Back to Back

#22 Victor Martinez 2011 Topps - Black Diamond (Redemption)

#57 Miguel Cabrera 2011 Topps - Black Diamond (Redemption)

I think that this may be the first time that I've ever gone to back to back baseball games to start the season. Based on last night's attendance at Camden Yards I'm not the only one for whom this is a rare occurrence. Still, me and my 5-person party of Tigers fans thoroughly enjoyed watching the Tigers do what we all wanted them to do this year. Play well.

It wasn't all perfect, but it made for a great game. At no point did things feel out of hand, but it was never at the point where I was sick-to-my-stomach nervous about things falling apart. Some points of note:

• Brennan Boesch reached on an error--a bad error, since it really wasn't very windy last night and that pop up should have been caught--which was folowed up by a walk to Peralta. With Alex Avila at the plate, having looked relatively helpless so far this season, a wild pickoff throw advances Boesch to 3rd. At this point my wife says something like "Avila is going to do something here. Weird errors like that have a way of snapping you into reality and breaking you out of a slump." And lo.
• Alex Avila was great. He won the game for the Tigers.
• Verander. See Above. Was filthy and got better later in the game, while clocking in not too far from 100 pitches. A phenomenal start.
• Back to Back home runs from Cabrera and VMart. Immediately prior to those at bats I thought that both of them had looked lost at the plate, especially Cabrera. Shows what I know.
• Maggs crushed the ball all night, but got only two singles to show for it. He's about to break out in a big way.
• Jhonny "Rhange" Peralta. He took a horrible angle to miss a routine ground ball earlier in the game, but made up for it with a couple very nice plays on balls up the middle(ish).
• Camden Yards. Still one of the nicest places to see a ballgame, especially on a 50 degree evening. The win made my walk home that much easier.

It was a great night all around. Back to back games for me and back to back home runs for the Tigers. Let's see if the Tigers can make it back to back wins tonight.

The two cards shown above are part of the "Black Diamond" redemption set from 2011 Topps. I actually got both of them in the mail before the game yesterday, which made the Cabrera/VMart homer parade feel all the more appropriate. This is a great little set from Topps. I certainly hope it continues into Series 2 and the Update Set, as these are the only two (non-autographed) Tigers that exist.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again*

Yesterday was Opening Day in Baltimore.

For those of you that haven't experienced an Opening Day--my life has been blessed with attending all but a tiny handful of Opening Days in Detroit and Baltimore--it is the greatest day of the year, without exception. Sure, individual events may surpass it--a particularly important sports game or championship; a wonderful trip or night out; that one time when you found that nice sweatshirt that you thought you lost, but there is was in some bag that you hadn't used in over a year, and then found $20 in the pocket--but there is no other day of the year that will be as reliably spectacular as Opening Day.

It has everything. The start of baseball season. The beginning of spring. Hot Dogs. Time with your family and friends before, during and after the game. Sure, sometimes it may be really damn cold, or raining or blustery, but with every Opening Day comes a duplicitous sense of hope.

This is the year my team can do it.
Winter's death grip shall finally be released.

When you grow up in a place like Michigan, that second point can't be understated.

So yeah, I treat Opening Day as a holiday, a proud family tradition dating back to my grandpa taking my mom and her brothers to Opening Day at Tiger Stadium. Every year he would tell the stories about how he would call in to their school and inform the receptionist that they wouldn't be coming in today. "They have a previous engagement."

Now I'm lucky enough to work for a company that literally shuts down to go to Opening Day. So just imagine my joy when I learned that my team--The Tigers--were going to be in Baltimore for the Orioles' Opening Day. Oh, there was joy.

But I was wrong. It was wrong.

Opposing fans should not be allowed at Opening Day. They should be banned. Removed at the gate. Stricken from the crowds.

I say this not because opposing fans are obnoxious, or rude or even a distraction to the home fans--I saw very few Tigers fans today and of those that I did see before, during and after the game they were non-entities. No. I say this because it simply shouldn't be. Opening Day is a sacred event. To not root for the home team is sacrelige. Hell, it's in the damn defining song about baseball, the entire lyrics of which are basically a narrative of opening day. Root, root, root for the Home Team

So here I was, watching my favorite team play on Opening Day in one of my favorite ballparks, and from time to time I couldn't help but think I shouldn't be here. Or, more specifically, if I'm going to be here I should be rooting for the Orioles. I have never felt that before, and I have been to many games in many sports as an opposing fan.

Was Opening Day a loss? A bust? No, of course not. It was Opening Day, and I love Opening Day. But this one was different. I was an intruder who somehow managed to slip through the cracks.

That's why I'm so excited to go back tomorrow. With Opening Day over, the baseball season can begin. Go Tigers.


*Full credit to my lovely wife and actual reader of ASFTINDA for suggesting a title vastly superior to whatever it was I had originally named this post, which I literally forgot the moment I heard her suggestion because it erased everything else from my mind with its superiority. Also, this post was in no way meant to evoke David Foster Wallace, or be written in the style of DFW or anything. I haven't read his stuff and despite wanting to, a full life with classes and lack of a kindle or similar doesn't make lugging around a 1400 page copy of Infinite Jest seem imminent.

Home O-pener

I am literally the most excited person in Baltimore today. It's the Orioles home opener, which has become an annual tradition for my wife and I and they are playing the Tigers. On Opening Day.

More good times:

- If you're familiar with a Baltimore accent say "Home Opener." It's a blast. You'll be saying it all day.

- Luke Scott pulled his groin and won't make it back until Wednesday, at the earliest. This is spectacular news for Tigers fans (For why, see "Tiger Killer Kills Tigers" and "Why I blog, Luke Scott Edition") To echo @sabrerosetiger on twitter the O's should probably just sit him for the whole week just to be safe. Please.

-Yesterday Brennan Boesch did a lot of this:


For those of you without a keen baseball eye, that is a picture of him doing awesome things with the bat. Yesterday it was to the tune of 4 hits, including a home run 4 runs and 4 RBIs. His partner in prolific offensive production was none other than...


It is Opening Day. He will play like a star. It's in the cards (!)

For the rest of you Tigers fans, enjoy your mundane sandwich series between the true opener and the home opener. Me, I'll be sporting all my Tigers gear down at Camden Yards, whereupon I will be mercilessly harassed by the large swaths of ignorant O's fans that show up for 1) Opening Day 2) No other games*. It will be miserable right up to the point where the Tigers beat the undefeated Orioles, at which point I will quietly make my way home, careful to avoid large, belligerent crowds.

*It should be noted that I do not find actual Orioles fans to be ignorant. In fact, they are among the better fans in the game--not surprising if they've stuck with it for this long. The specific subset of fans to which I'm referring are the large drunk masses of people who care about Opening Day, but not about the O's and are intolerable on every level. For the other 364 days of the year they are known as Ravens fans.

Brightening an off-day

An off day already? What a letdown. Also, I'd really like for Opening Day to be a singular monster where all the teams are playing all at once and I struggle to keep my head on straight in a full day of baseball overload bliss.

Oh well.

It's a cold, rainy friday and I need something to lift my spirits:



A friend of mine was upgrading his collection and didn't have use for this nice little glass case. This allowed me to move my autographs from individual ball cubes in a cabinet to this little fella.

A lot of nice memories in that case. The perfect warm-up on a crummy off-day.

Update: to answer a question from the comments, the "subjects" on each ball, from left to right, Top to bottom:

Top Row: Monte Irvin, Yogi Berra, Ernie Banks, Harmon Killebrew, Duke Snider
Middle Row: Cal Ripken/Tony Gwynn, Sparky Anderson, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline, Cal Ripken
Bottom Row: Bobby Doerr, Lee MacPhail, Carlton Fisk, 2006 WS (Granderson, Polanco, Thames, Inge, Robertson, Monroe), Curtis Granderson

Opening Day Is Go

Tigers vs. Yankees in the first game of the season on ESPN.

Go.

Day 0.

It's been a long hard winter for all of us. But Lo! Spring. Oh thank god, spring. A friend of mine called today "Christmas Eve," and I could only nod in agreement. It's enough to make me want to break out into song.



Indeed.

----------

This blog has been pretty quiet for a while, and for that I'm sorry. I've been busy, then in a funk, then busy again etc. For days I've asked myself, "what am I going to write about the Tigers this year?" Last year it was a season preview in which I predicted some things that proved to be pretty much true and also that Gerald Laird would hit .275 so, yeah. The year before it was THE YEAR, as painstakingly detailed in a multi-part series about how 2009 would be the year that nobody expected the Tigers--2008 cellar dwellers--to do anything at all. What did we get for that? 163 game crushing disappointment. Close but no cigar.

The problem is, I don't know what to think this year.

I don't feel like last year, when the team was both too young and too old, or the year before, where they really felt poised to take the division by storm. I don't know what this is. I don't know who the Tigers are.

----------

Individually you can see the potential.

Justin Verlander is going to win a Cy Young in his career, and I think he does it this year. You can write that down. Tell your friends.

Miguel Cabrera, sober edition, is an MVP.

Max Scherzer had a breakout 2nd half that could carry into this year

Austin Jackson, your should-have-been 2010 ROY, is back with a year of experience under his belt.

But geez, when I start reading things like "BEST ROTATION IN BASEBALL" by the person that you would absolutely expect to write something stupid like that, you just want to scream PHILLIES! in his face or hell, WHITE SOX! or a handful of others. But the problem is, we don't know.

That's why you get back-to-back columns in the Detroit News--Five reason the Tigers will be a hit and Five reasons the Tigers will be a flop.

We don't know.

We don't know if Phil Coke will be an effective starter all season, or if Brad Penny will be healthy.

We don't know if Rick Porcello will be better than he was last year.

We don't know if Alex Avila will be a good catcher.

Or if Will Rhymes will be a good second baseman.

Or if Ryan Raburn is ready to play a full season in the show.

Or if Brennan Boesch can take his place if he's not.

Or if Casper Wells can take his place if he's not.

We don't know if Maggs is healthy after breaking his ankle last year, or if he can stay healthy.

We don't know if Joel Zumaya or Carlos Guillen will ever return.

When you start counting up the question marks things become disconcerting. I don't like disconcerting--it plays games with my defense mechanisms. I want to prepare myself for disappointment, or temper my enthusiasm, but now I'm left here bare, naked to the whims of a round bat hitting a round ball. I don't know that I can take it.

It is Day 0 and the wait is over. Tomorrow will be Christmas Morning, and I have no idea of what I'm getting.


----------

This is the part of the season preview where predictions are made. Except, as my earlier ramblings may have indicated, I have no idea what is going to happen this season.

But this is the internet, dammit.

PREDICTIONS

YEAH. Serious predictions.

• Justin Verlander wins the Cy Young
• 40% of the Tigers starting rotation will be removed for non-injury reasons at some point.
• Austin Jackson has pretty much the same year as last year, is viewed as a massive disappointment
• The Tigers win 85 games, 2nd in Central to White Sox (91)
• Jim Leyland's contract is extended for two more seasons
• Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen and Joel Zumaya play their final seasons

Tommorow is a new day, folks. Welcome to the next six months of your lives and to a rejuvenated blogger.

Go Tigers.

I'm back baby

Sort of.  I'm officially back on US soil, but am still operating with my phone as primary computer.  Regularish posting should resume this week...just in time for the start of the season!

For those of you that have hung in there, thanks.