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.

The only upside to being home sick is finally having the uninterrupted access to the television and general home silence required to do something I almost never do, which today has been to watch a girly-ish movie, Julie & Julia (2009).

Which of course got me to wondering (or hallucinating via the fever) what it would be like to spend a year emulating Miguel. Then I realized, I sort of have, save the DUI bit.

In the spirit of the clever cutaways in the film that help the viewer see, easily, the parallels between Julie Powell and Julia Child’s lives, here’s my own brief mock-up.

1. We’re both assholes when we drink. Miguel was a supreme douche to the arresting officer, where I am known to do awesome things like being extra-snarky to friends/frenemies, and/or pick politically based fights with my husband. I stopped drinking a few days before Thanksgiving, and I’m less of an asshole.
2. We’re both big softies. Look at this photo of Miguel hugging it out with Al Avila, who translated during the “sorry, guys” presser last week. I saw it at work and teared up. I also got a little weepy when my little-big brother, who I told you looks like Miggy, called me this afternoon.
3. We’re both Catholics—or sort of, anyhow. I’m a regular, boring Catholic. Miguel is a Catholic practitioner of Santeria (which is, I assure you, way fucking cooler than the God-awful Sublime tune of the same name) and, in the 2006 off-season, became a babalao—a sort of priest of Santeria. That’s much cooler than completing your Confirmation, obviously.
4. Miguel has mastered the inside-out swing: taking an inside pitch, pulling your hands in, and dropping the bat head to connect with perfect form (you end up looking straight down on the ball as you hit it, almost like a golf swing), sending the pitch into right field. I’ve done this exactly three times in practice.
5. Oh, yeah, we’re both power right-handed hitters.
6. I started my career as a third baseman and have been training since October 30 to get back to my roots. Miggy started as a 3B, too—and of course we all remember the drama that caused when he came to the Tigers in 2007, and Inge was moved, and Guillen played first, and so on.

Ultimately, though, I am hoping this year Miggy and I will have a few happier things in common. I hope we both have MVP seasons, and that Miggy joins me in being blissfully happy and fulfilled and only an occasional asshole, but constantly sober.

“There’s no anger or animosity from us, your first reaction is for the person,” Avila said. “Millions of people have problems with alcohol and drugs. It’s something that can be overcome, but you need a lot of help.”
—The Detroit News, February 18

Miguel Cabrera.

Of all the strange ways life foreshadows itself, there’s this: the number on the back of his jersey is nearly the same —just add a decimal point—as the blood alcohol content he registered in 2009, after a domestic dispute with his wife led to police intervention.

And then there’s the far-off warning bells that rang last spring, when a healthy, happy, Cabrera explained to the assembled press that while he had stopped drinking, he didn’t have a drinking problem and was not an alcoholic.

Maybe it was harder to believe there was still something he was wrestling with: He looked finer at the plate, swifter with the glove, than he had his entire career. He mentored his teammates about his approach at the plate, and how it could improve their discipline.

No one seemed to notice that despite all appearances, Cabrera was still struggling. It can’t be much of a surprise that a man whose talent often makes his professional peers look collegiate wouldn’t struggle in the same, vaguely mortal ways as the rest of us.

As though he were Thor, as though the rest of us couldn’t ascertain his problems because, well, how would we even approach recognizing the shortcomings of a titan, an immortal, an Asgaardian?

I see my family when I look at the Tigers. My older brother, who gave me my gift of loving sports like a man, is a ringer for Joel Zumaya. My younger brother, the Army specialist with the massive muscles and childlike smile and babyfaced grit, is all Cabrera, save the Captain America tattoo gracing one biceps—Captain America, the Avenger.

But it didn’t occur to me until the details of the police report were published just how much Cabrera has in common with another epic, mythical, flawed, kind, titanic, and yes, troubled man I have loved: my Abuelito.

It was the Scotch that triggered it. Abuelito used to drink Dewar’s and soda, or sometimes J&B, my mom told me. I remember the stories of Abuelito taking my father and three uncles to the Loma, his old haunt, and getting them so drunk on tequila shots that they were like a vaudevillian crew when they burst thru the door of Abuelito & Abuelita’s house on Fairmont: One could speak, but not walk or hear. Another retained perfect motor skills, but was deaf and dumb. And so on.

He was, for much of his life, the kind of man who was somehow exceptional and knew it—tested it by enlisting in the Army with the intention of seeing combat in Korea; tested the binds and the love of the family he forged by taking a mistress for years; tested his wife by keeping her like a songbird on a grocery budget and home with five children while he drank fine scotch at the Loma.

It wasn’t until he almost lost it all that my Abuelito finally dropped his immortal pretensions and became the grandfather who would pass afternoons watching Cubs games on WGN with us, or tune in the Tigers game at the Labor Day picnic at Independence Oaks.

What is it about the men I love, about their inability to stop until the bonds, the people they’re testing—like tapping a wine glass with a doctor’s hammer—crumble?

I’d hoped Cabrera’s break, so to speak, was behind him. The new baby last season, the incredible (MVP-worthy) year, the leadership. Sigh.

But like all the men I’ve loved and still love, there are these moments, these backward steps, when the easiest choice is to just give up.

Ugh, Cabrera, grinning in that mugshot, gleeful and oblivious to the consequence—or convinced, like Thor, you’re somehow of another plane and simply above it—Momma didn’t raise a quitter.

Just don’t make a quitter out of me.

My good friend Maggie, who rediscovered her swing the first year I played on her team, said she can always hear her father, good old Ray Striz, telling her to keep her back elbow up when she settles into her stance at the plate.

But that’s all wrong. So is the generic, unhelpful advice to “stay back.”

Let’s start with swinging level. When I was an up-and-comer (read: sixth-grade fast-pitch Little-Leaguer), the chant from the bench was this: Swing level, swing level, and run like the devil. And that’s fine advice, if your goal is to hit grounders or line drives that don’t clear the infield and are easily nabbed by the shortstop.

In fact, the path your swing should take is more like a hula hoop tilted skyward at the finish, pointing toward the catcher’s mask at the low end. Imagine, as I do, the rings of Saturn, turned up 45 degrees.

In making contact with the ball—getting under it, as Rod Allen would note—while swinging on an upward track above level, you’re going to put the ball in the air, leading to either greater power and distance if you’re a power hitter, or better base-hit line drives if you’re my size. Which is, to be clear, 5-foot-2 and not very beefy.

When you finish your swing, your bat should be hitting you at the very top of your leading shoulder—in my case, my left shoulder, as I am a righty.

Take a look at my high school photo. Notice anything funny? Look at my wrists. My top hand has rolled over the bottom as I finish my swing, which is the telltale sign that you’re swinging level to a fault. It meant a lot of easy grounders, and an inability to consistently put the ball in the air unless I got a pitch that was already high, and forced me to get under it.

Here’s where the back elbow comes in. Keeping it up doesn’t help you, my coach says, unless you’re Ken Griffey Jr. In which case, you probably aren’t spending your Friday evenings getting drilled with grounders and taking hundreds of swings in the cages.

How can millions of American fathers have been so wrong? Because it’s actually not so much about the back arm—and elbow—as the front arm, and getting your hands through the zone—with the bat lagging back—before you push through with the final burst: stiffening the front leg, exploding through the hips and completing that upward arc.

Need a visual? This is about as good as it gets:

When I walk onto the field this spring, I want people to mistake my swing for Miguel Cabrera’s. And, as long as we’re wishing for insanely unlikely things, my hair, too.

Jim says team chemistry is overrated; give him a group of guys who can win together.

Watching the wonderful new installment of Ken Burn’s Baseball (the original, I sheepishly admit, I have yet to watch), The Tenth Inning, a player mentioned something similar: the chemistry comes when you’ve been winning together, when you are all bought into the plan, when the games get tough and you all— each of you—grind out each at-bat, each pitch, to get the right ball to hit and the hit that drives in the run that wins the game.

That kind of focus and workmanship has been missing from the Tigers since, well, 2006. And it’s the kind of thing you don’t get by building, or retaining, guys for amorphous reasons, like “He’s a veteran,” “He’s a leader,” or “The sound of the ball off his bat is different, like all the greatest hitters the game has ever known.”

So the Tigers have already announced who is not coming back—at least, not at this pay scale.

Cue up the music, whistle a song, because certainly, these guys were nice, but they’re moving on.

Guillen turned the double play, but that was the last bit of magic he had in him. So long, pal. so long.

Jeremy Bonderman hasn’t pitched a complete season that I can recall, either suffering a “dead arm” or a legit blood clot or some variation thereof. He’s got good stuff, but, as doomed former skipper Alan Trammel would say, it’s the one bad inning that gets him. Every start. Too bad for him the Tigers can get a starter who’ll be hurt often and give up tons-o-runs one inning each start for much, much less than Bondo’s recent rate. Some National League team will get him at a bargain rate, and he’ll probably become a 5th (maybe 4th) starter of note. He’s welcome to Spring Training if he doesn’t catch on anywhere else, and if that happens, I think the bullpen is an option.

And goodbye Johnny Damon, whose single most important contribution to the team in this, his single year as a Tiger, was not his spirited defense of the city of Detroit as he spurned the waiver wire advances of the Boston Red Sox, but the time he convinced the bullpen, a few starters and some other position players to trim their locks into Mohawks. Wouldn’t it be great if he ended up back with the Royals? Or the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he could pick on National League pitching and hang out with new manager Kirk Gibson?

I'm a lefty with three-bagger power and sweet hair. I like long at-bats and turning two. Call me. Or my agent.

It looks like we can say welcome back to Jhonny Peralta and Brandon Inge (barring a contract impasse). Dave Dombrowski says the Tigs won’t chase a Cliff Lee-caliber player, but they’re looking for rotation slots 3/4/5 to be filled. One with Phil Coke. (And his spectacular sideburns.)

Perhaps in the coming months we’ll have signed Carl “The Perfect Storm” Crawford (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease), gotten word that Joel Zumaya will never be hurt again (I’m saying rosaries for that one) and maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally get a call back about being the Tigers bench coach.

One just can’t say for certain. But it will be something to look forward to, to tide us through the winter.

Quick hit playoff picks:

Like Samson, Evan Longoria will grow more powerful with hair. Facial hair.

The San Francisco Giants will fall prey to The Curse Of Barry Bonds’ Jerkism (and paying way too much money for Barry Zito) and will be dispatched by the Braves. Braves in 5.

In a battle of sweet red uniforms (my personal favorite) the Reds and the Phillies will take it to seven games. Much as it pains me to say this (because the Phillies are my National League team) the Reds will take game 7. Tear.

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the hype. A rookie closer and Josh Hamilton’s sore ribs won’t be much more than a speed bump for Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria and Matt Garza. These boys know how to win, and they grind it out. Rays in 5. Four if Longoria has a beard.

It’s when September is just about out of days and the Tigers, God bless them, are officially, mathematically, scientific-method tested and retested and confirmed, out of the playoff picture. Again.

But it’s more than the end of the season. It’s the constant reminder of Opening Day, the (irrational) amount of hope and optimism gurgling north during Spring Training in the dispatches from the beat reporters in Lakeland. It’s the same as catching a whiff of summer even as the maple leaves are scratching across your shoelaces.

Austin Jackson comes to the plate, and it’s impossible to forget his first games, his first hits. Watching the Tigers dismantle the Twins this past weekend (ten runs? Where did that come from?) of course stirs up the same emotions roiling us off the couch and high-fiving in front of the television, exclaiming to no one when the boys would come back in the bottom of the ninth and you were listening to the game on the radio, covered in garden soil, spade raised triumphantly.

And yet it’s all tinged a little sepia, something like watching a film knowing the end will be tragic. The Tigers will take the series from the Twins, it will be impressive, it will be so much like June and those hot nights when Miguel Cabrera just seemed to will the team to win, when even Eddie Bonine had nasty pitches working and the bullpen was not what opposing hitters wanted to face.

It’s the Sunday dread, the nostalgia and the promise all still present – the taste of watermelon on the breeze when you’re buttoning your coat – and all somehow failed. The fabulous home record, the road trip disasters. The injuries, the sense of having wasted something – something perfect like 26 outs, something perfect like a Rookie of the Year season paired with an MVP.

We know what’s coming. The cold, the long tucking in until the snow drains away, the months of rumors and innuendo and tough decisions we can spend this moment, next year, second guessing.

Still, it’s not quite time. The Tigers might be getting ready to hibernate, but baseball isn’t finished. There’s an entire month left of hot tea on the couch, windows open, blankets swathing feet. Maybe it’ll be harder to burst from that cocoon while watching the playoffs, but if it’ll stave off the Sunday dread-esque feeling of knowing it’s almost time to tuck the cleats away, you better believe I’m ready to bring out my Phillies hat.

After making most of the American League Central look confused, outplayed and sometimes embarrassingly outclassed the first half of the season, the Tigers can’t buy a win. At least this time there’s a pretty obvious culprit: the dreaded injury bug.

Joel Zumaya, June 28, 2010 (Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)

Then in rapid succession: Brandon Inge (fractured hand) Magglio Ordonez (broken ankle) and Carlos Guillen (calf strain) fall like dominos, as though they were all single file on the third base line, just waiting their turn. Johnny Damon’s been scratched more than a handful of the last few games (flu) (back) and in the meantime, our pitching staff has had a difficult time staying in the majors, with Rick Porcello and Armando Galaragga each taking their turns in the minors.

Which brings us to now. Take a look at Sunday’s starting lineup for the Bless You Boys:

A Jackson CF
W Rhymes 2B
R Raburn LF
M Cabrera 1B
J Peralta SS
B Inge 3B
B Boesch DH
C Wells RF
A Avila C

It’s Miggy and the minors! (Note: I didn’t come up with that on my own – some Facebook friend or another said the team looked like Miggy and the Minors, and since then, I haven’t been able to get the notion of Miguel Cabrera as the “Charles in Charge” lead of a team of baby-faced baseball players – surely a Friday night sitcom. )

The infield especially – in the past few days before the Peralta trade, the infield was actually Miguel + Ramon (who, let’s be honest, only this year played his way into the position, so he may as well be a rookie). Don Kelly – the 30 year old rookie – was even taking a few turns at third.

Sure, it’s slim pickings, but the fact that our boys in blue are even scoring or not looking like those teams we annihilated earlier in the season is in itself remarkable, and a fabulous endorsement of the minor league system we’ve got working. And, as you’ll no doubt learn over the coming months, gentle reader, I am especially grateful for the opportunity to see names in the lineup that riff easily into nicknames – such as Will “Busta” Rhymes, holding it down at second and holy hell, is the kid fast, by the by.

But it’s not just the admirable performance of the “and the Minors” that’s keeping this team together. Let’s turn to Yeats. The opening stanza of “The Second Coming:”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Disclosure: my relationship with baseball borders on the ecstatic/religious, so you’ll immediately note why I am thinking of Yeats when I say this: that the truly noteworthy aspect of this season is that, for the Tigers, the center IS holding, and the center has a name and wields a terrible bat: Miguel Cabrera.

Miguel Cabrera (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

But it’s not just a poetry-meets-humor-meets-baseball-and-Jesus post, folks. It’s the airtight case for Cabrera as MVP, regardless of whether he rocks the Triple Crown this year or not. The man has saved more games than Valverde can legitimately lay claim to, and he doesn’t have an off night.

First game back after his new baby was born? Three homers. In. One. Game. (The Tigers did lose the game – a rare night when the boys wasted Miggy’s rare talent.)

Sure, Robinson Cano is having a great year, too, but people, I think I could have a great year too if my teammates were the Yankees.

Maybe Yeats makes the best case for Cabrera, MVP:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! …
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?