Garret Craig

The magical number of baseball which symbolizes sweet, sweet, mediocrity. The number which teams such as the Red Sox and Yankees fear falling to; The same number, teams like the lowly Nationals and Mariners can only dream of reaching. It is the number that can make or break a career.

It is also the number that the “stacked” Detroit Tigers team has been chasing all season–until now. Finally, on Saturday, June 28th, 2008, 80 games into the yearly roller-coaster we call Major League Baseball, the Detroit Tigers have finally clawed their way back to .500 with a thrilling 8-7 victory in front of a rowdy crowd of 42,729.

Call it what you like, but the last 20 games for the Detroit Tigers, I can only describe as magical. The Motor City Kitties went a cool 15-5 in the stretch that may have saved their season. 4 of 15 wins were in walk-off fashion, thanks to Miguel Cabrera, Gary Sheffield, and Clete Thomas.

It all started on Saturday, June 7th at Comerica Park against the Tigers division rival; The Cleveland Indians. The Tigers had dropped the opener of the series the night before 4-2, but the loss was overshadowed by the news that came shortly after: “Jeremy Bonderman Will Likely Miss Rest of Season”. Bonderman’s jersey was hung in the dugout on Saturday night as the Tigers dispatched of ‘The Tribe’ 8-4 behind a 6-run rally in the 8th inning. The Tigers went on to split the Indians in the 4-game set, followed by a 3-game sweep of the division-leading Chicago White Sox, and a 3-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Tigers went on the road and took 4 of 6 in an exciting pair of series in San Fransisco and San Diego, then came home and continued their recent tear at Comerica Park, winning 4 of their last 5 games and finding themselves sitting in the lap of Mr. 500.

The Tigers will go for the sweep of the Colorado Rockies Sunday afternoon behind Kenny Rogers, and then start an extremely important stretch of games with Minnesota, Cleveland, and Seattle leading up to the All-Star Break.

Don’t be surprised to see the Old English D in October, 2008. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Coming soon…

Shocked? Devastated? Call it anything you want. The Red Wings and their fans left the JLA after 12:30am this morning, tired and wounded.

Back to the third period; The Red Wings clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Joe Louis Arena loud as ever, singing chants of “We Want Cup!”. Michel Therrien calls Fleury to the bench with a little over a minute left in a last stitch effort to keep their season alive. With the Stanley Cup in the building, the Detroit Red Wings were seconds away from winning it all. Then….. BAM! 30 seconds on the clock, and Maxime Talbot stuffs in a rebound and the Red Wings and Penguins are back to square one. The crowd was silenced, and the Penguins had squashed the phenomenal momentum of the Wings.

It was off to Overtime #1. Detroit out-shot the Pens 13-2, but Fleury was incredible, keeping the game even. In the 5th frame, the Penguins once again were out-shot, and out-hit, but the Red Wings once again failed to score. The game dragged on into the third Overtime period, where Jiri Hudler was sent to the box for 4 minutes for accidentally clipping a Pen in the face. Though the Penguins had already failed to convert two OT powerplays, it didn’t take very long for Peter Sykora to send everybody home.

I sat in my living room as thousands of others did: Shocked. Devastated.

Now I’m not going to be pessimistic about this thing. I think Detroit will come out with lot’s of energy on Wednesday night, and the Penguins won’t have enough of whatever it was they had last night. So as much as I would have liked to see the Wings win a series at home, I’ll settle for Detroit in 6.