Sold Out Game Two / Haha Red Sox !

44K at Comerica, first time they've ever sold out the second game of a season.

Well, that's nice ... pretty soon they'll sell out the whole season in advance like the Red Socks do, and the guy who on a Friday in July decides he'd like to see a game on Sunday can forget it.

Speaking of the Carmines ... Josh Beckett gave up five home runs, two each to Cabrera and Fielder, and one to Alex Avila as the double-time march to October continued, 10-0.

Cabrera also made a nice play at third, taking a hit away from Jarod Saltalamacchia, whose Italian surname translated means "jump over the bush," in the fifth inning. In the process nixing the theory that Tiger opponents, instead of going for the fences, should try to hit grounders to the infield.

Doug Fister had to come out in the fourth with an abdominal strain, but that's okay; it isn't serious, it's early, and every pitcher goes on the DL these days.

So buy your tickets now and, if you have an October wedding planned, you might want to change the date to something safe in November, after the World Series victory parade. 

The key guy to get them there could become not Fielder, Miggy, or JV, but Octavio Dotel.

The veteran right-hander, when he came in to pitch the seventh, entered his name in a box score for team number thirteen; another new league record. He allowed one hit and struck out three in one and a third innings, in the set-up role where Tiger hurlers wobbled more than a few times last season. The Tigers needed a guy with experience to get games to Papa Shut 'Em Down, and now they have him.

The Off Day After

Another good thing from yesterday's win: not once, from pre-game shows to post-game wrapup, was You Know Who's name mentioned.

He did get into a newspaper sidebar: A Tigers beat writer mentioned that Drew Smyly, the fifth starter who won't be needed for a couple weeks, watched the game "from Brandon Inge's suite" at Comerica.

Inge's suite at Comerica, I thought, was the bench.

Opening Day 2012 / Haha Red Sox !

In the Tigers' 2012 home opener, both Justin Verlander and the Red Sox picked up where they left off last season.

JV pitched eight scoreless innings and allowed two hits. Then, the opening day overflow crowd of 45,000 saw something that never happened all last season: Jose Valverde blow a save opportunity. The Sox got two in a mini rally punctuated by Kevin Yoooo-kilis' triple, and tied the score.

But that's okay, because the Sox bullpen imploded, like it did in game 162 last October. With one out, Peralta and Avila singled, and Ramon Santiago was hit by a pitch. Austin Jackson's single plated pinch runner Danny Worth with the winner. Austin Jackson, he's still the man! He tripled and singled twice batting leadoff, scored a run and drove in one, and avoided the strikeout bugaboo that cost him a lot of productive ABs in 2011.

Some fans and at least one beat writer thought JV should have finished the game. He did throw 105 pitches, it was freezing at Comerica, there's 161 games left, and I thought it was time for him to come out so the big home crowd could see Papa Grande work. Forty-nine times last season, he entered in a save situation and got it done. So why not?

JV took a no-decision in a game he maybe should have finished, but Valverde got the win, we're in first place by a game over the Indians, and all is right with the world. At least until Saturday.

-----------------------

The Blue Jays and Indians opened in Cleveland, and offered further proof of Annie Savoy's contention that the game of baseball is linear and precise in ways that only Walt Whitman can appreciate. Or Isadora Duncan, I forget which ...

Jack Hannahan and J.P. Arencebia homered, giving each team one player who's homered in the first games of his last three seasons. Hannahan in the last three Tribe openers, and Arencebia in the Jays' last two plus his Show debut in August 2010.

The game was also MLB.com's free televised game of the day. The Jays won 7-4 in 16 innings, and there was lots of time for more new league records, for innings played on opening day, and for consumption of a Jays-Indians game from all four possible sources: both teams' radio including a local Sarnia station for the first time in three years, and both TV feeds via the MLB web site.

So we're a two home team town again. And on FM. For 161 of the next 180 days there will be at least three fewer hours of country music on the local radio dial. That's also a good thing.

Opening Eve

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.

------------------------------

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.

The Spring Opener

Prince Fielder got two hits and a walk, Hinge made all the plays at second, Tiger pitchers held the Braves to one hit, and Tiger fans who still have jobs are blocking out the second and third weeks of October in their day planners.

Optimism flows like beer in the sports bars for a team playing last year's batting champ out of position to make room for this year's MVP (sorry, it's contagious), that's committed to starting at second base a guy who'll be 35 in May and has never played a major league game at second base.

-------------------------------

March baseball is part of the serious fan's spring training, but for different reasons.

The serious fan must re-learn how to get up before noon, to prepare for day baseball (bleepers oughta go out and get a real job!), and make sure the radios are in working order (mine were still on 1120, where I left them last fall, and play just fine).  And to check out the commercials on the radio broadcasts. One bad commercial, heard several times a game, can ruin a whole season.

Again this season, Tigers broadcasts have great bumper music ("Jamie's Cryin,'" WILD THING!) but some of the most patronizing commercials of any major league team. It's always been that way. Maybe it's the sponsors' and ad agencies' perception of what works in Detroit. They apparently think people listening to Tiger games are idiots who need to be screamed at. A cultural and intellectual fountainhead the place isn't; but whatever the reason, the dumbing down even in spring compels the fan to finish the game on the other team's Gameday feed.

The Off-Season

The best part of the Cardinals' World Series win is that little kid not appearing under the words "World Champion Texas Rangers" on their 2012 media guide.

Twice in Game Six, the Rangers were one strike away from clinching the Series four games to two at home, but let the Cardinals tie the score. Then, guest villain Mr. Freese (Cards outfielder David Freese) homered leading off the eleventh. El Birdos had a 10-9 win and new life. Game Seven was an anti-climax. Tony LaRussa had a World Championship ring, and retired as one should go out: on top.

So the kid fades away into the land of the forgotten. And his hero fell off the wagon this winter, and spend the better part of a week apologizing. Let's see some hands, of everyone who's really, really tired of the soap opera that is Josh Hamilton. 

Justin Verlander got the American League Cy Young award, as even the casual fan knew he would, and also MVP honors. The serious fan wouldn't have been wrong in assuming that bat champ Miguel Cabrera (.344 for the season, .429 in September) would win. JV had a great season -- the most dominant by any pitcher since Bob Gibson in 1968 -- but Cabrera's contribution was just as vital as the Tigers won 95 games and the division by 15, and pitchers already have the Cy Young.

And there is a new addition to Maggie's baseball family. Our second grand-nephew. Six pounds eight ounces, born or Thanksgiving Day. Justin Miguel Velasco. That's what they named him. It's on his birth certificate. (Well, at least he has one. Someday, he'll be legally eligible to run for president.)

Spring Training Opens

The gates of Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland have opened and, on day one of spring training, Skipper Leyland's plate is full.

He'll have to get by without Victor Martinez, who tore his ACL in January while working out and is lost for the season.

To replace V-Mart's .330 and 103 RBIs, the Tigers, who had kept free agent Prince Fielder at arm's length all winter, signed the ex-Brewer to a nine year deal worth $214 million.

Now THINK, sports fans ...

Before V-Mart's injury,  the Tigers were ready to open the season with second and third base staffed by committee, and question marks at the outfield corners.

Owner Mike Ilitch wants to win a World Series but is also a businessman, and Tiger fans have showed him they will buy tickets and cable TV and support even an ordinary team if it stays in contention. And, again this year, the AL Central is weak and a record not much better than .500 could win it.

Good enough was thus good enough until Martinez was lost. Then, as if by magic, Fielder's $214 million appeared.

The money was there all the time. The owner just didn't want to spend it. He knew that fans would fill Comerica to watch Ryan Raburn play second base on skates, Brandon Inge not hit his weight, and a succession of part time players shuffle in and out of those two positions and the outfield corners.

Spend it he did, though, and Leyland's springtime dilemmas are those any manager would welcome.

Will Cabrera start at first and Fielder DH? Or the opposite?  No one wants to be a full-time DH, and Cabrera's glove skills have improved since he made the move from third to first upon joining the Tigers in 2008. If they split the positions, how much playing time would each get at each? Or does he sacrifice defense for offense by making Cabrera the full-time third baseman? And what about Governor Inge?

As Florida baseball signals the start of another season, the word is that Cabrera will play third, Fielder first, Delmon Young DH, Andy Dirks left field, the healed Brennan Boesch right field, and Hinge has been unhinged unless the absolute horror of horrors becomes reality: the appearance in the box scores of INGE 2B.

The resident managerial genius, one of the game's most respected judges of double-knit talent, actually thinks Hinge can be a major-league second baseman. 

He's not the Governor anymore, like he was when the Tigers were burning their way through AL Central opposition last summer, on the way to 95 wins and a division title. He's now the Tiger equivalent of Newt Gingrich; the guy who makes news for the wrong reasons, even if what he says isn't newsworthy. And no one knows what to do with him.

If the Tigers start Hinge at second, between Cabrera re-learning third and the bulky Fielder at first, opposition strategy changes. Instead of trying to hit it over the wall, hit it to the infield, on the ground.