a satirical, fictional account of the last five years of tigers fandom:
“Did we beat Boston!?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard my buddy Skeeter say it. Every Friday for nearly five years (well, almost every Friday. Sometimes I had stuff to do) I’d come visit him in the hospital, room 1984, and he’d never said a word. Didn’t even move a muscle, neither. He’d just lay there doing nothing like a Tim Belcher fastball right over the middle of the plate. Comas will do that, I suppose. I kept comin’ by anyway, figuring he’d snap out of it eventually, and, lo and behold, there he was, bolt upright, eyes bugging out, full of life.
“Holy cow! You’re awake! It’s a miracle!” I said, springing up from my chair and shoveling a handful of mixed nuts into my mouth.
“Never mind that now!” he shouted. He was a bit haggard and unshaven, but all-in-all not bad for a guy that had basically pulled a Rip Van Winkle. “Did we beat the Red Sox or not?” he said, seemingly unimpressed with his own resurrection.
“Umm…” I shrugged. “Last Sunday? I think we lost like 9-1 or something.”
He looked at me with an expression of utter bewilderment.
“9-1? We were up 5-1 in the bottom of the 8th. Bases loaded for Ortiz. Benoit on the mound…”
For a moment I thought the coma must’ve left him with more than a few screws loose, but then it hit me: He went under on October 13th, 2013, an insignificant day to most, but to Tigers fans it will be forever known as the day of the Torii Hunter play.
“C’mon, guy. Spill it,” he continued. “Last thing I remember is taking a bite of one of those brownies you brought to the party, the ones you swore had no nuts in them…”
“Oh, yeah…in my defense, though, you said you had a peanut allergy. I figured that meant you were allergic to legumes, ‘cuz you know peanuts aren’t even nuts. Almonds aren’t legumes, so…”
“Peanuts and tree nuts, guy!”
“What the hell is a tree nut?” I said, scooping another handful into my mouth.
“ANY OTHER N-”
He stopped short, his eyes square on the sleeve of nuts in my hand.
“Seriously?” he said, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh, crap!” I said, quickly tucking them into the pocket of my hoodie. “What do I do? Should I leave the room?”
“No, it’s fine. As long as I don’t eat them I won’t go into anaphylactic shock again.”
“Yeah…and lose another five years of your life.”
“What?” he said, not immediately grasping what I’d said.
“Soo…” I grimaced. “I don’t know how to tell you this but…”
“But what?”
“It’s 2018.”
“Get outta here,” he said, waving me off.
“No, really! It is!”
I looked around the room for something, anything to prove it to him. Finding nothing I went to the curtains and flung them open, filling the room with the blinding luminescence of a late-July day.
“What?” he said, leaning forward to get a look. “I see a parking garage.”
“Yeah, but…see, ” I said, pointing out a Ford Fusion driving down the exit ramp. “What about that, then.”
“A Ford Fusion? We had those in 2013, guy,” he said, skeptically.
“Didn’t you see the Platinum trim!? That was new for the ’17 model.”
He said nothing.
“Umm…here!” I said, remembering my phone. “Look at the date. July 27, 2018. BAM!”
Slowly, a look of dejected acceptance came over his face.
“I’ve missed four full Tigers seasons?”
“Yeah and a lot of other stuff has happened since you’ve been out. Like, umm…” I gazed up to the ceiling tiles trying to recall significant events of recent history. “Ooh, Dennis Rodman helped breach a summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un!”
“I…I…” he said, gently shaking his head back and forth.
“As far as summits go, I hear it was a good one.”
“I’m not even going to try and unpack that right now,” he said, stunned. “Can we…how about we just start with Tigers and Red Sox 2013 ALCS?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. It was just, you know…de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is kind of a big deal but…we can talk a little baseball instead. So…you remember Ortiz was up, bases loaded, facing Benoit. He cranks it to right, Torii Hunter had a bead on it. He went back…”
“Yes?” Skeeter said, leaning in, regaining some of his earlier vigor.
“Back…”
“And…”
“Back…and he goes flying, feet over head, right over the wall. It was a hell of an effort!”
“Did he catch it?” Skeeter said with such anticipation he was nearly floating off the bed.
“Oh, no. Grand slam. Some Boston cop in the bullpen is all arms-up, celebrating. Torii could’ve broken his neck. It was kinda unprofessional if you ask me. Anyway, it tied the game and we blew it in the bottom of the ninth and lost.”
Skeeter’s expression briefly grew dour.
“But we had Verlander going in game three, AT HOME,” he said, his face alight again. “Surely we won that game, right?”
“JV was a monster that game,” I said, thinking back to the cool October night. “Eight innings, ten K’s…absolute beast. Only flaw was a solo jack to Mike Napoli.”
“So we won?”
“Oh, no. Lost 1-0.”
“Do I want to know about game four?” he said, that twinkle, once again, fading from his eyes.
“We won that one.”
“And five?”
I shook my head. “Ditto for six.”
He slammed his fist into his thigh in anger. “How is that possible? We had reigning MVPs in Cabrera and Verlander, Scherzer was dominant, Anibal Sanchez had like a 2.50 ERA…”
“I don’t know man. It’s one of life’s great mysteries. I bet if Hunter had grabbed that Ortiz ball, it’d be a different story, though.”
Skeeter, ever the resilient one, shrugged and said, “That’s OK. Unless something catastrophic happened we should’ve returned the best rotation on the planet in 2014. Right?”
“Verlander kinda sucked that year, but Scherzer was still a monster. Porcello and Sanchez, too. And Price, he was no slouch either.”
“Price? David Price?” he said, flabbergasted.
“Yep. Another patented Dombrowski deadline deal.”
“So Leyland and the boys finally brought home the trophy for Mr. I in ’14 then…?” Skeeter said, hopefully.
“Leyland? No, he was gone. Ausmus was the manager in ’14.”
“Ausmus. Brad Ausmus? Why him?”
I shrugged. “Apparently because he went to an Ivy League school. I don’t know. He was kind of a disaster.”
“Uggh. I’m guessing we didn’t even make the playoffs then?”
“Oh, we did. Bounced rather unceremoniously in the first round by Baltimore, though. We had a shot in game two. JV went five and gave up three runs. Sanchez came on in relief and was a stud. Two innings, no hits, no walks, couple punch-outs. It made zero sense to pull him for Joba Chamberlain who preceded to get lit up. Blew the game.”
“Joba Chamberlain?” Skeeter said, his face mangled into an expression one might have after taking a bite of a festering roadkill skunk.
“Ausmus,” I sneered, popping a couple of Brazil nuts into my mouth.
“DUDE!”
“Sorry! I keep forgetting.”
“Whatever,” he said, his shoulders sagging. “Might as well continue with the misery. Go on with the 2015 season.”
“Let’s just say the awesomeness started in the off-season when we traded away two future All-Stars for one year of Alfredo Simon and four of Shane Greene who’s had like a 5.00 ERA as a Tiger.”
“What All-Stars?”
“Robbie Ray, the lefty we got when Dombrowski dumped Fister for no reason and Eugenio Suarez,” I said. “Annnd, that was the year we re-signed Victor.”
“That’s good, though. Right?”
I pursed my lips and shook my head.
“It’s almost August and he’s at .238, five homers and thirty-four RBI. Seventeen million for that and the slowest jog to first since Cecil Fielder. And last year wasn’t much better.”
“Sheesh. So no playoffs in ’15?” he said through gritted teeth.
“74-87 and Dombrowski mysteriously fired mid-season.”
“Wow,” he said, somberly.
“2016 was more fun, though,” I said, instantly perking him back up.
“Yeah? Did we win the Series?” he said, grinning hopefully.
“Oh, no! Don’t be an idiot! It was fun because they actually had a winning record. It was also the last year that Cabrera and Martinez did anything of note.”
“So 2017 sucked, too?”
“Oh, boy! Did it ever!”
It was at that moment that you could physically see his spirit break. Sagging backwards onto the pillow mound he’d called home for nearly a half decade, he appeared to have as much command of his body as Bruce Rondon did with his slider.
“Oh, it’s not all bad, guy!” I said, rushing to his side to comfort him. I felt horrible, seeing as that he did just come out of a coma…and you could kinda, sorta say it was me did that did the spirit crushing.
“No?” he said, meekly.
“Not at all. There’s still nothing better than the first sip of a cold beer as you settle in to your seat on a hot summer day. Or how the aroma of a grilled hot dog wafts through the concourse practically hypnotizing you until you find yourself drawing that thin line of mustard down it’s length. And we’ve still got Dickerson and Price, Mario and Rod, and sometimes Gibby, too. Heck, we even get to see Trammell and Morris inducted into the Hall of Fame this year.”
“We do?” he said, reviving, if only a little.
“And, geez. It’s been quite a ride these past few years. We’ve got to see some of the best players in all of baseball suit up in the Old English ‘D’. Cabrera, Kinsler, J.D. Martinez, JV, Porcello, Scherzer, Joe Nathan, Price, Cespedes, Justin Upton, K-Rod…I mean, that’s quite a list!”
“WOW!” he said, popping upright again. “Are they home this weekend? Maybe we can get some tick-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Pump the brakes there, pal!”
“What?” he said, confused.
“I mean…they’re in town, but you won’t see any of those players.”
“Why not?”
“Well Cabrera’s out for the year with a torn biceps.”
“And the other guys?”
“Kinsler, Angels. Same with Upton. J.D., Red Sox. Ditto for Porcello and Price. And Dombrowski for that matter. Cespedes, Mets. Scherzer, Washington. Nathan retired, but he sucked anyways. He also did one of those chin-flick. Italian-style ‘bleep you’ gestures to the crowd during one of his many miserable performances. You know, the…”
I demonstrated the gesture.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“And K-Rod was almost as bad. After blowing save after save, we cut him and then he allegedly trashed the house he was renting in Bloomfield. Good times.”
“And JV…” he winced.
“Astros. Sorry, guy. He did win the Series with them last year, if that helps.”
“Why would that help? Who cares if he wins for another team? He was supposed to do that here!”
“That’s what I said! All these clowns are out here with Astros jerseys on saying ‘Oh, good for JV. He deserves it.’ Whatever,” I scoffed. “We did light him up good a couple weeks ago, though.”
Skeeter said not a word. It appeared my attempt to cheer him up had a decidedly opposite effect. I racked my brain for anything that could possibly pull him from the abyss; some semblance of a silver lining to the dark clouds of blown opportunities, botched trades, managerial mis-haps, poor drafts, and bullpen conflagrations.
“We do have Michael Fulmer…”
“Who’s he?” Skeeter said, from some distant place.
“He won the 2016 Rookie of the Year. He’s hurt now, but I think he’ll bounce back and be all right. We got him in the Cespedes trade. And there are others.”
“There are?”
“Yeah. The rebuild started after the ’16 season. We’ve dumped some big names for prospects and since we’ve sucked so hard recently we’ve gotten better draft positioning, too.”
“Oh…” he said, but with no verve.
“Yeah. Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Alex Faedo, Beau Burrows. We got some stud righty named Franklin Perez in the JV deal,” I said, scanning his face for some nugget of enthusiasm that just wasn’t there.
“Uh huh.”
“And we also got Mike Cameron’s kid. Ooh, and Roger Clemens’s kid, too. The cupboard isn’t bare anymore. Not like the old Randy Smith days. And some guys currently on the team have some potential. I like Candelario. Niko Goodrum looks at least serviceable. Castellanos has finally put it together, although he still is occasionally a roller coaster ride in the outfield. And not to forget our lone All-Star, reliever Joe Jimenez. He looks like our closer of the future. I mean, this team could do some real damage in like five years or so.”
“Five years?” Skeeter said, his eyes wider but somehow looking not at me, but through me.
“Yeah,” I said, a bit unsettled. “Just gotta give these young guys some time-,”
“Five years,” he said, again, his head tilting creepily to the side.
“-to develop. You alright, guy?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Just a little tired, I guess.”
“Oh,” I said. “That makes sense. I, uh…I suppose I’ll take off then. Let you get some rest.”
I offered him my hand for a shake, but he gripped it and pulled me in for a full-blown hug.
“Oh!” I said, giving him a little pat on the back. After a second or two he removed his arms from around my hoodie and sagged back into the pillow mound.
“So…yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you soon then, guy.”
He mumbled something that kinda sounded like ‘five years’ again, but I couldn’t tell. I’m sure he was just exhausted from the all the excitement.
I walked out of the room and back down the hall towards the elevator bank stopping briefly at the visitor waiting area where a TV was turned to a certain four-lettered sports station. They were showing highlights of another J.D. Martinez home run.
“Thirty-one bombs and eighty-five RBI,” I said, shaking my head before starting off again down the hall.
It was then that my stomach growled. Then I remembered the mixed nuts. I reached into the right pocket of my hoodie whilst singing Eazy-E’s “Gimme That Nutt” but found nothing. Into the left pocket I searched, again coming up empty.
As I began patting the pockets of my jeans a nurse sped by, nearly knocking right into me.
“Hey! Watch it!” I said, still finding nothing but lint.
Another sped by, then another. It was very distracting. And then, to compound matters, some very aggressive voice came over the P.A. blathering “Code Blue! Eighty-four! Code Blue! Anna Phil axis!” or some nonsense. It really made it tough for me to remember if I’d thrown the nuts out in Skeeter’s room.
“Must have,” I determined as I continued, hungry, down the hall. I made it about five steps when it hit me.
“Eighty-four!” I said, spinning back around. “Oh my God!”
Within seconds I was in mid-sprint to right back from where I came, Skeeter’s room, 1984. And there just beyond it was the vending machine I remembered passing.
“Mmm…” I said, pulling a dollar from my wallet.
I could almost taste those Brazil nuts.