“It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball”
— Billy Beane

Many great things have been said about the game of baseball (and a few silly things, too — Just Google Yogi Berra), but the above quote wraps it all up nicely and puts a bow on top. I would argue that you’d be hard-pressed to find a sport where even a regular season game, especially one early in the season, could hold as much drama as baseball. Bennett Miller’s Moneyball opens with a playoff loss and closes with one, but it focuses on a record-setting winning streak during the Oakland A’s 2002 regular season.

Beane, played by Brad Pitt, attributes the season’s winning ways to a team-building system devised by a night watchman at a pork and beans cannery named Bill James, now an advisor for the Boston Red Sox. James’ theory is that you choose players based on specific skill sets regardless of their perceived worth and overall talent. Beane is introduced to this system by a young Yale grad named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill).

Of course everyone thinks that Beane’s lost his. . . beans. But the wins begin to pile up, and you can’t argue with wins. Well, I suppose you can. Even Beane states that he won’t be truly satisfied until they’ve won it all. Even then he’d probably just want to do it again.

We spend a lot of time with Billy Beane off the field, which is easy because we’re told that superstition prevents him from watching the games on television, let alone live. He is a doting father and an honest, hard-working guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously. I was thoroughly impressed by how well Pitt was able to disappear into the character and contribute to Beane’s high level of likeability. If you had asked me beforehand whether or not I would expect a potential award-winning performance from him I would have said no, but there it is.

Moneyball is cleverly written (The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin was involved, after all), well-directed and perfectly acted. The only real question is whether or not it is too quiet to stand out in the crowd. Well, if the montage of Oakland’s 20-win streak doesn’t get them, then I just don’t know what would have.

Moneyball is nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Brad Pitt), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), Film editing, Sound Mixing & Best Adapted Screenplay

—

Kevin Mattison is co-editor of The Idler, and a filmmaker and videographer. You can follow him on Twitter at @kmmattison.

My first column, “Miggy and the minors,” tried to get at this a little, I think. I wrote about the epic awesomeness of Miguel Cabrera — who I still believe should have been the AL MVP last year — at a time when everything around him was going south. Once again, the Tigers were tanking after the All-Star break — but Miggy, like the beast I compared him to from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” dragged the rag-tag team along with him to at least keep the chances of a pennant run alive a little longer.

Looking back, that seems to have paid off for the Tigers now — and for my conception of Miggy as the epic hero. If Miggy had gone Juan Gone on his teammates and eased up (and, hey, who would blame him, really, for letting off the gas when he was the only one revving the team’s engine?) I don’t think this year’s team would show the grit to do what they’ve done: sweep the Indians; come back from behind to take down the Royals; go deep into the bullpen to muscle out a win.

That’s what makes Miggy a hero — he inspires greatness in the rest of his team.

A guy like Alex Avila is a great example. He’s got talent, work ethic, pedigree. Does he become an All-Star catcher who looks like he’s been in the league for ten years without learning a bit of that poise and determination from Cabrera? Not sure, but I like to think Miggy rubbed off on him. Same for Brennan Boesch, who’s clearly absorbed some of Cabrera’s plate approach this year — helped, no doubt, by his fluent Spanish.

Of course, at times he is a tragic hero (see: “In which Miguel Cabrera breaks my motherfucking heart”). But he’s human. And sweet sassy molassy, I just love him.

But beyond how awesome I was in the beginning (snark), what has really been badass about The Idler is how much my own writing, and even the way I am thinking about the things I write about, has been influenced and augmented by the other Idler columnists.

If there’s a column I wished I had written, and one I think of often when I write my own stuff, it’s Ana Holguin’s invocation of another hero and the place he held in her younger years. She just nailed so much so perfectly: nostalgia, heroes (that in childhood seem so much more tangible), mental illness, family, longing.

Having a bunch of smart bastards around has challenged me, too, to think about my beloved baseball in different ways. Kate Sloan’s piece on the homoerotic overtones of The Dark Knight Returns not only inspired me to read the graphic novel (which was AWESOME) but to think harder about the role of sex, sexuality and gender in baseball. Without Kate’s work, I don’t think I’d have written “Pandering with p-words.”

I could go on forever about The Idler. I’m honored to be a part of it, and I can’t wait to get back to writing. (I’ve been on an unscheduled hiatus — who knew switching jobs would be so time-consuming?)

A few things I’m working on:

• I picked up a copy of Rickey Henderson’s Off Base yesterday (FOR 25 CENTS!), so I’ll be rocking some paleo-blogging on that bad boy.
• Moneyball hits theatres this month, and I’m planning a man-date with some of my softball buddies. Expect a review, and answer to the burning question, Will Brad Pitt be believable as a man who is not incredibly attractive?
• There’s some stuff to catch up on, like a review of my progress as a third baseman and my goals for the winter. (Yep, I’m going to go back to the coach to get some more bruises.)
• And it’s pennant time, and then playoff time.

We’ve got a lot to look forward to. Thanks for staying with us this far.

—

Angela Vasquez-Giroux writes about baseball, poetry, and other things for The Idler. Find her on Twitter at @A_V_G_W

In Inge’s first at-bat after rejoining the Tigers, he hit a home run.

Inge is the kind of player fans either love or hate, often, I think for the same reasons. He’s only ever played for the Tigers, which is either a sign of loyalty or that Inge isn’t good enough to play anywhere else. He was a member of the 2003 team that lost more games than any other in the history of the American League, which gives his presence on a team making a playoff run this year a feeling of redemption, or every time he walks to the dugout after striking out serves as a reminder of that team’s failures. At his best at the plate, he’s a mediocre hitter, with little power and control who strikes out too much. He participated in the 2009 Home Run Derby and didn’t hit a single home run. At his best in the field, he’s a miracle. It’s a crime that he’s never won a Golden Glove.

For me, Inge is the last remaining piece of an old puzzle, a link both to the worst Tigers team I ever watched and to the team I’ve loved more than any other. He played with Bobby Higginson and Dimitri Young. Pudge Rodriguez, who was the first well-paid piece of the Tigers post-2003 rebuilding puzzle, took Inge’s spot as catcher. He played with Justin Verlander, Magglio Ordóñez, Sean Casey, Curtis Granderson, Kenny Rogers, and Joel Zumaya in 2006. Casey and Rogers were gone the next year. Zumaya has been the walking wounded most of the time since then. Granderson was traded to New York in 2009. Inge is still around.

It may not be for that much longer, and when Inge is done with the Tigers, he’ll be done for good. Nobody wanted to trade for Inge when Miguel Cabrera took over his spot at third base in 2008. (Inge didn’t even get his spot back when Cabrera moved to first base, and Carlos Guillén, who was useless at first base, got the chance to be useless at third.) No one picked up Inge on waivers when he was assigned to Toledo. It’s entirely possible that Inge is too expensive: not enough offense, and defense that will get worse and not better with each passing year.

Even I’m not romantic enough to say that he deserves a spot just because he seems to be a really great guy, a true professional who has taken everything the team has thrown at him, played everywhere — and I mean everywhere — they’ve asked him to play. Granderson was a great guy too, and I think trading him was the right move. The Tigers know what they’re doing, and when Inge really doesn’t have anything left to offer, they’ll pay out his contract and let him go. I’ll be sad, even if it’s the right thing to do.

But I’m going to enjoy it while he’s here, as long as it lasts.

—

Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.

Partnership.

When I spoke with Laura and Ben about what they wanted me to say today, that’s the one word that came up again and again.

And, as far as I’m concerned, we can’t talk about partnerships without talking about the best partnership in the history of the word:

Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker.

For those of you who didn’t grow up in Michigan, obsessed with the Detroit Tigers, a little history:

Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell played side by side for nineteen seasons.

They started out together at Double A Montgomery, where they first assumed the roles that would define them: Whitaker at second base, Trammell at short stop.

For nineteen seasons, one World Series Championship, seven Gold Gloves and eleven All-Star selections, they did together the same things Laura and Ben have, and will do together.

You anticipate your partner’s needs.

You cover their back when they make a mistake.

When they end up on their back, you offer your hand.

Now, we’re not here to talk about baseball — but we can learn a few things from Lou and Alan.

First, it’s all about WE.

“It’s the damndest thing,” Houk said. “You tell one of them something and he says, ‘We can do it.’ Like they’re a team.”

Second, you do the big stuff together — and you support each other.

In 1977 they roomed and played together at Montgomery in the Class AA Southern League. “We did everything together,” says Whitaker. “We didn’t have anybody else.” Says Trammell, “We comforted each other a little. If one of us had a bad night, the other one wouldn’t let it get him down. We sort of used each other as crutches, and we became pretty close.”

Whitaker hit .280. Trammell batted .291, broke Reggie Jackson’s league record for triples with 19 and was named league MVP. Brinkman, their manager, says, “They could’ve been co-MVPs that year.”

And last, you complement one another.

Being partners doesn’t mean being the same. Lou batted lefty, Alan from the right side.

And being partners means loving each other for your faults, not just your talents.

For all the gold gloves, Trammell was such a klutz that no one wanted to sit next to him at dinner — they’d end up covered in his spaghetti.

Lou, for all his natural athletic prowess, couldn’t lay off the junk food. That’s why they called him Sweet Lou.

Neither was perfect, but together, they were close.

To me, that’s what a good partnership is — you’re each pretty great on your own. That much, everyone here knows already.

But together, you’re better. Together, you’re champs.

Laura and Ben, as you being the next phase of your lives together, I can think of nothing more to wish for you than that you become co-MVPs; that you conquer the challenges of life the way Lou and Alan conquered the infield: together.

Growing up, my father instilled in me a reverence for the things he loved most: John Wayne, pro wrestling, bow hunting, and Detroit baseball. If we weren’t watching Full House or WrestleMania (exclusively for Hulk Hogan) on a lazy summer afternoon we were watching the Tigers.

Throughout my life baseball has been a comfort to me. The dusty cleats on the infield. The perfect white lines. The green, green grass. The pop of a bat on a home run. The stolen bases. The mustaches. The blue, white, and orange. I love it all.

Last August I moved to the east coast and this spring I experienced my first opening day living in Red Sox nation. On April 8th, the Sox played (and bested) the Yankees at Fenway. That morning a tide of red and white and blue swept through the city. On my morning train I observed a woman done up in devotion with Red Sox shoelaces, jacket, visor, earrings, purse. The fact that she had stopped short of adorning herself in an official uniform was what was truly surprising.

Though I never check the schedule, I always know when the lights will be on at Fenway. On every street downtown a shuffling sea of caps, shirts, and jerseys clogs the bricks of Copley Square from T stop to my destination, where ever it may be.

These people are my friends and coworkers. These people are the people I depend on. They cook the meals, they haul the trash, they connect the calls, they drive they ambulances. They guard me while I sleep. You do not fuck with them.

It’s an interesting experience, to move from one big sports city to another. To suddenly find yourself watching the Bruins at the bar because the Wings aren’t on. To wake up one day and realize you root for the Celtics, and begin fostering an unrequited love of Glen Davis. To be constantly surrounded by a slew of base-hit reports credited to names you don’t recognize.

Living here is like being in a foreign country — no one speaks my language and the scores from home get lost in the post.

That Boston is a sports town is some small comfort to me. And their Sox reverence is something it’s hard not to be a bit humbled by. Love or hate the Sox, living in Boston I can’t escape them. Because Fenway Park falls somewhere between my job downtown and my apartment off the green line, evening games mean I can’t get a train home for the better part of an hour.

I watch train after train of excited, B-emblazoned fans roll through Copley station, biding my time, praying for a car with space enough open for a person of my stature. Never in my life have I seen so many single-letter tattoos. I would guess that about 70% of Boston natives over the age of 18 have a Sox tattoo.

In all the time I’ve lived in Boston, nearly a year now, I’ve seen exactly four Detroit Tigers hats. FOUR. One night while waiting for the train I noticed the woman next to me in the most beautiful adjustible navy blue baseball hat, with that pristine white old english D that weakens my knees. In Boston there’s an unspoken rule, fostered by the general rush and meanness of city life that you don’t ask strangers questions that aren’t game scores or directions. But. I. Just. Couldn’t. Help Myself.

I asked this woman if she was from Detroit and all I got in return was a blank stare. “Your hat,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I have some friends there, and I believe people should be able to wear whatever they want.”

“I only ask because I’m from there — I’m a huge Tigers fan.”

She turned away.

And so it goes. I am a stranger in a strange land. Won’t someone please send me the score?

For the first time.

Ever.

Mind you, it’s no accident I made it this long without reading them. My roommate in college discovered the novel the summer after our freshman year — that would have been June, 1999. She adored it, and began reading each as it debuted, even organizing midnight Harry Potter parties at the independent bookseller in our hometown.

But I, ever the hater of all things beloved by everyone else, turned my nose up. Not only did my snobbish disdain for something I’d not read a word of give me the ability to do something unusual — that is, feel superior to my fellow English majors — it fit into my aesthetics formed — where else — in baseball.

To my mind, Harry Potter was like the Yankees: given every possible advantage for success without working hard enough to make the real fan, the burgeoning 18th c. literature aficionado, feel they’d earned it. British author? Check. Charming, if easy, narrative? Check check. Accessible for all? Checkity check check check.

But I was wrong. Harry isn’t a Yankee, though he is born under the burden of heavy expectation. He’s not Derek Jeter, a seemingly charmed (if likeable) hero. He’s certainly not Jason Giambi, or Alex Rodriguez — players who couldn’t seem to live up to their hype until they were lampreyed onto some greater player’s underbelly.

No, Harry was Johnny Damon. Johnny of an unknowable level of talent in his early years in Kansas City, Johnny with his lightning strike speed and freakish outfield instinct in Oakland. Johnny in Boston, not fully realizing until the 2004 ALCS, perhaps, just how great a foe he and his teammates were up against, Johnny and his ragtag gang of self-named misfits, the idiots, lacking pedigree and pinstripe.

The Yankees were Voldemort. (How else to explain A-Rod’s spectacularly nefarious swatting of the ball from the first baseman’s glove?) An evil, long-simmering force that took over seemingly decent people and turned them into entitled, unappreciative fan-monsters.

I’m not in any hurry to read the rest — I’ve got a stack of library books higher than Johnny’s current Mohawk taking precedence — but I’m finally learning the lesson about the book and the cover and judgment. Or, at least, the lesson about making sure you assign the correct judgment to said book.

Between my own disgusting scent and the presence of the vile Chris Berman (on television — not in my home), I was a little cranky. Not Joe Buck is on cranky, but close.

A selection of tweets, below. You can go check my Twitter feed for everything — including the duds I edited out to make it appear that I am a 1.000 hitter when it comes to the funny. Instead of, you know, .500.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Chris Berman is wearing the douche uniform: navy blazer, khaki pants. #YoureWithMeLeather

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
I used to have serious lust for Nomar. That’s all dead after his genius observation of HR derby dude: I noticed they were sweating.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Apparently Chris Berman gets his ties the same place Garth Brooks used to buy his shirts. Someone alert Clinton Kelly!

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Cal Ripken’s head got fat. #SeriousNogginWeightGain

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
I stand corrected, apparently that’s Prince’s son. Good on Prince for not naming his kid, um, Prince. #OrCecil

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Hey is that Big Pun in the bullpen? On the rascal?

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Um, these jerseys are ugly. Like Courtney Love in 1993 ugly. Without the heroin to blame.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Husband: Those kids do NOT know how to track a ball. #ToughCrowd #ButSeriouslyFirstStepBackKid

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Is Berman calling bombs or porn? He needs to dial down the orgasmo. #SwamiSaysYouCreepMeOut

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Husband wants to see a pitcher’s home run derby. I bet Cliff Lee would win that, too, unless Mike Hampton un-retired.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Matt Holliday, those shoes are HOTT. I want them for myself.

mario_impemba Mario Impemba
by motheroflight
Apparently there are more announcers than contestants in the home run derby. #toomanypeopletalkingatonce

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Yadi should be a starting pitcher. #ThingsJimLeylandIsThinking

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Curtis has a future after baseball. Love that kid. Great voice, too. #StillStruckOutTooMuchInDetroitTho

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Very helpful of Berman to remember to announce the sponsor of the sign Cano hits. #ThisHitBroughtToYouByMoney

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
A whole lotta Marcus Thames out there. RT @sportspickle: The kids in the outfield field like a bunch of future DHs.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Ok, it’s a plaid jacket, striped shirt and candy cane tie. If Berman’s personality matched his clothing…I would still wanna hit him.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Do you think Cano’s dad is really giving Papi good stuff to hit? Gotta be honest — if my kid was in it, too, I’d throw junk.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Big Papi = Big Pop Up.

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
HONEST ANSWER to how it felt to be named an All-Star: not great, because like 150 people made the team. #fb #GettingTheMilkForFree

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Seriously, we’re talking about Justin Upton like the Home Run Derby MATTERS? Oh, god, they actually believe it matters. #fb

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Prince Fielder just mercifully tried to shut Berman up. He’s definitely my favorite now. Well, NL favorite. #StillLoveYaCabby

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Side note: I ran a quick three miles before the Derby, and I smell TERRIBLE. Hitting the showers after this round.

fakPlasticSpenc Adam Spencer
by motheroflight
RT @Jesus_M_Christ: Lot of prayers for “Please make Chris Berman choke on his microphone” right now. Interesting. For you @motheroflight

motheroflight AngelaVasquezGiroux
Even I only have so much to say about Berman before I want to hit myself. It’s the transitive douche property.

Alex Avila is flirting with. 300, the first Tigers catcher to hit so well since Lance Parrish. In fact, he took a turn at third base just to keep his offense in the lineup during interleague play.

If life were fair, he’d be the undeniable starting catcher for the American League at the All-Star Game. But life isn’t fair, and ignorant asshole Yankee fans are voting half their geriatric lineup into the game.

Obviously, some things never change.

Except for the things that do.

For once, the Twins and White Sox aren’t dominating the AL Central. For once, Ozzie Guillen’s brand of managerial jackassery isn’t paying dividends as his team hovers in the middle of the pack. For once, Joe Mauer isn’t the Tom Brady of baseball, wooing sportscasters with his impeccable hair and fundamentally, aesthetically perfect swing. He’s a catcher who’s already started to break down.

Leg weakness, the mystery injury that landed him on the DL for so much of the first half, might be an apt metaphor for what’s happened to the Twins and the Sox this season: something at the base is failing.

But the opposite is happening in Detroit.

Finally, the base is strong. Finally, Cabrera has protection in front of and behind him. Finally, the bottom of the lineup isn’t a three man barren wasteland of strikeouts and wasted at-bats. Finally, the Tigers aren’t just about one man, one bat.

There’s one man, however, who seems to personify the tigers this season: Justin Verlander. JV, like Steve Yzerman before him, adjusted his game to make his team better. Obviously, he can still mow ’em down, but by pitching to contact he can go deeper into games — with multiple complete games already in the books this season, giving a thin bullpen adequate rest.

More than anything else, he is showing the team how to win: by putting the team ahead of your own stats; and in his case, that approach is netting a very special season.

So while the Tigers flirt with first, and Verlander winks at no-hitters every outing, and every man on the bench seems to have finally gotten it, it might feel a little bit like we’re living in bizarro world.

But we’re not, fans. This is a brave new world, a world where the Tigers at the top is exactly how things are supposed to be.

Despite having played alongside some of the best hitters in terms of creating quality at bats—Placido Polanco, Miguel Cabrera—Raburn seems, more often than not, to just swing at whatever pitch comes after strike two. And miss. As a fan, that’s frustrating. How can he not learn? Doesn’t the osmotic effect of just sharing an oxygen supply with these hitters translate into more plate discipline?

2. He’s a defensive nightmare.

He misplays the ball in left more often than he gets it right, almost to comic effect. (Side note: that he sometimes laughs it off is either endearing or maddening, take your pick.)

Remember when Raburn botched the grab early in the season against the (allegedly cellar-dwelling) Seattle Mariners, sending the ball into the seats for a homerun and contributing, in his own small way, to an embarrassing homestand that saw the Tigers get swept by the (allegedly cellar-dwelling) M’s?

And of course, there are legions of Tigers fans who heap all the blame for the bonus game loss to the Minnesota Twins—which officially eliminated the Tigers from the playoffs, something they’d been desperately trying to do on their own since the All-Star break—on Raburn because he, yes, misplayed the ball.

3. Raburn’s just a guy in need of, as someone said of a colleague I cannot believe will ever rise to meet his job duties, just a little more confidence. But looking at him, you wonder if maybe that’s not part of it.

My coach reminds me that production at the plate starts with confidence: confidence that you’re making the right choice in laying off that ball out of the strike zone even though your protect-the-plate instinct is trigger happy with any count ending in -2, and—compounding and augmenting that first choice—confidence that you can put the strike that is coming in play.

I remember, as a young player, sometimes swinging just to strike out rather than face the anxiety and pressure head on; having to produce when that’s exactly what’s required is probably the most challenging aspect of baseball, and the reason why a shade above mediocrity, by some standards, is greatness.

4. “I’m just a country boy,” he’s said countless times.

He was a country boy of 22 years when he was the major casualty of what can only be described as a hellish all-terrain vehicle accident that left him with a dislocated hip and a few broken bones that were never diagnosed, simply because the doctors never thought to check anything but the horrific, obvious injury of a hip and leg stuck at an impossible angle.

The Detroit News had a superb story on it last year toward the end of the season; the link is now expired. A detail I’ll not forget anytime soon: that he had to be driven on bumpy, rural roads—sans painkillers—for hours to the nearest hospital. Imagine that. Shudder.

Suffice to say that playing baseball again—at all—was not even a remote certainty, and sometimes you wonder if Raburn doesn’t need to be reminded that this opportunity in the Majors is one he’s earned. Indeed, it’s one he had to earn more than once, and he owes it to himself—and every moment he dedicated to what had to have been a nightmare of a recovery and rehab—to just take that last step and reach his potential, even if that potential tops out at .280.

5. Sometimes, he’s a victim. As Pat Caputo points out, Raburn’s best position is second base. And, as baseball writer Jon Morosi noted during another sub-par outfield performance last week, it’s hard to fault Raburn for his left-field letdowns when manager Jim Leyland names him the everyday 2B and then promptly goes a week without playing him at the bag.

Maybe, like a toddler, he needs a few things: a little more discipline (at the plate), a little more love (and confidence), and a set schedule—like starting at second base for the rest of the season.

It’s almost as if, for a guy like Raburn, the perception creates the reality. When he feels secure, he flourishes—as in Sunday’s timely, desperately-needed blast that plated four runs when the Tigers were down.

Where’d that bit of security come from? Teammate Miguel Cabrera:

“His game is like waves,” Miguel Cabrera said. “Right now, he’s worried because he’s not hitting too much, he’s not hitting for average. I said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s going to be your time. Get your timing, be ready. It’s a long season. We’re going to need you.’ And you see what happened today. He got a big home run for us today.”

Cabrera had been giving encouragement to Raburn in recent days as he saw Raburn continue to press. He had been kidding with him, too, that the second half was just around the corner and that’s when he gets hot.

“It’s going to take one day at a time. You don’t get big numbers in one day. You have to do something every day, play hard every day, and at the end of the season, I think the numbers are going to be there. That’s why I told him, ‘Don’t worry about that.'”

The Times, of course, picking up on something that’s been written better and with more nuance by people who actually enjoy and watch the sport—i.e., not just a Yankees fan—is not news. That the paper’s home team roster is jam-packed with nicknameless players, and the player whose absolutely derivative moniker started the worst trend this side of hipsters, is simply the Cool Whip on the strawberry shortcake.

But all snark aside, it is time that I finally attempt to answer my own question:

What, then, should we be calling these men?

I’m an agency of limited resources (being just one very small woman with a bruised up knee from the douchebag who knocked me over at third because, hey, who slides for close plays anyway?), so let’s tackle the neediest player first.

Lucky for you and my knee, the excellent folks over at Pitchers & Poets—who also brought us 90s First Baseman Week and 90s First Basemen as Saved By The Bell Characters—identified a worthy young man: one Jose Miguel Cabrera.

During a game against the Blue Jays last week, Miguel scored from first on a Brennan Boesch hit. The big man lumbered as gracefully as a man his size could on his approach toward home, sort of like a 747 landing: if you watch it and think about it, it’s amazing it ever happens without anyone dying.

The inimitable Rod Allen (who you know I love) remarked, during the slow motion replay, “And the Big Fella, carrying the mail.”

Now, of course The Big Fella is a kind of adorable nickname, but it’s more a term of endearment than a moniker on equal footing with Prince Albert or Sparky or even, yes, A-Rod.

In a bit of serendipity, earlier that day Jim Leyland reflected on Miguel’s workhorse ethic:

…His back was sore and he has a big bruise on his leg. But he plays. That kid, he’s a champ. He’s like the mailman—rain, sleet or snow and he shows up.

Cabrera, the only Tiger to start all 36 games, was in the American League’s top 10 in batting average (.320), home runs (seven) and RBIs (24).

What should we call this man, who plays every day and just hits and hits and hits, who never seems to think that what he’s doing is anything spectacular—as Carl Crawford said, Cabrera is always talking about how he is struggling at the plate, can’t get comfortable, all the while hitting .360—who just seems to go back to the plate each day and put together a quality at-bat?

I know what you’re thinking I’m about to suggest, but you’re wrong.

Il Postino.

It’s one part The Great Bambino, one part working class hero.

It fits, no?

Il Postino.

In a place like Michigan, where we had one 80 degree day last week and we’re getting frost tonight, you need a guy with a slightly postal approach to life—a guy who can weather any storm, be it one of his own making or one of God’s.