MLB - 2006 Season! Continued!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Pedro will face minimal work until the end of the regular season and probably will be fine when the playoffs start.

[Arrian]

One hopes so, anyway. He's battled injuries all year, and time is getting short.

Magic number down to 1. Back-to-back "quality starts" from rookies (Rasner and Karstens) up in Toronto was nice to see. The Yanks will most likely get blown out tonight, though. The Jays have Halliday going, and we've got Sean Henn, who sucks.

-Arrian

[Guynemer]

I didn't want to say anything until it was official, but here it is:


The Tigers are in the playoffs.


The end is near, people. Repent.

[OzzyKP]

Who's your Tiger?

[OzzyKP]

Select quotes from a Detroit sports board I lurk on:

I would like to thank the 2006 Detroit Tigers for rekindling that lost passion in my sould for the great game of baseball. Every March for the last 15 years, I would anxiously await opening day with the hopes of what could be. Every June, I was left wanting better. Now, finally, I can have that same feeling again in October.

I feel like I am 10 years old again. I have been through 3 Pistons championships, 3 Red Wings Stanley Cups, and a UofM Co-National championship. While thrilled and excited, nothing will compare if the Tigers can win it this year. My late father never really got into sports. But he went out of his way to take me to Tiger games and watch games on channel 4 with his son because he knew how he felt about the team and the sport. My first ever sports championship memory was the 84 Tigers. I had just turned 10 years old. That feeling is irreplaceable and hopefully, I can get that feeling back next month. What a tremendous 32nd birthday present that would be. And I know, that somewhere my father is looking down on me right now smiling, because he knows the rush of feelings I am experiencing right now.

Thank you Tigers. You still have unfinished business. Now go kick some *** and bring it home.

I was 24 in 1987 and had just started my first post-college job. It was an amazing pennant run that year but a horrible playoff. Still, I figured there would be more playoff opportunities in the near future. Little did I know it would take 19 years. I cried a little in the 9th inning today.

Wow. Just.....wow. I can't even really begin to express how great this is. I was eight years old in 1987, and when they got bounced out of the playoffs I just thought to myself that they will be back in contention next year. That was the last year my family lived in Michigan, and I really didn't follow Tigers baseball that closely until the internet exploded and made it easier to find local coverage of Detroit sports. I really got into the Tigers in that '87 season, and that season was one of my fondest memories as a little kid. When we left Michigan, I just felt this hole inside of me as I slowly stopped following the Tigers for a few years.

I got back into Tigers baseball in the early 2000's. While it definitely felt good to be following the team again, there still was something....missing. The team just wasn't that great, and it just didn't 'feel' like the Tigers baseball I knew and loved as an eight year old kid.

Today, there's some eight year old kid who is getting his version of Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammel, Lou Whitaker, Frank Tanana, and Jack Morris. Justin Verlander, Brandon Inge, Kenny Rogers, Carlos Guillen, and Joel Zumaya are going to be baseball heroes for the next generation of Tigers fans. There's a kid somewhere who is falling in love with Tigers baseball like I did 19 years ago.

Today, I feel like an eight year old kid again.

[/QUOTE]

1968 was a special year in my life. Eight years old and the Tigers coming off a very disappointing season in 67, losing the last game of a double header on the last day of the season. Dick McAuliffe hit into his only GIDP for the entire season to end it all. I was heartbroken. Crushed as most Tiger fans were.

But 68 was a magical year from the beginning, as the Tigers picked up Hall of Famer Eddie Matthews to bolster their bench, McLain winning his 30th game in Oakland, Kaline breaking his wrist slamming his bat into the bat rack after a strike out, and then joining the team for the last month or so of the season, Northrup hitting two grand slams in one game, and it always seemed like there was a new hero every game.

I can clearly hear Ernie calling the pennant clinching hit, Kaline at third, all tied up in the bottom of the ninth and lite hitting Don Wert ripping a line drive single to LF to score Kaline and the party was on! Fetzer was the owner of the Tigers back in those days, and he owned the CBS affiliate in Cadillac, MI at the time. I remember them breaking into whatever was on TV on that weeknight in September, and showing the lockerroom celebration.

It's always been great to be a Tiger fan, but after all the bleeding the last 19 years, it even greater at the moment.

What a special season.

The first season I remember is 1961, when they won 101 games and finished second to the Yankees.
I remember the '67 season (a heartbreaker), the '68 season ( a delight), 72,84, and 87.

But this season has been the sweetest of all for so little was exepected of this team and so much has been accomplished. It is wonderful when the exceptional happens.

[Apocalypse]

The Astros swept the Cardinals and are now just 3.5 games back. They have a much easier schedule than the Cards have too.

[Imran Siddiqui]

What, 3.5 games back with like 6 games to go? It's going to be a tall task.

[Apocalypse]

Cards have 8 and Astros have 7.

Very doable.

[Arrian]

Doable, but still unlikely. But I'm rooting for them.

Congrats to the Tigers

-Arrian

[Imran Siddiqui]

A tall task.

If the Cards go 5-3, the Astros are eliminated. Basically the Astros will have to be perfect or almost perfect and hope for the Cards to finish below .500 in their last 8 games.

If the 'Stros go 7-0, then the Cards have to go 3-5 to lose the division (4-4 for a tie). If the Stros go 6-1, then the Cards have to go 2-6. If the Stros go 5-2, Cards 1-7.

It isn't "very doable", it IS doable, but still a tall task.

[Apocalypse]

Astros are what? 3-0 at leasts for end of the season runs. Astros have to just play Astro baseball and they have it. The Cards have to make sure they don't buckel under pressure they haven't experienced in a year.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And that makes it less of a tall task, how? To hope your opponent plays under .500 ball is doable, but not all that easy.

Not saying it's impossible, but it will be hard. For example, see the Indians/White Sox last year. Indians made a great run, but got tired at the end and couldn't make up those final few games. Maybe the Astros can.

[Apocalypse]

It's not like the Astros played any good so far this season to be tired from anything. Saying the Astros will be too tired is like saying the reason someone is going to fail a class is because they are too tired from pulling an all nighter for the final, not because they slept through all the classes.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The Astros have played with a playoff mentality in the last few weeks to make up the space between them and the Cards. That can take a toll.

[Apocalypse]

Some mentality when they are playing not even .500 ball.....

And like I said, they did the same thing for four years in a row now.