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Believe it, Folks; The Tigers Are Living Their Destiny

By BostonMac, Section MLB
Posted on Sat Oct 14 2006 at 9:44 AM EST
More on: Detroit Tigers, Oakland A's, ALCS (all tags)

Maybe it's because they took it hard to the franchise of evil incarnate, the New York Yankees, the vaunted "Murderer's Row and Cano" that was supposedly going to mash its way through the 2006 playoffs en route to a coronation in the Bronx for a 27th World Series title.

Maybe it's because we watched them lose 119 games three years ago, watched Mike Maroth suffer the indignity of losing 20 games in a season, and saw a 20-year-old Jeremy Bonderman, fresh off a trade from the team that drafted him (the Oakland A's), plow through perhaps the most ignominious, laughable season since the 1962 Mets.

Or maybe I just like the Tigers now because I can't wait to see the graphic during Game 4 of the ALCS: "TEAMS TO COME BACK FROM 3-0 DEFICIT IN LCS: 2004 BOSTON RED SOX VS NYY).

Don't get me wrong.  I feel for the Oakland fans.  Until 2004, Red Sox fans had watched our team implode in the postseason on a similar scale as Oakland has.  My esteemed colleague Trevor Freeman provides us with a retrospective of the heartaches that the Athletics have put their fans through over the years here so they do not have to be rehashed in any detail except to say that the Red Sox themselves were responsible for one of the collapses, in the 2003 ALDS.

But after watching the Detroit Tigers seemingly rise from the dead after being down 1-0 in Yankee Stadium after getting clobbered in Game 1 of the LDS (and this after stumbling down the stretch and choking away the Central Division title to the Minnesota Twins by losing to the Kansas City Royals (!) on the last day of the season), I can't help but root for them now.  Sorry, Trevor; I am going to root hard for the D.

Maybe Tigers fans haven't suffered enough in the sense that A's fans have.  On my men's league softball team this fall, we lost three games by one run in which we had the tying run in scoring position, which led us to agree that we'd rather get blown out than lose by one.  Such is the case with the A's.  They have been such a solid franchise for so many years, solidifying their position as a perennial contender in the American League through the genius of Billy Beane and his ability to consistently stay in front of the curve and ahead of the other GM's in the game.  They should have made the LCS in 2001, 2002, and 2003.  They have been shut out of the playoffs behind a deep-pocketed Angels team in the West and the beasts of the Northeast Corridor, the Yankees and Red Sox, keeping them away from the Wild Card in 2004 and 2005.  Meanwhile, the Tigers have pretty much been awful since C. Everett Koop was telling us to stop smoking.

But I have a hard time blaming Tigers fans for their poor attendance through the lean years.  Why would a self-respecting fan give up his or her hard-earned money to go watch a ridiculously bad baseball team?  The Tigers fans didn't come to the ballpark during the '03 debacle, but why should they?  If they had had great attendance numbers during that time, they would have been patsies or suckers or rump-swabs of the team who buy tickets and fill the stadium no matter how poorly the team is run or is playing (see: many BOSTON RED SOX fans, circa 1991- PRESENT).  The team never gave them any reason to come; that doesn't mean they stopped loving baseball.

The Tigers and the A's both have rich histories, both being charter members of the American League, although the Tigers have managed to stay in one spot while the A's have traversed from Philly to Kansas City to the Bay Area.  The Tigers are the team of Ty Cobb (racist bastard), Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline, Charlie Gehringer, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Kirk Gibson, Jack Morris.  I remember growing up and fearing the Tigers; their 1984 team was one of the best of all time.  

Detroit has every bit the history, the pedigree, and the right to take back their place at the top of the baseball world.  As everyone has been swooning over the coast teams in recent years, hard-working Detroit has sat out there in the Midwest, on the far western fringes of the Eastern Time Zone, enjoying daylight later in the evening than the pretentious baseball snobs in Boston and New York, biding its time by celebrating championships in fringe sports such as hockey and pro basketball, watching its biggest college football team implode year in and year out under Lloyd Carr, and seeing its pro football team, for lack of a better term, suck balls.  All this time, Dave Dombrowski has been quietly building the Tigers for their run.  And now it has come.  

Their fans deserve a World Series.  The city of Detroit now has a reason to get excited about baseball again.  Don't blame them for not paying ridiculous ticket prices to watch a bunch of stiffs lose 119 games.  Commend them for jumping back on the Tiger bandwagon early this season and knowing what the rest of us are just coming to believe now after being skeptical all year: the Detroit Tigers are the best team in baseball and will win the 2006 World Series.

Take consolation, though, Oakland fans: take solace in the fact that when the series is over and done with, you get to go home to the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, while the Tigers fans have to live in Detroit.  I think the baseball gods can see which group has suffered more; living in the 313 gets you infinitely more sympathy points that Oak-town, even with the current state of the Raiders.  Go Tigers.