What Evil Lurks Within

I have a theory about this pre-season.  The Milwaukee Brewers have used voodoo and other dark arts to attempt to buy a World Series title.  Hear me out, and you'll stop thinking I should be committed to Bedlam.

Surely you've heard about the adorable stray dog Hank, nick-named after Henry Aaron, that showed up at the Brewers' camp, and became the feel good story of Spring.  I have no beef with Hank.  It's great he's being made much of, loved and spoiled.  But the Brewers are trying to use Hank to appease the baseball gods, and thereby curry favor for this year's post-season.  I simply cannot allow them to get away with this plan.  I will expose their deeds for what they are:  a desperate grab at a championship.

Oh, they adopted a stray dog, and put him into the sausage race, and brought him north with the club, and the vice president and general counsel for the team adopted him, and hundreds of people waited hours at the airport to greet him?  The Brewers have already come out with a line of Hank gear--t-shirts, pennants, you name it.  They say some of the proceeds are going to a Wisconsin Humane Society.  Apparently they take the world for fools.  Good grief, any idiot can see that the Brewers are soulless vipers, perverting the good will of innocent fans into cosmic World Series karma.

In addition, the Brewers have placed a curse upon the Tigers, causing player after player to drop like flies from various afflictions. The list of casualties grows longer every day, and each dawn reveals a new victim.  Doesn't it all make sense to you now?  Soon, the entire starting roster will be laid up in a hospital ward, and the Tigers' uniform attendant will be scrambling to stitch the names of the boys from Erie onto the jerseys.

My advice is that fans unite to prevent the success of this wicked plan.   The Brewers are loathsome, but I never dreamed they would resort to black magic.  Turnabout is fair play.  I have constructed a Bernie Brewer voodoo doll, and will be torturing it to no small degree.  I may need your help.  Someone should be plotting to sabotage the sausage race, for a start.  Don't make me spell it all out.  Get to work.  The Brewers must be stopped before it is too late.

The Winter of Comerica's Discontent

Tuesday evening, thanks to the desperation thoughtful generosity of Scott from TigerSnark, I got to attend an event at Comerica Park.  Scott wrote a fictional account of the evening here, so I figured I'd better counter with a realistic look at what went down.

Scott texted me Tuesday begging that I accompany him to the park, promising that I'd get a personal tour of Comerica from Magglio Ordoñez himself.  How could I refuse an opportunity to meet one of my all time Tigers?  I could put up with Scott's odious presence for a couple hours if it meant meeting the great Magglio.  I've always wanted to thank him for the baseball memories that are forever imprinted on my otherwise grinchy heart.

Scott did get one thing right.  Comerica is a shambles.  The field, while scraped of snow, looks like the frozen Siberian tundra.  How is sod going to go down on St. Paddy's day?????  Just look at it.  Heather Nabozny has probably suffered a nervous breakdown and is now muttering incoherently to herself in the dark recesses of the park's bowels.

This is the view from the broadcast booth.  Notice that I had no trouble getting a decent shot.  There were no drunken idiots knocking Scott's elbow.  He just sucks at taking pictures.  Anyway, I swear, you could hear Ernie reciting the Voice of the Turtle.  It was mighty dusty in there.  Strange.

That personal tour from Magglio Ordoñez?  No.  No Magglio.  No 2007 batting champion.  No 2006 ALCS hero.  Please give me a moment.  Sniff.

However,  1984 World Series team member Dave Rozema was there, and he was friendly, not fresh (no, he did not grab my derriere), making jokes with everyone, taking time for all comers, signing 20,000 photos of himself, and generally being the life of the party.  Um, I am not 4'6".  Dave is at least 6'5".  Really.  There is no photo of Scott with Dave, because Scott is a ghost, and his image does not show up in photographs.

Paws really did sit down next to me at the Blackjack table and I froze up until he left, because MASCOTS ARE CREEPY AND I WAS TERRIFIED.  Mascots need to be abolished from the sporting world.  From all worlds really.  A lot of problems could be solved if mascots were no more.

Now, could we please just fast forward through the rest of this scourge of a winter and get to what will certainly be a sub-30 degree Opening Day?  Play Ball!