reason, and it’s not something I necessarily wanted to do, but to me it would have been distracting.”
NY Daily News

Oh, ok. Sorry that basically all the bandages made at that size are MADE FOR WHITE PEOPLE, Joe Girardi. Sorry that Joaquin Benoit ISN’T WHITE and therefore when he has to WEAR A FREAKIN BANDAGE ON HIS FACE because he has SOME SORT OF NASTY THING THAT YOU DON’T WANT FLYIN’ FREE UP THERE, it ends up DISTRACTING FOR YOUR DELICATE PLAYERS’ VISIONS on account of his skin not matching the band-aid! SO TERRIBLE, WE MUST STOP THIS SORT OF THING FROM SULLYING THE PURE AND NONDISTRACTING GAME OF BASEBALL! AS IF JOAQUIN BENOIT’S BAND-AID IS ANY MORE DISTRACTING THAN AJ BURNETT’S ENTIRE FACE! HAVE HIM REMOVE THAT, IF YOU WILL!!

Ahem. Anyways.

Benoit loaded the bases and walked in a run and generally turned the 7th inning into the sort of baseball that ought to come with warning labels for those of delicate dispositions or preexisting conditions. BUT IT WAS OK. He pulled through, more or less, and then Valverde pulled through, more or less, and the Tigers won the catdamned baseball game in front of ARod and Spike Lee’s terrible hat and Little Victor and John Smoltz and the world and everybody.

Here. We. Go.

the great Tiger fan rooting debate

photo illustration by Samara Pearlstein

I’ve had this discussion with a lot of people recently. Now that the Tigers are out of it, what to do? After all, the season marches on and nobody wants to ‘waste’ the few precious remaining weeks of baseball before the Long Dark Winter without a rooting interest.

Of course this isn’t even a debate for me; my proclivities are known. And it was easy when the Yankees were in the running still, because then if you had to decide a rooting interest you could just answer in the negative sense (i.e. anyone BUT the Yankees). A perfectly reasonable response, as I’m sure most of you would agree. But now that the Yankees have been eliminated (yay!), what do you do?

So far there seem to be several Tiger-fan schools of thought.

1. Root AL Central. The people who lean this way believe that, with no Tigers to root for, another AL Central team is the next best thing. The reasoning is varied, but a lot of people either treat it as a regional thing (Cleveland being midwestern-relatively close to Detroit) or a divisional pride thing (if we prove how good the AL Central is, it makes all the teams in the division look better!). A lot of Detroiters have fairly strong ties to other midwestern cities, so I can’t really knock that, but I think everyone understands how good the AL Central is without having to see the Racist Logos win in the postseason.

Side note: remember when the AL Central used to be considered one of the worst divisions in baseball? It wasn’t that long ago!

2. Never root for the divisional enemy. These are the people who spend the whole regular season hoping every AL Central team except for the Tigers comes down with ebola, and they aren’t going to start changing just because it’s October and the Tigers are sitting at home watching the games on TV. Some of these people temporarily rooted for the R.L.s, unnatural as it may have seemed to them, because they were playing the Yankees. All normal enmities must be set aside when it comes to the Yankees. We must present a united front. Etc.

Anyways, most of these people reverted to anti-R.L. rooting as soon as the Yanks fell out of contention. This means that they’re rooting Red Sox at the moment. No shame in that, my friends, no shame in that at all.

3. Never root for the league enemy. These are people who simply cannot stand to see anyone in the American League win, ever, if they’re not wearing the Olde English D. If these people follow a second team at all during the regular season, it’s a National League team. This cuts down on the amount of mental and emotional stress they have to go through, because their teams will meet rarely, if at all. I envy their clarity of mind.

These people would be currently rooting either D’backs or Rockies. Personally speaking, I don’t really care about this series, but I’m vaguely rooting Rockies. I don’t have any particular like for them, but a) purple! b) their mascot is a freaking triceratops and c) I don’t like the D’backs at ALL this year.

4. There is but one team in baseball, and that team is the Detroit Tigers. These people lose all interest in baseball when the Tigers are eliminated. I do understand baseball burn-out, so I guess this basically makes sense to me, but… it’s awfully hard to comprehend. WE WILL BE WITHOUT BASEBALL FOR MONTHS soon, surely you’d want to squeeze every last drop out of the season.

So far as these people are concerned, though, the season is already over.

Like I said, this isn’t even a debate for me, because I am a two-hat kinda fan, and my other hat has a B on it. But I’m sure most of you are sorting yourselves into one of these categories, or something else altogether. Best of luck: whatever gets you through this tragically Tiger-less postseason.

ALCS Game 4: when the dust settles

See, the first thing you gotta understand is, there’s this number.

There’s this number, in the American League. It doesn’t care about who won the division. It doesn’t care about who has what banner hangin’ back home. It doesn’t care about last year, or the year before that, or 10 years before that. It doesn’t care about what the newspapers say. It doesn’t care about payroll. It doesn’t care about who has the prettiest third baseman.

It doesn’t give a flyin’ fox fruit bat about any of that, because it’s just a number, see? And numbers don’t care. They don’t care about what was, or what will be, or what might have been. They just care about what IS. ‘Cause numbers are pretty concrete, pretty much live-for-the-moment kinda things, unless you get into imaginary numbers and baseball has enough trouble accepting common algebraic formulas.

So there’s this number. And it’s the number of American League teams left standing.

And that number is One.

OK, and this is baseball, so nothin’ more complicated than algebra, right? Wouldn’t want Joe Morgan’s head exploding or Tony The Russa havin’ a heart attack out there. We’ll stick with algebra. And in algebra, see, sometimes the numbers have names. C’mon, you all remember this. A=2, and B=36, and C=7.564.

So, there’s this number. And we’re gonna play a little game. Take DETROIT. Yeah, good word. Let’s just have some fun here, assign some numbers some nice little names, algebra being about the speed of baseball, I think we’ve all agreed.

D=23, Jeremy Bonderman’s age.
E=29, Nate Robertson’s age.
T=41, Kenny Rogers’ age.
R=23, Justin Verlander’s age.

Average those together and you get 29, the average age of the current Tiger pitching staff. Still with me?

O=2006, that’s today.
I=1984, that’s the last time the Tigers were, you know, there.

2006-1984, that’s 22 years, man, that’s a long time. Heck, longer’n I’ve been around.
29-22, that’s 7.

T=6, that’s the number of runs we scored today, that’s the number that got us over and in and thank you Magglio, 6, I think, is a pretty cool number, that way. It’s the number of letters in ‘Tigers’ and it’s Al Kaline’s number, which is a good sort of thing to be thinking about today.

7-6, kids. That’s 1.

DETROIT=1. Simple math, really.

But of course that’s not how this number got the name “Detroit Tigers” tagged onto it. That’s just something I made up on the spot. Really this number got its name just because it describes a thing, a place. A state of being. The last team in the American League to make it through. That number is one, and that team is the Detroit Tigers, and

The Tigers. Are. Number. One.

In the AL. Which is not everything, of course. But it’s a start. They don’t call it a championship for nothing, you know. And it’s way, way more than we’ve had in years and years and years.

One more thing.

A year ago, the best thing baseball could bring to this city was an All Star game, and everyone agreed that that was OK, but it wasn’t VERY good, and Pudge was the only Tiger there anyways.

That wasn’t true.

Because before the big boys played, before The All Star Game, there was something called the Futures Game. And that was in Detroit too. And there were a couple of kids there. At the time I was calling them the End of the Alphabet Boys. I thought it would be funny if they both made the big league squad next year (this year). I didn’t think it very likely, but I thought, and wrote, hey, how neat, what if.

The End of the Alphabet Boys. V and Z, see. Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya.

The best thing baseball could bring Detroit last season was an All Star game, and the best players Detroit could put in there would do nothing at all except decide that wasn’t enough, they wanted more, and they would be absolutely vital in bringing something more to Detroit the next time ’round. A World Series, even.

No one expected this. No one. Not the fans, not the writers, not the owner or the players themselves. No one expected it, but do you SEE? Do you see how it was BREWING?

Verlander and Zumaya no more remember the last time the Tigers were playing like this than I do. This is a new generation of Tigers, and Tigers fans and we are GOING TO THE FREAKIN’ WORLD SERIES.

So there’s this number. And it’s not THE number, not yet. Maybe we won’t get THAT number. But we’ve got this one, this One, and I don’t care what team you are, I don’t care how rich you are or how special or deserving you think you are, you can’t take that away from these Tigers.

Also, I am incomparably happy that Polanco got the MVP, since he deserved it 10 times over. I am only saddened that he did not wear his snood to accept it.