I don’t care much for championships. It’s very easy to just come out and say this when the sports team that I like is bad, but I’ve always been on the record with this opinion, even when they were in the World Series. Even if I didn’t, it shouldn’t matter, because I think changing your mind and being a hypocrite is fine, and I have not always been on the record with this opinion.
The Detroit Tigers have an active nine-game losing streak, all at home. Embedded in that losing streak is a suspended game with the Oakland A’s that will be resumed they next time they meet, which is September in Oakland. The game’s outcome will be decided in four months, three time zones away, to see if this losing streak will move to 10 games or be broken up into digestible little six- and three-gamers. Right now Oakland leads the game 5-3 in the middle of the seventh inning.
So if I’m going to root for anything, you might think chaos is the logical choice, but among universal forces, rooting for chaos is like rooting for all 30 owners to make a profit. So let’s just try to bend some space and time, y’all. It’s not the first time this has happened — Juan Soto homered in such a game last year, officially going deep chronologically before his major league debut. Barry Bonds has done this as well. The Tigers don’t have an array of hitting prospects that might pull this off, at least none that would make headlines, so let’s instead pick someone going the other way. That would be Craig Monroe.
Currently a TV analyst for the Tigers’ TV affiliate, the 42-year-old Monroe has been out of baseball for 10 years, and it’s been 13 years since he led the AL champion Tigers with 28 home runs. He was the next generation’s Rob Deer, so you can understand why that pull swing has probably not left his body. It’s all he had and it’s probably all that’s left. He’ll be there either way for work purposes. Might as well mic him up.
He can presumably replace Nick Castellanos in the outfield, since he could very well be on another team. Or he can just DH for Miguel Cabrera, whose new expiration date is usually mid-August. He has four months to get into shape for a couple of at-bats and officially go in the books as playing in a game that he started in the TV booth. It’s a longshot, which, again, I’m rooting for the underdog, and I’ve always been on record saying that this is sometimes okay.
(draws from Harper’s Magazine June 1995 article summarizing a study published in March 1994’s Annals of Emergency Medicine)
Anecdotal evidence suggested
distribution of thousands of free
baseball bats increased beatings
in the area near the stadium
But one statistical survey seems
to contraindicate this belief where
only three of 77 victims identified
the weapon used as a Yankees bat
Not very beautiful to imagine fans
as they exit rapping one another or
bystanders with their commemorative
free gift turned volunteer nightstick
Even worse how the study concludes
neutral thousands of new weapons
in a setting rife with poverty as the
authors say the Bronx of course being
They claim it seems probable drugs
and violence overshadow the bats
Surveying 10 days fore and aft
to blame interlocking social problems
To what pathology shall we attribute
Cleveland ten-cent beer night or
Comiskey’s infamous Disco Demolition
More run of the mill drugs and violence
Thank you for reading
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