Baseball Love: The Tiger in Michigan's Heart

One out, bottom of the ninth inning, Brandon Inge of the Detroit Tigers is up at home plate. It's chilly in St. Louis, and the field is wet. It's been raining all day and the noisy red crowd of Cardinals fans are ready to send the Tigers back to Detroit without a World Series title. My hands are clenched at the bar. I'm smoking a cigarette and sparsely touching my beer bottle. I imagine every bar in Michigan, at once: thousands of fanatics drinking, chain-smoking and cheering on the television; countless smoky spaces filled with navy blue and orange. It is not a dream to me, it's the Tigers - the Tigers are about to lose the World Series. Third basemen Brandon Inge swings and misses at the first pitch - strike one. I imagine a half-drunk bar-patron in Livonia or Saginaw; his heart drops an inch and he exhales a small breath, adjusts the rim of his Tigers hat. Here I am, one hundred and seventy-something games into the season, and Brandon Inge is batting with two out, and one strike. He watches the next pitch go by, it's a strike and I can feel the heart of Michigan collapsing - all the air in the bars, clubs, restaurants, and living rooms is being sucked out with each strike. The Tigers are on the brink of losing the World Series; a black wave is rolling across the state. The pitcher sets up - here it comes, Brandon Inge lifts his left leg slightly, torques his body towards the pitch, and swings. No pop of the bat. No silence as we watch the ball soar; only the smack of cork and leather into a catcher's mitt. Inge strikes out and the hopes of millions of fans are gone until next April. The Cardinals storm the field in lurid celebration, the crowd of red shirts and raincoats is pulsating and cheering, taking no notice of Inge wallowing off the field, defeated, deflated - at the summit, but unable to plant the flag of Detroit in the rocky soil.

For so many of us "fanatics", the Tigers take on an archetypal role. They embody Detroit's economic redevelopment and a statewide devotion to a team that only three seasons ago, finished with one-hundred-nineteen losses, and only forty-three wins. This year's ball club meant much more than a winning season for the Tigers. It meant our state was getting back on its feet. Lower Michigan had something to get behind.

I was eating lunch last week at a bar in Marquette and overheard a group of young college students talking about the Tigers. One of them said, "Every Tiger fan is a fair-weather fan" His statement lingered with me; it created a boiling anger inside me. I wanted to march over to his table and show him my right upper-arm, where there is an Old English "D" tattooed. I would have told him that I got this tattoo when the Tigers were in the middle of a terrible season - when being a fan wasn't the "cool" thing to be. Instead, I let the emotion pass and considered the impact his statement had.

When the Pistons or Red Wings do well, it's not quite the same. Baseball is an old game with some very old fans - a game with an ancient reverie. Tigers fans come out of the floorboards - they want the magic of 1984 back. These fans remember the very first Tiger game in 1901, and how that game sparked off a century of magic. The game was scheduled for a stormy April Wednesday. It rained, and the field was wet, so the authorities postponed the opener for a day, weather permitting. Thursday the 5th, over ten thousand fans arrive at Bennett Park to see the Tigers make their American League debut against the Milwaukee Brewers. The Tigers fall behind early with seven errors allowing thirteen runs to score. In the ninth inning the Tigers are down 13-4. Miscue after miscue, error after error - the Tigers chip away; a run at a time, 13-6, 13-12. Now, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and the Tigers rallying to within one run, Frank "Pop" Dillon comes to plate with two runners on. The crowd is in an earsplitting, turn-or-the-century raucous. Brewers pitcher Bert Husting gets ready on the mound; he only needs a pop-up to end the game - a strikeout for that matter. He delivers the pitch, and somewhere between the pitcher's hand and the batter's bat, Motown magic materializes. Dillon smashes a double into the outfield, scoring both runners. Tigers win, 14-13. This is the kind of thing Tigers fans remember; the uncanny ability to prevail when the odds are stacked against them. Perhaps this is also why fans are so devastated when the magic is gone. We expect the magic, so when it doesn't come we are confused, ruined and bitter.

The psychology of a baseball-fan's love is a quagmire. There will never be a Nietzsche who unravels the mystery behind a man's love for his team. There's no correlation between physical love, and baseball love - no mathematical absolute that explains our passion in numerical terms. It's just a ballgame, and we love it. But for Detroit, it's a bigger issue. When Ivan Rodriguez takes the field with the Old English "D" on his breast, he is taking the field for the city Detroit. The Tigers take the field in honor of a city, ravaged by crime, inner-city flight, economic turmoil, and the brunt of 's jokes for thirty years. Anyone from Detroit knows what it's like to be on a vacation in a city far away, and to see the sympathetic faces on locals when they learn that you're from Detroit. Non-Detroiters think they should offer consolation when someone says they're from the city. But the roar has been restored, as they say in Tiger-terms. Eleven billion dollars has been invested in the city since 2000, according to NBC news, and the signs are all over the city. New lofts are sprouting downtown, historic apartments are being renovated, and two major stadiums have popped up since 2001. Despite much work left to be done, the sense is that Detroit is getting back on its feet.

In the Tigers' case, love for baseball may take on a bigger meaning - it's not only a love for the game and its strategy, it's a regional devotion rooted in a deep historical legacy. Michigan waited since '84 for this World Series appearance, albeit this year's success was totally unexpected. Baseball love is a waiting game - it doesn't pay off when you expect it to, but when it does the thrill is overwhelming. When the Tigers beat the Oakland "A's" this month in the American League Championship Series with Magglio Ordoñez hitting a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, the Tiger was in full roar. ComericaPark, its forty-thousand devotees, and millions of true Tigers fans across the globe were spinning in nirvana-like bliss.

For a minute, myself and everyone at this bar, have forgotten about losing. Manager Jim Leyland is being carried around the field, star pitcher Kenny Rogers is on top of the dugout dousing fans with champagne. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" is blasting over the stadium speakers, we're clanking our mugs at the bar, and Detroit is ablaze.