I was just catching up on some of my Flickr contacts, found this ABSURDLY CUTE series of photos by awesome baseball photog Emily Smith, and thought I’d share ‘em with you lot. What you’re looking at is Jaden, Gary Sheffield’s kid, signing autographs for Tigers fans.

I love how intent he is, how solemnly dedicated to signing balls and gloves for the fans. I love that there are fans out there now with stuff signed by Gary Sheffield’s kid. And really, just look at how serious he is with his little Sharpie AND HIS LITTLE PENCILS WITH THE BASEBALL ERASERS OMG.

If that is not the cutest thing you’ve seen all day, you must have a pile of wee kittens at home.

Anyways. If you haven’t yet seen yesterday’s important notice please take a look at that, and comics are still in process. I just figured you guys had to see these, because the postseason can be a sorrowful time when your team is not in it, but awwwwwwww mini-Sheff!

OK, first off, the next installment (episode? issue?) of The Season of Much Woe comic is being worked on: I’ve got a couple pages inked and a few more already laid out, and I’m debating whether I should post it without colors or not. The story is very exciting, with lots of standing around and talking and also monsters and shooting. So that will be up relatively soon.

But this is mostly just to let you guys know that the long-awaited MVN platform change should be happening soon. It’s supposed to be done by October 15. Now, I know we tried this once before already, but this time it ought to be FOR REAL, YO. We are not expecting any downtime on the site.

There are going to be a number of changes to MVN itself, but what will this mean for RotT? The site’s gonna look different, for one thing; I believe column width will be greater, making it possible for me to post wider and thus infinitely more obnoxious images, and there should be a little more in the way of team-specific colors instead of all this gray. But the most important thing to note is that

THE ROAR OF THE TIGERS ADDRESS WILL BE CHANGING.

I repeat: the RotT web address WILL BE CHANGING. Links pointing to this address will no longer direct you to RotT! If you go to the current mvn.com/mlb-tigers address, you will get something, but IT WILL NOT BE ROAR OF THE TIGERS. This has not been explained to me with 110% clarity, but I believe at this address you will instead get a space including everything posted anywhere on MVN that pertains to the Tigers - a MVN Tigers content round-up page, if you will. Roar of the Tigers SHOULD be accessible somewhere on that page, i.e. I have been led to believe that there will be a link from there, so on the Day of Reckoning you should be able to find RotT’s new address with just one additional click.

Now, I THINK the RotT new address will be mvn.com/roarofthetigers but I am NOT positive on that. I can email you as soon as I know the new address; you can either comment on this post (in which case I can see your email) saying you’d like to be notified, or you can email me at bluecatsredsox at gmail dot com saying you’d like to be notified. Or you can just wait ’til October 15 and find the new address on your own. Again, I have been led to believe that this will not be too difficult, but I’m not really sure what the new page at this address is going to look like, so who knows.

If you watch this page via RSS feed, that will also be changing. I will try to let you guys know where to find the new feed as soon as I know.

IF YOUR WEBSITE/BLOG LINKS TO ROAR OF THE TIGERS, I REPEAT, THE CURRENT ADDRESS WILL NO LONGER DIRECT YOU TO ROAR OF THE TIGERS AFTER OCTOBER 15. PLZ BE PREPARED TO UPDATE YOUR MAD CRAZY LINKZ AFTER THAT DATE. I know this is a pain in the stripey tail and I am not particularly happy about it myself, but it is apparently the Only Way this particular platform change could go.

So that’s your heads up. I’m not planning to change content at all, or to let any of these shenanigans slow down the comics - they’ll be posted as they’re finished, whenever that may be, without regard for the change-over. Get ready to be alert around the 15th, and you can join me in hoping that the new MVN won’t suck.

Click the pages to see them bigger/more readable.

To be continued!

This just has to be shared. Granderson’s doing the TBS postgame show, and they were asking him, since he grew up in Chicago, if he was a Cubs or Wrong Sox fan. Curtis says, nope, Braves fan.

What?

He claims that it’s because Braves games were on TBS all the time (I find this AWFULLY convenient and a little suspect… after all, he IS doing broadcasts for that very channel at the moment. Then again, Curtis Granderson is perfect and as such would not lie to us), so he watched them a lot.

And Cubs games often interfered with his favorite TV show. Saved by the Bell.

He was all adorkably embarrassed by it, and then, as usual, instead of letting this golden nugget of happiness sit where it was, TBS had to try to hammer it into the ground by photoshopping Granderson and the rest of the crew into photos from Saved by the Bell (I will admit that The Eck looked hilarious in it. Everyone else: total overkill).

Curtis Granderson. Braves. Saved by the Bell. Somehow, that is awesome.

(And I am quite glad that he did not grow up a Wrong Sox fan. Really that’s just further proof that he is a perfect human being.)

ETA: Unrelated to Tigers, but if you want to see my Red Sox fan playoff concerns, rendered pithily in Terrible Cartoon form, you can enjoy that very thing over here.

How very appropriate that the last day of the Tigers’ season should coincide with (at least one group’s version of) New Years. As we rocket into the year 5769 we will jettison this past season into the Black Hole of the Past, never to be spoken of again, except for the several million times when I will bring it up.

A great many things have happened since we last spoke/remotely interacted via pixels. To help ease our transition into the new year, I will go over all these things. As many of them as I can immediately recall at the moment. Whatever.

We played the Wrong Sox in an ‘extra’ game. We lost. On the one paw, it looks like Freddy Garcia was pitching OK, so mazel tov to Mr. Garcia, but on the other paw, apparently he came out with a spasmy injury? That’s not exactly the way you want to end the season, but at least he has a lot of time now to rest it, and it’s not as though we were exactly counting on his health/effectiveness for next year. (And if we were… oy.)

On the third paw, our hitting was terrible and our bullpen was terrible and Arrrrmando got tagged in relief with a stupid pointless loss. There was no upside to this game. None. Except for the fact that it was one additional day of Tigers baseball, and come January we’ll be fondly looking back on it for that reason and that reason alone.

Gary Sheffield did not get 500 homers. He stalled out at 499. Barring catastrophic injury, he’ll trot on past that milestone next season. If he doesn’t do it in a Tigers uniform, I will probably be OK.

His entire family, through multiple generations, up in the Comerica box with all the signs, though… that was pretty unequivocally great.

Brandon Inge has been declared next season’s starting third baseman, and Carlos Guillen will move to left field. This one caught me by surprise - I’d only just started to fully come around to the Brandon Inge as 2009 Catcher camp, and then WHAM, the sudden turnaround. I honestly don’t understand why this decision would be made (or publicly announced at this time) unless the Tigers had someone in mind for the ‘09 catcher.

Like, even if they were thinking about it, why announce it now? Why not wait and see if you can get the catcher you want via free agency or trade or Dusty Ryan suddenly hitting baseball puberty? And then if you don’t get that guy, you still have Inge expecting to catch, and there’s no drama. By announcing this NOW, the Tigers have invited further drama should they attempt to move Inge back behind the plate yet again at some point between now and April. You see what I mean?

It’s also becoming increasingly obvious that Carlos Guillen’s body is falling apart before our very eyes. Morbidly fascinating, really. His ideal position very soon (if not already) will probably be DH, but the Tigs have plenty of elderly, heavy-batted fodder for that spot, so Guillen gets shunted around the field to try and figure out where he can do the least amount of damage. Sad.

Chuck Hernandez was fired. I’m fairly ambivalent about this one. To return to our little cat’s feet: on the one paw, I don’t think Hernandez specifically was the Big Bad Main Problem here. He had nothing to do with guys getting old, and injuries like Bondo’s are nothing to do with any kind of pitching coach. But on this second paw… well, he had a LITTLE to do with this mess, perhaps in the sense that when stuff went wrong that he SHOULD have been able to do something about, he failed to do so.

Verlander… even putting aside the issues of arm fatigue and (over)use that arose this year, which are more strictly Leyland’s fault, you still have a guy pitching way, way off from his peak, and you have a pitching coach completely failing to get him back on track. You have a bullpen suffering from inconsistency so dire that if inconsistency was a bodily disease the entire ‘pen would have been hospitalized, and you have a pitching coach unable to do much of anything about that.

You have Joel Zumaya, a guy whose injury was probably not 100% preventable, but whose mechanics require much more close attention than they’re getting under Hernandez (or much more attention with knowledge about what to DO with that attention, in any event). Zoom’s one of those exotic pets, like an iguana or something, that require a very special set of supplies to thrive. He needs his appropriately-sized tank, his specific-wavelength heat lamp, his particular lettuces. Hernandez means well, and he loves his iguana, but he just doesn’t have the specialist-type of knowledge necessary to keep pet iguanas. And let’s face it: it’s just not responsible to have a pet iguana if you can’t care for it properly.

Miguel Cabrera won the AL homerun title. He hit 37 for the Tigs this season. This is a vaguely pointless ‘title’, but he beat out ARod and Carlos Quentin the Wrong Sock for it, so we can all feel good about that.

Edgar Renteria’s 2009 option will not be picked up. THANK CATS. Look, I’ve had two seasons of watching Edgah try to hack the AL, on two different teams, and I’ve had enough of it. The guy can’t do it, he’s unhappy trying to do it, he starts playing like he’s unhappy, and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle of ineptitude and woe. I hope he goes back to the NL and has all the success in the world out there, but I don’t want to deal with him on this side of the DH Divide anymore.

I guess we can still re-sign him as a free agent, if the madness takes us. At this point I would really almost rather go with Ramon Santiago. At least he’d come cheaper, and we’d probably get comparable production.

The Tigers have officially clinched last place in the division. Our final record is 74-88, for a .457 percentage. At least we avoided 90 losses? Worse than the Tigers are: the Orioles, the Mariners, the Braves, the Nats, the Pirates, the Giants, and the Padres (the Reds are actually exactly tied with us, with the same W/L record). That may seem like a respectable number of teams still looking up at our tail, but those are some catawful teams, kids and kittens, so coming out of the season with a better percentage than them is nothing much.

Kansas City is not allowed to gloat. You’re under .500 too, guys. Here but for the grace of one stupid make-up game go you.

Curtis Granderson will be in-studio for the AL/NLDS on TBS. He’ll be working pregame and postgame and probably some between-inning stuff as well, alongside Cal Ripken Jr, Dennis Eckersley (who has been a glorious studio presence on the Red Sox TV channel), and whoever TBS has hosting this thing. Because Curtis Granderson is a perfect being, he is marvelously good at this broadcast stuff, and if you were waffling about whether or not to watch these upcoming non-Tigery postseason games, well, you might want to tune in just to see Granderson a) conversing with Dennis Eckersley and b) probably wearing a suit.

If you can’t get excited about that, you can’t get excited about LIFE.

The Tigers are not in the postseason. Just in case you hadn’t noticed. I assume that my rooting interests from here on out are clear, yes? Remember: every time you root for the Red Sox, you root for Sean Casey to be made happy. Don’t you want Sean Casey to be happy? Don’t you want him to smile? Isn’t he just the nicest guy ever? Rooting against Sean Casey is like rooting against kittens. I just want you guys to bear that in mind.

Onwards. L’shana tova to those of you celebrating the new year, and a happy stress-free postseason to the rest of you goyim.

Go Lions?

(Don’t get the New Years stuff, or the image up top? Tonight is the start of Rosh Hashana [literally ‘head of the year’], the Jewish New Years. The Jewish calendar starts earlier than the common calendar, so while it’s only 2008 in the common calendar, it’s now the year 5769 in the Jewish calendar. It’s traditional to eat apples dipped in honey on Rosh Hashana, for a sweet new year.)

Yes, those are your power hitting Tigers for the night. Gary Sheffield, who hit his 498th and 499th homeruns, and Ramon Santiago. Ramon Santiago, who has a grand total of 10 homeruns in his entire career thus far, three of which came in the past two games. Santiago is OPSing .909, which is better than nearly everyone on the team (of course he also has far fewer at-bats than most of the current starters, so it’s not a real indication of his mad crazy hitting prowess - it’s just funny to point out).

Sheff now needs only one more homer to hit the arbitrary but still vaunted 500 mark. WILL HE MANAGE IT THIS SEASON??!?!? WILL HE DO IT IN A TIGERS UNIFORM?!!??? DO WE ACTUALLY CARE???!@?

Truly these are wacky times in which to live.

Verlander ONCE AGAIN threw over 100 pitches in under 6 innings: 113 pitches in 5 innings, to be exact. He was struggling enough in the 5th inning (and had thrown enough pitches) to make Leyland and everyone else consider taking him out, but apparently Leyland wanted him to have the opportunity to get the W, and was thus determined to make him gut it out for the full 5 innings. Normally I would say fine, whatever, let the kid go for it, but! why pile up unnecessary pitches on Verlander’s arm in a meaningless game, in a season where he’s ALREADY had an unusually heavy workload?

It’s not even like he was trying to break even in his personal record: with this win, Verlander’s season total will be 11-and-17. Was that 11th win really all that important? As usual, this is the one place where I really tend to grind my teeth over Leyland’s managing.

Anyways. Todd Jones was in the booth today for the beginning of the game. He’s definitely no Curtis Granderson when it comes to broadcasting (the awkward pauses! the rambling! ever so much rambling! it was kinda painful), but whatever, these are some of the things I noted down (I was out for the end of his booth time, but I think I ended up seeing the majority of it).

Jonesy: “I enjoyed the fight in Cleveland… I didn’t realize the second baseman, Cabrera, I get messed up with his first name…”
Mario: “Asdrubal.”
Jonesy: “Yeah, you get in trouble with that! Heh. He got in a few good shots on Sheff.”

(On Dane Sardinha, who was batting at the time) “Dane, hitting right now, he’s a scrappy guy from Huh-WAH-ee. He’s starting to hit a little bit better…” (Sardinha strikes out) “…although he just struck out there.”

(On the replay of Santiago’s homerun) “Hanging curveball, man’s best friend.”

As they go to commercial in the bottom of the second, Jonesy yells, “HE’S THROWING A NO-HITTER!” Sometime in the third, Jonesy says, “I have officially jinxed Justin, because now there’s a hit.”

(On Verlander) “He’s got the Word We Don’t Wanna Talk About Stuff every time he goes out there.” ‘Ace’? Are we not supposed to say ‘ace’ anymore? Since when did ‘ace’ become ‘Voldemort’?

(After a long free-ranging ramble during which absolutely no one so much as mentioned the on-field action)
Jonesy: “There’s a game going on, Tigers winning five-nothing, if anyone wants to know…”
Rod: “They can see it!”

(On why we shouldn’t blame Chuck Hernandez) “At the end of the day these are grown men who know how to throw a strike.” This is a blatant lie. For instance, I am not at all convinced that Kyle Farnsworth actually knows how to throw a strike (it’s something that he sometimes happens to do, much to his own bafflement), and Freddy Dolsi is in no way a grown man. Have you looked at the kid lately, Jonesy? He’s like six years old.

(On how it feels to blow a save)
Jonesy: “There’s these rollercoasters of emotion.”
Mario: “Really!” (Highly amused, obviously thinking Jonesy was making a joke on the whole Rollercoaster Jones thing.) *longish awkward pause* (Suddenly filled with Doubt: was that intentional, or does he have no idea he was even making a joke, or what a joke even is.) *more pause* “Nice!”

(On his rain delay Magglio hitting and sliding and hair impression from earlier in the season) “I always wanted to be a tarp guy… that should’ve told you I was gonna retire… that was on my bucket list of things.”

(On Gary Sheffield) “He’s got some kinda FlexAll thing that’s so hot other guys can’t even put it on a finger and he’s got it all over his back and knees.”

(On attending games now that he’s retired)
Jonesy: “I’ll be there with my puffy hand.”
Mario: “Your foam finger?”
Jonesy: “My puffy hand!”
*almost in unison, as they realize the problem* “The Claw!”

Saturday, 7:05 pm EDT. Dontrelle vs. Matt Garza. I guess we don’t have anyone random in AAA we could call up to pitch this one? A pity, a pity. Go Tigers!

OK, so that wasn’t QUITE what I meant when I said that Kazmir/Armando had the potential to be a pitching duel. They DID manage to go nearly toe-to-toe anyways. Just… a bit messier than one might have expected from that initial matchup. See:

Kazmir: 5 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 8 SO, 4 HR, 102 pitches/60 strikes
Armando: 7.2 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 5 SO, 3 HR, 102 pitches/64 strikes

That’s actually kind of scary. Arrrrrrrrmando gave up one extra run, but he threw the same number of pitches as Kazmir in 2.2 more innings, thus giving his bullpen significantly less time to come in and muck it all up. And that’s what did the Rays in here. Hammel and Bradford did all kinds of mucking, while the Tigers were blessed (?) with 1.1 innings of The Good Fernando.

Throw in some wacky power - homeruns from kittens Mike Hessman and Dusty Ryan, a homer for Granderson, and two homers for Ramon Santiago, of all cats - and you’ve got yourself a completely unexpected Tigers victory. It’s nice to see the team more or less remember how to play, and it was lovely to get Arrrrrmando his 13th (!!) win of the season.

And of course, as a Red Sox fan, I am very interested in seeing the Rays struggle right now, so… double incentive to hang tough, Tigers!

Friday, 7:05 pm EDT, Justin Verlander vs. Andy Sonnanstine. He’s from Ohio. Boo x infinity. Go Tigers!

Noooooo Miguel, run faster! The Void is right behind you!!

I don’t know about you guys, but nothing says ‘September in tha D’ to me quite like a sweep at the hands of the Royals. Spectacular. Today we made Brian Bannister look like a golden god as well, but let’s face it, we’re making everyone look golden and deity-esque at the moment. Everyone except for us.

How good does Tampa Bay feel right now? They barely have to do anything to secure their division once and for all, because they play the Tigers for the last four games of the regular season. That must be a nice feeling. I hope they are enjoying how that feels.

As for us, we struggle now only to escape the Void. What is the Void? I actually have no idea. It is not last place in the division, because lo and behold, we’re already there. Is it 90 losses? Maybe. It could be 90 losses. The Void is your darkest fears, your saddest memories, your most potent hatred. The Void is emptiness. Blackness. Blankness. Nothingness eternal and infinite.

This is all sapping my ability to post a vaguely coherent blog with some sort of narrative holding one paragraph to the next. Unconnected thoughts shall follow.

The difference between this year and 2003, aside from the fact that we were actually worse in 2003, is the enormous gap between SHOULD-HAVE-BEEN and IS. The Tigers were catawful in 2003, but that wasn’t much of a surprise, because the players in 2003 were catawful. We are so bad in 2008, but it wasn’t supposed to go down like this. These players are not that bad. To be quite honest, the record the Tigers have this season surprises me almost every day. Almost every day when I look at it I am shocked all over again, because the mental construct I have of this team is not a team that posts that kind of record. Obviously I’m delusional to some extent, but the fact that a disconnect that large exists… I don’t know how that happens.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Todd Jones is retiring at the end of this season. We all knew this was coming, but it bears mentioning anyways. Say what you will about the Rollercoaster (and I’ve probably said it), but he did manage to get those saves, even if he almost killed us every time he went out there. A healthy Rollercoaster, even in full Rollercoastering form, would be a marked improvement over the bullpen shenanigans we’ve got going on right now. Alas, life is what it is and is nothing more, and the same is true of the bullpen.

There’s a lot of debate right now surrounding Jim Leyland, and whether or not he should be the manager of the Tigers next season. I fall on the side of ‘yes, keep him’. Do you guys honestly think another manager would have done better with these players? That’s the big question. I’m not saying that Leyland is the most super awesome magical manager ever, and I’m not saying that he’s completely free of blame for this season… heck, LEYLAND isn’t saying that:

“I’m going to tell you the facts: I stink,” he [Leyland] said. “With the year we’ve had, I stink. But I can tell you one thing: I ain’t the Lone Ranger.”

Later, he added: “If anybody says we shouldn’t be feeling pressure around here, we should be. We deserve to be. That certainly includes me.”
Jon Paul Morosi/Detroit Free Press

I don’t agree with everything that Leyland has done. I think he played some guys too much when they should have been sitting (Sheff), and I have a well-documented hate for the way that he has (mis)handled Justin Verlander’s arm this season. The whole Guillen/Cabrera defensive position mess was just that - a huge friggin’ mess - and could have been handled a lot better, but I don’t know how much of the blame for that should be laid squarely on Leyland himself, as opposed to the rest of the FO.

I DO think that Leyland has done some good things as a manager. He’s managed personalities fairly well, and has kept several potentially deeply toxic situations (Inge vs. catching, whatever the hell was going on with the closer position at various times throughout the season, anything and everything involving Pudge or Sheff) from becoming cancerous. He hasn’t been afraid to yell at people if he thinks they need yelling at (although it would have been nice to see him equally unafraid to bench guys if he thought they had acted badly enough to be yelled at).

When a purportedly good team is THIS bad, it’s natural to want to blame the manager. After all, the players are not supposed to be this bad, so the fault must be elsewhere, and who else could affect the players more than the manager? But the manager can only do so much. At the end of the day he can’t go out there and bat leadoff. He can’t go out there and pitch the 9th inning. And he can’t MAKE any of the Tigers hit, or walk, or strike guys out.

So I don’t think Leyland is the perfect manager. But I don’t think that many (maybe ANY) other managers would have done significantly better with this team, with these injuries, this season, so I don’t think that firing Leyland is the answer.

Nate should not be starting games right now. I understand that we’re throwing him out onto the mound simply because it doesn’t matter anymore at this point and what we need is a simple warm body, but I would have rather seen Lambert start today, or Inge, or ANYONE. It’s not OK to keep throwing Nate out there just because that’s what we’ve been doing. There are only four games left so it’s not like this matters now anyways, but I’m just throwing my general irritability over this fact out there.

Thursday. 1:05 pm EDT. Arrrrrrmando Galarrrrrrraga vs. Scott Kazmir. Legitimate pitching duel, or lolarious shellacking? That is up to the Tigers. We only wish to elude the Void. Go Tigers!

There were exactly TWO Tigers extra-base hits in this game, and they were both doubles, and neither came around to score. Ever. The Tigers only managed to get four hits overall in the entire game.

We made Zac(h/k) Greinke look like a golden god.

Freddy Garcia gave up five runs in five innings, including three homeruns.

This game was so pathetic that it was over, start to finish, in two hours and seventeen minutes.

We are right now technically in last place in the AL Central. There are only two teams in the AL with worse percentages than us: the Orioles, and the hapless Mariners.

That is not someone’s idea of a sick joke. The Detroit Tigers are

IN LAST PLACE IN THE CENTRAL

BELOW THE ROYALS

IN LAST PLACE

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DIVISION.

On the one hand, this is clearly awful. On the other hand, though, I am almost amazed by it. I am nearly in awe. The idea that a team with the talent that the Tigers have (had?), a team with the expectations the Tigers had, is worse than the Kansas City Royals…. it is both compelling and repellent in that classic flaming train wreck kinda way.

Wednesday, 7:05 pm EDT, Nate Robertson vs. Brian Bannister vs. The Void. Go Tigers!

Is Sheffield getting crazier as he gets older, or is this just par for the course? I feel like I haven’t followed him closely enough in the past to say for sure.

As you all know, this past Friday Sheffield was involved in a rather spirited brawl with the Racist Logos. Many punches were thrown, many lulz were had, etc. Sheff’s been suspended for four games and he’s not appealing, so he’ll start sitting tonight.

The fantastic bit is what he said while talking about the suspension.

“It’s on,” said Sheffield, who added he wouldn’t appeal the suspension or the undisclosed fine announced by Bob Watson, vice-president of MLB on-field operations.
…
Sheffield said he received “cheap shots” during the melee and planned to take matters into his own hands.

“When guys take cheap shots, I take that personal,” Sheffield said. “When I find out who they are, they’re going to have to deal with me. They’re going to be penalized by me, too.

“You’ll see. I’m not one of those guys who talks what I’m going to do. I’m just going to do what I’m going to do.”
Steve Grinczel/Mlive.com article

This is like a perfect nugget of crazy. I want to frame it and hang it on my wall.

Gary Sheffield is not going to talk [about? up?] what he’s going to do. He’s just going to do what he’s going to do. BUT WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO?? In case you weren’t sure, we do not in fact play the Racist Logos again this season. Is he going to let this hate fester in his heart until Spring Training? Is he going to spend the entire winter watching tape of the brawl over and over again until he knows with 100% certainty who it was that popped him in the back of the head, so that he may exact his bloody revenge when the ‘09 season starts up?

Or is he going to track, like, Asdrubal Cabrera down in the middle of November and, I dunno, sneak up on him while he’s out buying groceries, ambush him, and punch him in the liver until he says ’sorry’?

I don’t know. But Sheff knows. He knows that some dudes are gonna get PENALIZED!! ‘Cause IT’S ON!

(If you don’t get the image, please refer back to this post and the perfect nugget of crazy that came from that particular Sheff-incident.)

ETA: Wow, that game was no fun whatsoever. I don’t really want to post about it and I have to be up at 5 am anyways, so I’m leaving this post up and you can all enjoy Gary Sheffield’s belligerent insanity instead of reading about our deeply depressing fight for last place in the Central. Tuesday’s game is at 7:05 pm EDT, Freddy Garcia vs. Zach Greinke. Remember, these games now matter, not for the prideful excesses of playoff baseball, not for the marginally respectable goal of having a record at or above .500, but instead for the humbling struggle to not be the worst team in a bad division. Think about ending the season under the Royals, and tremble with that fear. Go Tigers!