Tiger Geist

This is getting ugly. I really think the best thing that the team can do right now is go on the road to somewhere in the New England area and let the fans focus on the other local sports for a while. What? They’re heading to Boston? Perfect. Get out of town and away from the fans. Scotty Bowman used to say he wanted to open up every hockey playoff series on the road; it put less pressure on his players. The weight of expectations seems to be crushing the team right now, and the best thing they can do is get out of town.

If you look at the tigers who have world series rings — Pudge, Cabrera, Willis (2003 Marlins), Renteria, Sheffield (1997 Marlins), none of them were really expected to win. They were all young and losing actually was an option — they had nothing to lose. Now, you’ve got a lineup full of hitters making $10mil / year each and pitchers who seem overwhelmed.

Nothing is going right at this point.. they’ve made a baserunning error in nearly every game (nice double last night Santiago — next time keep your ass on second). Fielding is starting to fall apart, and the pitching seems dominant at times, only to let the bottom of the order get on base too easily. Luckily it seems the league is beating itself up right now, so we’re only a few games back.

I was lucky to catch most of last night’s game on my friend’s new HD screen during a dinner party. I was unlucky to have a few non-sports fans ask me why my team was losing so badly. I tried to explain how it gives me nothing to write about and just frustrates me in general… that because its such a long season, you have to let the peaks and valleys work themselves out without nit-picking. So.. thats what i’m going to do. I’m hoping that the pitchers stop walking batters, that Cabrera realizes we’re not paying him to hit into double plays, that Polanco starts hitting the ball on the ground, and next time we’ve got 2 on with no outs, someone hits it out of the infield. I’m waiting for Leyland to turn into a Lou Brown, and next time someone screws up during the game they drop where they are and do 20 push ups.  Maybe next time Dontrelle decides to walk 7 batters, Jimmy walks behind the mound, pisses on Willis’ contract extension, and heads back to smoke a carton or Marlboros.

Between this and Michigan’s lack of a spread option QB, I’m going to either get an ulcer or my wife’s going to divorce me.  Ah, the blessed off day.