pug marks, 11/8

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

It has been approximately one thousand years since our last pug marks post, so you know what that means! No you don’t, you’ve forgotten because it’s been so long since we did one of these. Anyways. It means that it’s time for a pug marks post.

pug mark 1
Apparently the Tigers have signed Jhonny Peralta to a two-year deal. Good news for a team without a hot sexy shortstop prospect chomping capably at the triple-A bit, bad news for twitchy newspaper editors. Jhonny had said that he wanted to stay in Detroit, so nobody is exactly screaming with uncontrollable joy, but everyone is moderately pleased, and that’s fine by me.

pug mark 2
Brandon Inge won the Marvin Miller Award for being so freakin’ awesome. This is a league-wide award, mind you, not one of those where one guy on every team gets it. Brandon Inge is such a stand-up fellow that the entire league stands in awe of him. Am I surprised? No. Of course not. Am I pleased. Yes. Yesssssssss.

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Were you wondering who won the pumpkin carving contest? Wonder no more. Although technically that is a scraping, not a carving. Also I think that to win a Brandon Inge bat, you should have to create a Brandon Inge-themed pumpkin. I believe that would have only been fair.

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The Tigers sent Brent Dlugach to the Red Sox for the usual cash-or-a-PTBNL. I’m assuming that most of you don’t really care, but he has been in the system for a while so maybe someone has strong feelings about it. I hope he makes it up with the Sox so I can listen to Jerry Remy struggle to pronounce his name.

pug mark 5
Happy belated Diwali! I don’t have an image of Paws holding a bunch of candles ready to go or anything, so have some Comerica lightbanks. That works for a festival of lights, right? Right.

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Will Rhymes has been having some dog problems.

The dog is a pug; I can’t remember whether or not we know his name, though. Anyone? This is vital information.

pug mark 7
Lee is doing a contest: correctly guess the first new player to sign with the Tigers (from outside the organization), win a book! It’s a pretty good book, you know. It’s got some nice cartoons in it.

pug mark 8
So I guess it’s really the offseason now. If there’s anything you’ve been dying to see rendered in Terrible Cartoon form, speak now and maybe I will draw it. I’ll need little drawing warm-ups now that it’s coming into Wicked Massive and Intense Holiday Card Creation Season anyways.

September call-ups? For me?!

illustration by Samara Pearlstein

Gosh, Muddy, you shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble! Let’s tear off that paper and have a look at what’s in the box…

Jeremy Bonderman

It’s always good to have unstoppable flesh-eating zombie death power on our side, so the addition of Bondo ought to be a welcome one. If the Wrong Sox get pushy in the last month of the season, we can just tell him that AJ Pierzynski has spicy, spicy brains, and he’ll go gnaw ’em right out. Let the fear consume you, AL Central.

His fastball is allegedly back (he was throwing 95ish in rehab starts) (so we are told), which, if true, would be something that we haven’t seen in literal years. Here’s a potentially terrifying thought, though: he’ll be pitching out of the bullpen, so EVERY inning, for him, will be like a first inning. The physical issues have ostensibly been defeated; can the same be said of the mental issues?

Eddie Bonine

The Bovine Kid returns! As you may or may not recall, he was the cat sent packing to make room for Aubrey Huff, who has not done much of anything since he threw dirt in Brandon Inge’s face, and that was before he was a Tiger. Now Bonine gets to come back and exact his revenge. I vote for filling Huff’s entire locker with dirt. As Huff digs out his belongings, a Jack-in-the-box-style toy cow with devil’s horns pops out and hits him in the nose. Don’t mess with the Bovine kid.

Casey Fien

Fien replaced Bonine the first time, back in July. He has the powers of a sea cucumber: the ability to change his body from a solid to a viscous liquid and back again at will, the ability to control his own buoyancy, and the ability to vomit up or poop out his own internal organs to frighten opposing teams. His blood is yellow. He will be a fine addition to the bullpen.

Dusty Ryan

It’s always nice to have extra catchers, but unfortunately for Dusty Ryan, there’s a little somethin’ on the Detroit rosters these days called Alex The Savior Avila. Avila brings a sort of glamor to the backup catcher role that Dusty Ryan can barely even imagine. Avila has a Good Story and an inability to remain clean-shaven for any length of time and his dad is a member of the front office, so… good luck with that, Dusty, you poor sod.

Wilkin Ramirez

A little outfielder, he was up briefly earlier this year when Magglio had some personal stuff that temporarily took him away from the team. He hasn’t been hitting super well in Toledo, but he’s got 17 home runs, and in his two games with the Tigers, he had one homer (his first and so far only big league hit was the homer, actually). He’s also pretty speedy. I guess that’s not a bad thing to have on the bench.

I shall call him Mr. Wilkin.

Brent Dlugach

Rod and Mario were pronouncing this one dih’LOO-gitch (short i sound on the ‘dih’), with that wee ‘dih’ almost elided away. He’s a shortstop. I hope he ends up playing in a nationally televised game at some point, because I look forward to hearing non-Detroit announcers crashing through his name like a drunk tiger in a china shop where all the china is actually made out of eggshells that are extra-thin because the birds that laid them were all eating DDT.

Armando Galarraga

Arrrrrrrrrmando needs no introduction. He also won’t be back up until Saturday, because he has to spend at least ten days with the kids. Them’s the rules.

Pretty good haul, right? Thanks again, Mud Hens! Hopefully we’ll be putting them all to good use soon enough.