photo illustration by Samara Pearlstein
September in tha D! Are you ready for this? Are you ready for the extraordinary excitement that will be The Race to .500?!?!!?
As we finish out the season we will be playing teams who are fighting for their divisions, teams who will be fighting for the wild card, for any playoff berth at all. The Tigers? We’re fighting for the more symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing EVEN SPLIT. We aim for perfection… PERFECT MEDIOCRITY. The mathematical beauty of .500, that is our objective.
We need a minimum of 81 wins to achieve this majestic goal! Right now we have 67! There are 23 games left in the season! We need to win at least 14 of those games to reach .500! This means that we are only allowed 9 more losses for the entire rest of the month. START YOUR COUNTDOWN, FOLKS AND FELINES!
Bits and pieces from the Wednesday night game, ’cause I need to be in bed about two hours ago:
– Lots of ‘USA, USA’ chants for Olympian Mike Hessman. He obliged the crowd with a late-inning home run. Rod and Mario spent quite a while talking about how he didn’t get to see any of the basketball or swimming because even if you’re an Olympic athlete, you need to get tickets to watch other events, and the tickets would get snatched up early in the morning.
– Renteria was tossed in the 6th for arguing about being called out on a checked swing (lots of rumbling about the strikezone tonight too) so the camera focused on Ramon Santiago, who was readying his glove in the dugout. He was talking to Ryan Raburn, and as he got up he appeared to reach out and TWEAK RABURN’S NOSE. It’s kind of hard to see because he’s between the camera and Raburn, but I definitely did a doubletake. A doubletake of POTENTIAL GLEE.
– The crowd kept chanting ‘Gary! Gary! Gary!’ when Sheffield was up, and then booing loudly if he made an out. Rod and Mario were perplexed and amused by this. Obviously they’re not familiar with Sheff’s deep, twisted need to be booed to psych himself up at the plate.
– After the game, Magglio, Joyce, Granderson, and Santiago all met for a GROUP HUG. Like, a big circular hug. I squee’d.
Thursday we’ve got a day game, 1:05 pm EDT. Kenny vs. Ervin Santana. Remember: there’s a maximum of 9 losses allowed for the entire rest of the month. I hope Kenny is bearing that in mind. Go Tigers!