Tigers Win.............Again

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine and he asked whether it was easier or harder to maintain a blog about the Tigers during a wildly successful season, and the answer I gave was it's harder, much, much harder. It's been infinitely more exciting/enjoyable to watch a team thats winning nearly 68% of their games and are on pace for 108 victories, BUT at the same time it's nearly impossible to write anything new about their sustained success through the first 2/3rds of their schedule. There has been no controversy, no major injuries, no heartbreak, and no disappointment. (I know I just jinxed the team by writing that last sentence, tomorrow Pudge will probably demand a permanent move to first base, Verlander and Guillen will go down with catastrophic injuries and they'll lose a nine game Central Division lead in three days. Sorry.) I just can't find myself getting worked up over the little bits of news that are coming out of the team since I last posted. Verlander misses a start as a way to limit his innings. Makes sense. Chris Shelton gets demoted to the minors to work out the kinks and to re-work his contract with the devil and have another hot streak for the last two months of the season. Justified. Even potentially sticky situations have worked out swimmingly. Dmitri Young comes out of re-hab and steps right into the lineup as a productive bat/defensive monster. Kenny Rogers turns in a months worth of poor starts and has Lynn Henning calling for his spot in the rotation to be replaced by has-been/never-was Chad Durbin because Willie Blair,(whose autograph actually decreases the value of that card from 5 to 3 cents) wasn't available and then Rogers comes out and delivers a solid start in yesterdays game against the Indians. Verlander misses his turn and Wil Ledezma turns in a stellar performance shutting a powerful Indians team out in his first big league start in over a year (remember I once compared Wil Ledezma to a young Pedro Martinez before the start of last season, which proves that I have no business writing about sports.) Even Jason Grilli.......wait no, Grilli still sucks, but you get my point.

Anyways this weekend the Tigers swept the Indians, the 11th time this season that they've accomplished such a feat, and it seemed as if they were toying with the Indians, seeing how far they could push themselves to the brink of losing and still come through triumphant. Friday night they fell behind big early before clawing back and winning in their last at-bat as Craig Monroe hit a two run homerun, which made my friend T.J. who doubles as the president of the Craig Monroe fan club even more insufferable. Saturday night Rogers got knocked around in the first inning putting the Tigers behind 3-0 before they even got a chance to bat before Pudge hit another 2-run homer to win with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Followed by Ledezma and a gaggle of relievers combining for a 1-0 shutout today the 13th time this season that the Tigers have shut the opposition out and opening up a nine game lead over the White Sox, who won 2 of 3 against the Blue Jays this weekend and still lost ground. Ho-Hum. Now the Tigers enter a tough ten game stretch where they play nine games against the Twins, White Sox and Red Sox, which should be interesting as we face three teams contending for a playoff spot including two from our own division but probably won't be very interesting because I continue to expect them to do well regardless of the doom and decline that many naysayers still predict even though this team has proven itself through the first 110 games of the year. This is just a long way of explaining why I havent been posting much lately, I need poor play, and idiotic moves to build up the necessary amount of indignation to sit down and write/complain on this site or to make fun of a player/team. But I wouldnt trade this season for anything, it's great to not have anything to complain about with the team and not have any gripes with the performance of the players.......( not so fast Mr. Grilli. ) and if that comes at the expense of having nothing to write about so be it. And there is always Lions season.