With three franchise players -- Cabrera, Verlander, and Fielder -- in the starting lineup two days from today, the spring buzz has been over who will be half of the second base platoon.
Brandon Inge has become the mother-in-law who came to stay "for a couple weeks" a year ago and is still around.
In any other universe, he would have already played himself off the team by hitting under .200 in Florida. But he's owed $13 million for this season plus a $500K buyout for 2013 and, when waived last July, there were no takers.
So, at this point, you may as well play him, somewhere.
Hinge made the decision easier for Skipper Leyland and The Miracle Worker by landing on the DL late in the spring campaign. When he comes off on April 15, he'll start against lefties, and go in for defense. (Having a defensive replacement who's never played a major league game at the position says all that needs to be said about this season's second base arrangement.)
The Hinge soap opera will draw attention away from this year's relentless conquest of AL Central opponents, as the Tigers march towards the big October dance as General Sherman did through Georgia.
But baseball melodrama has a way of handing the guy who doesn't belong a chance to be the hero, and our crystal ball foreshadows a night in June when the backup second baseman no one wanted snags a hot grounder with the bases loaded, and drives in the winning run. Exactly the way it's done on the Hallmark Channel.
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Another spring ritual has come and gone -- Tom and Maggie's annual viewing of "Bull Durham."
I pretended to be not watching when Annie Savoy talked quantum physics with Crash on her front porch swing, dripping wet from a late September North Carolina rain, lest the baseball fan curled next to me object.
But she made sure I noticed the candle splashing bathtub scene.
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