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    • Tiger’s thirst-quenching run leaves no time for thought
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    Tiger’s thirst-quenching run leaves no time for thought

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

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    Now that is how to end a drought. The city was illuminated. The sun was a diamond. The air was cool and fresh with anticipation. It was a fall day that felt like spring, and the mob scene around Comerica Park was wild yet serious — like opening day, but with consequences.

    And big consequences. After ten empty days in October, playoff baseball had finally returned to Detroit in all its tense exuberance. There had already been four away games, and now there was finally a home game in which the ALDS drew. A group as young as these Detroit Tigers should have been overwhelmed by the pressure of hometown expectations.

    But this unusual team happily defies convention, from its no-one-can-guess lineups to its chaotic pitching changes. Nothing is predictable.

    Everything is joy.

    SHAWN WINDSOR: Pitching chaos? No, the Tigers cause chaos in the playoffs with their win in Game 3 of the ALDS

    “We treat baseball like a game,” catcher Jake Rogers said.

    There is no explanation for how effective this is.

    So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the seemingly carefree Tigers are now one win away from playing for the American League pennant, or that they used six pitchers to win Game 3 on Wednesday, or that Riley Greene drove in the first run in the first inning. or that Rogers, the No. 9 hitter, doubled and scored the second run, or that the lyrically named Beau Brieske hit three of his six outs in a row and departed to a thunderous ovation.

    Or this: In the sixth inning, with Detroit defending a 2-0 lead over Cleveland, Spencer Torkelson came to the plate to try to break his own losing streak. Torkelson has had no success in his last 14 appearances this postseason and hasn’t had as much fun as some of his teammates. He undoubtedly heard the whispers. The No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, his career has been a pinball game full of flashes and surprises. He’s moving up to the big leagues. He will be sent back to the minors. He earned the gap with a great second season. Then he collapses and is sent down again.

    Now, in an October no one expected, Torkelson was where he wanted to be, but not where he wanted to be. No hits. Seven strikeouts. A .000 batting average in four games.

    But …

    “In October,” AJ Hinch would say, “you are one step away from having a completely different emotional response as a player.”

    And here came the pitch…

    “Just grind, stay in the fight”

    DANCING IN THE STREETS: Tigers playoff baseball brings a party to downtown

    Torkelson took advantage of an inside attack by substitute Eli Morgan and fired the ball into left field, as decisive as a referee’s gavel. It made it to the wall, Colt Keith made it home, Torkelson made it to second base and the RBI made it 3-0, which might as well have been 300 given the way the Tigers pitched.

    The largest crowd for a postseason game in Comerica Park history was ecstatic.

    “What were you thinking during the fight?” Torkelson was asked about the win.

    “Just grind, stay in the fight,” he said. “Just keep going. That’s it really. In the playoffs you don’t get caught up in numbers, you just try to win baseball games. And that’s what we do, so I was pretty happy.”

    Then he added, “It felt good to get through today.”

    And that’s exactly what Hinch was talking about. One punch. A post. And you have a different sense of self, just as the Tigers, once considered underdogs heading into the 2024 season, have a different sense of self now. You no longer have any doubts. No worries.

    “Nobody really thought we would be here,” Matt Vierling said, repeating an analysis he has made many times before. “We were kind of playing with house money towards the end (of the season). Nobody thought we would make it to October. … We kind of feel like there’s no pressure on us, so we can just keep going.”

    To prove this point, consider what Vierling did in the inning following Torkelson’s heroics. With runners on first and second and the game-winning run at the plate, he jumped to designated hitter David Fry’s bat, a ball that a cannon couldn’t have fired faster.

    Vierling’s jump was perfectly timed. His arm almost slipped out of its socket, but he caught the ball like a toad’s tongue catches a fly. End of the threat. End of the inning.

    LISTEN TO: Dan Dickerson’s decision as the Detroit Tigers eliminated the Guardians in Game 3 of ALDS

    “What did you think when Fry hit that?” someone asked.

    “I really didn’t have time to think,” he said.

    The Tigers could tape that phrase over their locker room door.

    Thinking is overrated

    Because it’s not thinking that got them this far. I don’t think they’re playing over their heads. I don’t think this winning percentage, the best in the major leagues over the last two months, is some kind of coincidence. I don’t think their roster, compared to, say, the LA Dodgers, is like a high school cast of “Pippin” compared to Broadway.

    Thinking is overrated. What matters is the doing. And right now the Tigers are doing exactly what they need to do. Their pitching decisions, baseball’s equivalent of pickup sticks, held Cleveland scoreless in 25 of the 27 innings they pitched in this series. Their hits come from everywhere, be it Parker Meadows at the top or Rogers at the bottom of the leaderboard. Rogers actually has the highest batting average of the starters at .333. And this is a guy who has struggled his entire career to get his hitting to the level of his catching.

    “It’s fun, man,” he said of his offensive contributions. “It’s like the age-old AJ saying: ‘When you catch a winner, everything that comes after is just a bonus.’ “

    I guess we’re in bonus time right now.

    Now it’s true that all that sticky joy could melt away if Thursday’s game is lost and the Tigers have to return to Cleveland for a winner-take-all Game 5. But honestly, even if that were to happen, why would anyone assume it was negative? These Tigers have prevailed against the odds for so long that perhaps it’s time to reconsider the odds.

    “We’re all human, we can hear the noise,” Torkelson said. “We know how close we are. But it all comes back to one pitch at a time, one out at a time. …

    “A few weeks ago, a month ago, whenever it was, things started clicking. So that worked. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

    This is how you end a drought. Torkelsons. The Tigers. The fans. A 10-year thirst has finally been quenched. As the crowds spilled into the streets and the October sun set into a clear autumn sky, there was the simple, satisfying conclusion that we had just experienced a perfect day of baseball.

    Why not again?

    Contact Mitch Albom: [email protected]. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchhalbom.

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    Madoc Meredith
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