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| 2008 Bowman #BP108 Will Rhymes |
It's a 2008 Bowman rookie card of new Tiger Will Rhymes, who was called up to the team on Sunday to make his major league debut. As my luck would have it, a package of cards from Play at the Plate arrived yesterday, and this card was fortuitously included in the package. A good omen, I told myself. I thought that I would post it up to celebrate Rhymes' first major league hit, which had a reasonable chance of happening on Monday.
Or not.
This Tigers were no-hit for the 13th time in franchise history Monday, although the first time since Randy Johnson did it to them way back in 1990. You might hear a number of Tigers folks playing down what Garza did yesterday. The Tigers threw a glorified AAA roster out there and were rewarded in infamy. One: that's not Garza's fault. Two: it's really not less impressive considering that he still had 4/9 of a legitimate major league lineup to contend with. Granted, it is made much easier.
I think that this will be my last woah-is-me Tigers fan post for a while. There are a lot of cards on my desk waiting to be catalogued and written about. The National begins tomorrow right here in Baltimore. The temperatures are back into the 80s. The sun is shining.
I'm not conceding the season. I'm not giving up. I love watching the Tigers, root for them ardently, and feel pained when they lose. But it is defense mechanism time for me. The last few sports seasons have been consecutive marathons of pain, and I'm only in shape for a 10k (this is a truer statement than you know). I'll keep tuning in though, for these two reason if nothing else:
Miguel Cabrera makes baseball worth watching. He will fight and scratch for the Triple Crown even with a decimated supporting cast. He should win the Tigers' first MVP since Guillermo Hernandez, and, barring the improbable, the time that a Tiger has won the MVP in a non-World Series year since 1937 (Charlie Gehringer).
Austin Jackson and Brennan Boesch will continue to battle head to head for Rookie of the Year. One of them should win it. Their success portends the success of the Tigers in 2011 and subsequent seasons. It's easy to forget how young the team is. Cabrera is 27. Verlander too. Scherzer just turned 26 today (!--thanks wikipedia, note to self, create happy birthday post this afternoon). Jackson, Porcello and Boesch are all under 25. There are a half dozen other rookies getting some big league reps. One or more may pan out. It's like all the benefits of a rebuilding year without suffering the absolutely horrid performance that those years usually require (I'm looking at you, Orioles). Sure, it's bad, but it's not all bad.
Baseball can still be fun to watch, I promise.
