 |
| |
|
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
They're baaad Terrible, toothless Tigers have a long, grim road aheadPosted: Monday April 28, 2003 11:38 AM
It's hard being a loser. Really hard. Sure, all those millions help ease the pain a little, not to mention the free food and the bubblegum cards and the floozies at the gate, if you're of a mind. And, sure, it's nice to have a few months off at the end of every grueling season when all you have to do is stay in shape and get ready for the next grueling season. But, during the season, it's hard being a loser. Every day, every night, for months on end, going out there, playing badly, getting humiliated, then coming back to the clubhouse afterward to talk about playing badly and getting humiliated ... really. It's no fun at all. Oh. We're talking here, of course, about the Detroit Tigers.
But this year's Tigers, clearly, have done it. They are worse. By a lot. I mean, three and 20? C'mon. The Indians, in the middle of tearing down and rebuilding, have twice as many wins as that. More, in fact. The Devil Rays, who know a little something about losing, have more than three times as many wins as the Tigers. The Milwaukee Brewers, for crying out loud, have tripled up the Tigers. Three and 20? How bad is that? Last year's Tigers had seven wins by this time. Not since the '88 Orioles started 0-21 has a team struggled like this. Losing isn't a surprise. Everyone knew that the Tigers would be bad this season. Stuck with a no-talent roster and an owner who insists the team re-build from within, the Tigers were doomed from the start. And then they started like this. Three and 20? This isn't just a slow start. It's a glacial start. If the Tigers' start got any slower, it'd be stopped. "We haven't played that bad," manager Alan Trammell, ever the optimist, said the other day. You don't have to look too closely to see why the Tigers are so bad, and why they will be all year. No. 1, they can't hit. At all. None of them. No. 2, they can't hit. At all. Trammell was banking on the middle of the lineup showing this young team how to play. Instead, they've stunk. Dean Palmer is hitting .127. Bobby Higginson is at .212. Carlos Pena is hitting .185. Dmitri Young checks in at .156. Those are, for the most part, full-time players. The Tigers are just 1-7 at home, and they're no better away from Comerica Park. The Tigers just finished their longest road trip of the year. They hit .195. Palmer hit .135. The Tigers went 2-10. They still haven't won back-to-back games this season. Sunday, they blew a lead against the Mariners to lose 4-3 in the finale of their long road trip. The starters sunk to 2-11. They have a 5.29 ERA. Oh, the Tigers are bad, all right. We could go on and on with these damning statistics. They were shut out six times in their first 21 games. Lefty Mike Maroth is 0-6, only the second pitcher in the history of the game to go 0-6 before the end of April. And Maroth is scheduled to go again Wednesday, the last day of the month. Hold those record books. The Tigers are so bad that many are starting to wonder if they'll challenge the '62 Mets, the standard by which all bad teams are judged. The expansion Mets won 40 games that year. But even the expansion Mets were 6-17 after their first 23 games. It's impossible to know where all this will end for the Tigers. It was barely six weeks ago that owner Mike Ilitch stood at the Tigers' spring training facility in Lakeland, Fla., and praised the direction of the team. He wasn't going to go out and spend any money to get more help, mind you. But he saw a team that, after years of losing, finally was coming together. With the help of president and general manager Dave Dombrowski, Ilitch said, Trammell and his bunch of big-name coaches would revive the pride of the Tigers. Ilitch saw big things in store for Detroit. Trammell saw it, too, though with four rookies pitching on Opening Day, he and everyone else know the big things weren't coming around this season. After this start, though, the question is whether the Tigers can ever come together with this group. "What are we going to do," Trammell said, "jump ship and say we're going to need some other guys?" No, the Tigers aren't in position to buy their way into respectability. So they'll have to turn these guys from losers into winners. Somehow. Some day. Now that will be hard to do.
This week, some more on the Hall of Fame's decision to cancel the Bull Durham celebration and a lot about drinkin' and fightin' ... Recently, I suggested that one way to punish unruly fans was to lock them in a room with David Wells and Mike Hampton ...
David Wells got beat up by a weightlifting Italian midget. He is more slob-like than tough guy. The big concern with being locked in a room with him would be that after Hampton would kick your ass, Wells would be looking for a snack and your calf would be in danger.
Eliminating alcohol is only masking the problem. Please answer the question -- what are you left with when a drunken jackass sobers up? The ONLY correct answer is ... a jackass. People who act up like this will do so whether there's alcohol involved or not. My $.02 worth. Regards, from Melbourne, Australia. Alcohol is not the root of evil here, and it shouldn't be rooted out of the parks. Heck, it's part of baseball for a lot of people. I've been known to have a beer or two at a ballpark myself (though never while working -- honest). But alcohol, as anyone who's ever quaffed a beer knows, is a contributor. The teams have to watch who they're serving, and they have to cut off the ones who need cutting off.
Sportswriters are fond of writing condescending columns. The latest comes from your colleague Phil Taylor as he explains that the First Amendment applies only to governmental action. Ergo, the Baseball Hall of Fame couldn't have "infringed" on Tim Robbins' rights by canceling the Bull Durham anniversary celebration. What Mr. Taylor and so many others fail to realize is that the Hall gets money from the government. (They got almost a million bucks from the State of New York in 1999!) And let's not forget that Tim Robbins donated his Bull Durham jersey to the Hall at the time Petroskey became president. The Hall even touts this on its Web site: "Internationally Renowned Film Star Visits Museum, Donates
Uniform" is what they said at the time. Doesn't anyone else see the hypocrisy of extending one hand to accept a donation only to use the other to slap the donor's face?
I agree that free speech is the American way and everyone has a "right" to use his or hers. What I don't agree with are the folks who have a forum to exercise their speech to more people, louder, longer, etc., than I do. I have an opinion too, but I don't have a newspaper to voice mine, or a stage to voice mine, or the media attention to voice mine. I have whatever I can generate and there aren't too many folks listening to me. I'm a 27-year Marine Corps veteran, Harley Davidson enthusiast, former PADI scuba instructor, and voting member of this great nation. Ever heard of me? We have now, Phil.
It's too bad nothing will be done about removing these unruly fans and players. The reason: If you take them all away you've got no one left. We always seem to get one baseball doomsday dude in every bunch. Back on the fans getting unruly thing, I said last week that players taking matters into their own hands was wrong. I just don't want to see Jason Giambi pummel some dumb drunken accountant out to impress his cubicle mates.
How else you gonna stop it? You got to take things in your own hands. Waiting for MLB to slap their hands is like running to Momma! I looked it up. Kill Devil Hills does exist.
Whenever I go to a D'backs game I have a beer and just love to read your excellent, well thought out columns. Well, maybe two beers. Come to think of it, I have disagreed with some of your writing. Sometimes a third beer. You don't know the difference between a dotted i and crossed t you think you know it all about the game pencil pusher. Hardly ever a fourth, but when I do don't care if you ever come to a D'backs game and not root for us or the ump makes a wrong call I'm going send you back to where you came from after a stay in the hospital. Well, I'm sober again and have found Jesus. Stopped drinking and your writing is very good again. Dammit, I hate when the letters are funnier than the column.
After the opportunity to spend two nights at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, I can tell you the MLB will not be moving to the islands any time soon. The fans would be perfect for baseball in light of other recent events, but the field and stadium are awful. I'd say the chances of the Expos moving to PR are closer to 10-90 than 60-40. Sorry, didn't mean to say they'd move there, just that they'd play more games there next season. No, I don't think the Expos are PR bound for good. It's just a stopover to ... wherever.
Any player who willingly gets involved in fan-on-player violence is an utter fool, for a variety of reasons. Forget about professionalism and the unfairness of stomping some poor drunk moron who doesn't have the benefits of padding, cleats and heavy wooden clubs. Think for a second about the civil liabilities that can result. In these litigious times, where regular folks get sued out of house and home for intentional infliction of emotional distress for giving the wrong person a dirty look, every hack lawyer with a 1-800 number must be chomping at the bit for a chance to sue some guy making a million of dollars a year for assault, battery, and any other charge they can muster from their dirty little law books. ... The satisfaction of giving some hooligan a firm kick in the ribs will wear out very fast when court dates, extravagant lawsuits and the specter of professional distraction and personal financial ruin come into play.
The fact is MLB is not going to cut down on drunks at ballparks because money is the driving motive. Too bad money is more important than responsibility. Too bad I can't take my family to a ballpark anymore. MLB doesn't need security at ballparks, they need bouncers.
Drinking fans are not the problem, IDIOT fans are the problem. Thanks to all for responding. John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.
Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
He said it was all in jest. But when Minnesota's Doug Mientkiewicz suggested that the All-Star Game be moved from Chicago because of its unruly fans -- this just before the Twins arrived in Chicago to play the White Sox -- you knew bad things were about to happen. This weekend, he was hit twice by pitches, thrown out of a game and booed mercilessly. Should be an interesting season series.
"They picked the wrong restaurant with a couple of athletes who are on a losing streak."
