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Well, you did say "you" ... 😉

I'm not totally hung up on free agency. I do think it's important to make this team competitive for the better free agents when it's our time, perhaps as soon as next year, and I think it's important that not only on-field improvements like lighting and fence depth are addressed, but off-field amenities like improved travel and clubhouse experience as well. All this is a big step in the right direction and sends a big message to the industry about striving to actually become a truly first-class organization, not just giving the idea cheap lip service. And it's even better that it came from the mouth of Chris Ilitch directly to the players, coaches and staff inside of the clubhouse, in their environment, looking all of them in the eye, instead of communicating it through an intermediary or a memo, because that face-to-face delivery of the message makes his personal responsibility for making it happen even more heightened, and puts him squarely on the hook if it doesn't. His entire credibility as an owner with his players is right on the line. I'm not a big fan of Baby Doc, either, as anyone who's seen me post here over the years could attest. But he did move up a notch in my estimation with this move.

I'm assessing this only in terms of what he is delivering to the players, assuming he will actually deliver it, and the effect it may have on the view of players around the league about the Tigers organization.

I think the improvements are fantastic. This is the kind of thing that plays very well in the player community and will help make Detroit a more attractive option for players who are moving on, and if we want to move into the elite level of teams, we have to become an organization that top players want to come play for. No winner can build entirely from within. Baby Doc has moved up a notch in my estimation.

Jesus Chris Almighty … Sure, on the one hand, this could not happen in the United States as currently constitutionally constructed, so reasonable people are free to dismiss her as a complete wackjob spouting off wild ideas. On the other hand, the more she says things like this without suffering any real consequences, the more normalized the ideas themselves become, and the closer we inch to the idea that the United States might be constitutionally reconstructed to allow something like this, and god knows what else. Dismiss that if you like, especially you kids who would be those who have to deal with that decades into the future. God, I hope it takes decades at least.

While I agree he doesn’t deserve scorn, he does deserve to take responsibility for not living up to the performance his salary suggests he should deliver. Yes, Papa Doc proactively offered him the money. And then Miggy took it. So he is a party to it. I think his hearing people whine about how he’s not earning his salary is a small price for him to pay to cash those checks.

I remember trying to get channel 78 out of Windsor to see French language TV, hoping to see an occasional Expos game. The station was only maybe 15 or so miles away but it might as well have been 150 for how hard it was to get anything. Even after they moved it to channel 54, it was still almost impossible to pull in.

KDKA. That was another reliable one. Pirates! Some of the others that were at least fairly reliable pulls were WSM, WLW, WHAS, WLW (Nawlins!), WCBS, KYW, KMOX, and WCAU. The higher up the dial you got the harder they were to pull in, and I don’t think I got anything above 1210 from very far away very often.

This is the Valentine Fox will give its audience after they got caught slagging them.

Nah, it was time to retire Tiger Stadium. It was pretty dingy and cramped, and a lot of seats were blocked by posts.

Anti-American traitor representing the I Hate America faction of a major political party wants to literally destroy the United States. Bonus: she sits on the Homeland Security committee.

Here's the other thing about Miguel Cabrera: when he retires, there's an excellent chance that Eddie Mathews will still hold the record for most career homers by an ex-Tiger.

That shipped sailed 20 years ago, for a bunch of those networks. History Channel isn't historical; Discovery discovered that the money is in cheap reality nonsense; Travel Channel travels only to where there are yetis or ghosts; Sundance is all Law & Order and no Sundance films; Nat Geo's geography encompasses anything involving crime or UFOs; you can learn only about 1,000-pound women and being secretly pregnant on the Learning Channel; the Science Channel is focused on the "science" of the paranormal; and A&E isn't particularly artful or entertaining anymore.

Did you know we had a .300 hitter on the team last year? The Athletic reminds us it's true. 😏

Neither do I. Making it through a whole season of one-game-a-series might even be optimistic. I think there's at least a 50-50 chance he finds his way to the 60-day injured list at some point during the season.

When I was at Ferris State in the mid 80s WJR could hardly reach up there, either, and they had no nearby Tigers affiliates. WBRN, the one and only reliable radio station we could get, certainly wasn't one. The closest one, I think, might have been Cadillac and that couldn't reach, either. WKZO also didn't make it up there. I spent two years there hardly hearing any games during spring or September. In this pre-cable time, it was also weird that I could get no ABC TV stations. Channel 13 out of GR was buried in snow, and don't even think about channel 29 out of TC, even though Mecosta County was in the Traverse City-Cadillac ADI. And once I'd moved on to Michigan State, I couldn't get any ABC station there, either. Channel 13 was the same snow situation, channel 41 out of Battle Creek pretty much stopped at the Charlotte city limit, and forget about channel 7 out of Detroit. That was another two years of no ABC TV. I spent a lot of time in some very weird media deserts when I was young.

I think JR might have been strongest directionally going out west. I remember as a kid going up north to just outside Traverse City with my family and not knowing whether I could pull it on any given night so I could listen to the Tigers game. The local Tigers station (TCM?) went low power at night and we couldn’t pick it up quite so well through the hills. On the other hand, WBZ, 1030, out of Boston? Clear as a bell every night in Warren, Michigan. Too bad they didn’t have Red Sox games. I did get KMOX and Cardinals games out of STL pretty reliably, though. Same with 3WE and Indians games.

If everything goes right, I see Cabrera as a one game per series guy, which would put him right around 50 games and perhaps 200 plate trips. If he gets substantially more than that, something has gone horribly wrong.

Apropos of not much, the Royals also have a sort of traditional sabermetric cred as quite a few of the early guys were Royals fans: Bill James, Rob Neyer, Rany Jazayleri, I think maybe one or two others.

The other thing buddha got right is suggesting how impossible it is for national guys to pay to all 30 teams in depth, for obvious reasons. They also pay far more attention to what they see in front of the curtain, not what's behind it. Sure, we made a bunch of changes behind the scenes—what does that mean to Keith Law or Dan Szymborski or Jay Jaffe or Mike Petriello or anyone else who has to report on baseball to a national audience? Very little, if it's not one of the Big Six franchises, plus whatever team is a hot commodity at the moment. Any changes there, they are going to take deep dives into. But changes like here in Detroit, or places like Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or Kansas City ... ah, wake me up when they're relevant. It's why when these guys review or project anything about the Tigers, it reads as though nothing has changed here.

Given how badly the ultra-red hat wing of the GOP lost in Michigan, resulting in a Democratic government trifecta, I can imagine only that their plan is to take over the state by force, in part by deputizing militias and, who knows, maybe even local police, by overthrowing the duly elected government and then imposing their will on the unarmed majority. Because I don't know how else they think they can seize power, since I can't see what it would take for ordinary reasonable people to conclude that these MAGA wackjobs are the preferable choice in a free and fair election.

“Now pitching … for the Detroit Tigers … number 3.14 … Bleep … Blorp …”

OK, I wondered whether you were being serious here, but not completely sure either way. I do fear that with the coming rise in offensive numbers, especially if the ball is re-juiced, pitchers and their coaches are going to try harder than ever to come up twisty, turny, ever-faster magic pitches to try to miss bats, resulting in even more season- and career-ending injuries than we see even today. Bseballl has simply got to deaden that ball to instill confidence in pitchers generally that if the bat lands on the pitch, there’s still a very good chance it stays in the park and has a chance of turning into an out. To do that, they’d probably have to cut the home run rate down to something under 1.00 per game and have it persist for a few seasons. Otherwise, as long as that homer rate is floating around 1.25 or even higher, I think we’re just going to keep seeing endless pitcher injuries ad infinitum.

Another ex-Tiger on yet another minor league deal.