Why I Hate the Detroit Tigers and Why Baseball Sucks

I live in the Metro Detroit Area, and if you don't know around here that the Tigers are in the World Series, you're living under a rock.

My local newspapers have up to 3 sections dedicated to sports now, including the entire front page, and I've never cared about baseball less in my life.

Did I just say it? Verily, I did. Call me unamerican if you like, but I cannot STAND baseball.

What does the World Series mean to those of us who somehow missed out on the "baseball appreciation" gene? Let me tell you...

The traffic is everywhere, the bars are uproariously loud, Tigers fans are springing up out of the woodwork, insistent that they were always Tigers fans, we just never knew. There is Tigers Memorabilia EVERYWHERE so good luck getting a jump start on Christmas shopping for anyone BUT a Tigers fan.

Didn't you know? Everyone around here is a Tiger's fan, whether we like it or not.

Are they still in the running in the World Series? They must be, since my driveway isn't blocked with sobbing Tigers fans with their caps thrown away from them in defeat. I keep waiting for the nightmare to end but every day I wake up, stagger to get the paper, and there it is once again...a front page with no real news on it. Instead, if I were "normal", I'd be ripping off the back page for yet more Tigers photos in the newspapers' own poster-sized newsprint and tacking them to my walls.

It may be because I'm a woman, but I don't think so. I love the Redwings, after all. I can even tolerate the occasional car race or University of Michigan football game. Baseball just holds nothing for me.

I even went to the Tigers game once as a kid. All I remember is sitting for hours and eating hot dogs. The hot dogs were good, but not good enough to keep me from wishing I could be anywhere but in that crowded ballpark while people guzzled beer and yelled. Maybe that's why I can't stand the Tigers...I'm permanently scarred by the extra innings I had to sit and wait for those tiny people to finally get a home run so we could go home.

I feel like Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve. Bah humbug, I say. Bah humbug...and no matter what I do I can't shake it.

I've tried to care, but there's no real incentive for me to do so. I don't care about the Tigers. I think I care about them less than I care about the Lions, and everyone is a Lions fan...or so I've heard.

Fortunately for me, very few of my friends are Tigers fans as well. Too bad we can't go and do anything fun together until the baseball season is finally over. We went out to shoot pool the other night and there was a Tigers game plastered on several screens. We went to the theater to see a movie a few nights ago and the people with my popcorn were watching the Tigers game on one of those new-fangled tiny televisions...or maybe it was a podcast. Maybe they're as fanatical about the Tigers as nascar fans are and they watch the old ones over and over. Either way, we still had to make small talk with the guy putting popcorn in my butter about whether the Tigers would make it.

He was all excited about it as well. When I remarked that it's irrelevant to me, he looked at me like my head had fallen off and then looked to my husband for some kind of help. Male bonding? Not today, kind sir, my husband can't stand baseball either. I guess I didn't choose that badly after all.

As for the tigers, I don't care. I don't care and I'm unrepentant.

Perhaps I should seek asylum in Ohio?