When White Moths Are On The Wing

Traveling photographer Robert Kincaid discovers that farm-bound housewife Francesca Johnson fills her afternoons not with soap operas, or real operas, but with with Chicago Cubs games, at a time (1965) when the Cubs still play 81 home day games a season. So, instead of building a fire and curling up in a blanket, on the night of an oppressively hot mid-August Iowa day, they sit on the porch are read Yeats, and listen to the Cubs game (they're out west and on late). All this takes place in the movie "The Baseball Games Of Madison County." Which is why that movie has never been made, and why Your Cynical Baseball Blogger would never make it as a writer of screenplays.

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The Tigers play 15 of their next 18 at home, where they're 11 over .500. Only a weekend road trip to KC breaks the string of home games. 

Three of the next ten calendar days are off days. and that's good news for the pitching staff, and especially the battered bullpen, in the dog days of summer. 

Now, then, is the time for the Tigers to put some distance between themselves and the AL Cantral pack, or at least the other would-be bridesmaids.

The mystery remains, though: Why a team with three of the league's top starters (Verlander, Scherzer, and Fister), and Jackson, Cabrera, and Fielder in its lineup doesn't already have its division pretty much wrapped up.