Help Wanted

Position: FEEL GOOD STORY

Job Description:  Defying the odds, befuddling the skeptics, slaying Goliath, reawakening the passion of a burned-out city, making dreams become true

Qualifications:  Remarkable, youthful talent; playing with heart, emotion, & determination; ability to heed the advice of grizzled, loveable curmudgeon; spraying champagne

Prior Experience:  Decades of ineptitude & futility

Status:  NO LONGER TAKING APPLICATIONS.  Second round of interviews, as of 10/07/2006

Position:  SECOND FIDDLE

Job Description:  Despite ample talent, and flashes of brilliance applicants will always be second best

Qualifications:   Standing in the shadows; history of self-implosion; unraveling at inopportune times; possession of massive inferiority complex

Prior Experience:  Numerous years in the fields of second banana, court jester, annoying next door neighbor, or red-headed stepchild

Status:  FILLED.  Again, as of 10/07/2006

Tigers 4, Yankees 3, Series tied 1-1

Oh, and those tickets I have to Game #4 are now for a chance to see either team clinch the series with a win. And, the Tigers game now is scheduled in direct conflict with the Michigan/MSU game. So, I'm not sweatin' it.

If It's October...

It must mean the Tigers are in the playoffs (Although I'd be a lot more confident about their chances had they not been swept by the Royals this weekend)! Yes, the Tigers are returning to the playoffs for the first time in 19 years and I have tickets...Sort of. Finishing up the season at home with the Royals on the schedule, a team that lost 100 games this season, a team the Tigers lost to only once during the course of this season's prior 15 match-ups, seemed like a gift from the schedule makers. Had los Tigres managed to win one of the three games this weekend, two which they blew (5-run lead Friday, 6-run lead today, three bases-loaded, 1-out situations in the last two games in which they came away with no runs), they would have won their division. Thus, earning them the right to host the first round series and be guaranteed two home games. The game I purchased tickets for is home game #2 and would have been played on Wednesday afternoon. 

Now because Detroit finished as the Wild Card qualifier, they must travel to New York to play the Yankees and are only guaranteed one home game. For me to see the Tigers in a playoff baseball game, in person, they must win at least one against the Yankees to force a Saturday game in Detroit. It's a plausible scenario, but not one that comes without other conflicts of interest. 

Saturday is also the Michigan-Michigan State football game, scheduled to be played in Ann Arbor at 4:30. This pretty much guarantees I'll miss viewing significant portions of that game (should the Tigers still be playing at that point) regardless of what time the Tigers' game is scheduled to start. I guess I should just be happy that the Tigers have finally made it back to the playoffs, after years of horrible, horrible baseball, and enjoy the ride as long as it lasts. It really has been a great season of baseball in Detroit.