Look Out Below!

File this one under "local boy makes good." Britton, MI native Duane Below will be making his Major League debut tonight, taking the place of the now-bullpen bound Charlie Furbush. Britton, MI is here, BTW, south of Ann Arbor between Tecumseh and Dundee, (Northeast of Adrian and northwest of Temprance for all of you former SEC high school athletes!)

I recommend the Detroit News' version of Below's life story, which is a nice human interest piece with small town charm and a mom named Phyllis that works at a senior center. Good stuff.

As for Below, he becomes the next in a line of potential rotation fillers, notable because 1) he is not Charlie Furbush, who was his predecessor in that role and 2) He is not über-prospect Justin Turner who should pleasepleaseplease stay in the minors. Below (which I have taken to pronouncing "Bell-O" and now "BE-low", but I guess I'll wait to hear Dan Dickerson or Mario and Rod to get my pronunciation right), has been pretty good at Toledo this year, sporting a 3.13 ERA with 83k and 37BB in 115 IP. His full minor league stats suggest that he's not quite that good, but hey, give me six innings and a couple runs and you're ok in my book this season.

Good luck Duane, we're pulling for you!

Some Early Ginter Returns

There are six cards in the Tigers team set. Guess how many relics there are? Yeah*














*Ok, so maybe there are only 5. You see, there are two Austin Jackson cards--one with a jersey and one with a bat--but they are actually the same card. Same card number, same picture, same everything except for the little swatch. To me this is only one card, with your choice of how you want your one square inch of memorabilia, but I could see how some people would want both.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Sorry folks, the blog is going under construction for a while. Some things, images and galleries in particular, might appear or disappear or be broken etc. For this I am very sorry. The hope is that the end result is a much better site for everyone.

Now the bad news. It is no secret that my blogging here has been a little, um, sluggish for the last few months. This is a function of my life going from a normal, acceptable pace, to a crazy, full-time job + grad school + damn, this recession must actually be long gone because work is chaos + and I'm exhausted in my free time pace.

I am not shutting down the site. I am not stopping with the blogging. Things are just UNDER CONSTRUCTION for a while. Pardon the mess, especially because I'm a notoriously slow worker.

Shipped!

My favorite word in the english language. Well, at least when this is involved: