Miguel Cabrera

Just look at him. How can you not love this man?

When I first signed on to be a part of the Baseball Feelings experience (and oh what an experience it is, complete with fire eating circus clowns, Indian peyote rituals and the best part – daily massages from Kendall’s strong hands) I intended to just post pictures after every game and maybe occasionally scribble a stray thought or two – and this is still largely my intention – which is an extremely minimalist approach for someone like me. After all, those of you who have followed my tales of woe at Armchair Linebacker, where I write about the Lions, know that I have a tendency to, uh, be a little wordy. I decided to do something different for Baseball Feelings as much out of self-preservation than anything else, largely because I knew that attempting to actually write about the Tigers with any sort of regularity would drag me quickly down an insane road of wild gibbering and stupid rage, and shit, the Lions play once a week while the Tigers play every damn day, and if you want me to be found wandering down the highway in a daze missing my pants, covered in my own blood, speaking in tongues, attempting to fornicate with cars as they whiz by me then by all means, encourage me to start staggering down that brutal hellroad. But, right now, the plan remains relatively unchanged. Sure, occasionally I might pop in with a few paragraphs about Cecil Fielder being awesome and I will regularly rant and rave in the comments section, but for the most part, I will let the thousand words of a picture tell the story.

But . . . but . . . then Miguel Cabrera was arrested for drunk driving only days after I posted a little excerpt from Yahoo sportswriter Jeff Passan which said that Cabrera would be well worth the $106 million he’s owed if he doesn’t get fat and stays sober, which . . . yeah. Immediately, I knew that a mere picture wouldn’t suffice and I promised my fellow Baseball Feelings sufferers that I would write something about it. And so here we are. Of course, this is shamefully late for a couple of reasons. One, I have been busy with various things, including writing stuff that people actually give me money for, so I’ve been putting this off and putting this off until I felt like I could devote the proper time and mental energy to it, and two, this story deserves my best because it is complicated and the Baseball Feelings it inspires are contradictory and strange and so I knew that I would have to take some time to wrap my head around it all. And I’m still not sure that I have.

The thing about this story is that it both made me kinda hate that Miguel Cabrera is a Detroit Tiger and it made me love that Miguel Cabrera is a Detroit Tiger. Actually, let me rephrase that a bit: it made me kinda hate that Miguel Cabrera is a Detroit Tiger because he is a fat drunk who is owed $106 million, which makes him the highest paid player in baseball who doesn’t call New York home, and it made me love that Miguel Cabrera is a Detroit Tiger because he’s a fat drunk who’s owed $106 million.

Perhaps that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but let me explain. You see, I can identify with a man like Miguel Cabrera. I like to cheer for him. The dude just wants to get shitfaced and have a good time. I can relate. Sure, people will mewl like idiot babies and bray like jackasses about how he is setting a bad example for the kids, but to hell with the kids, you know? I am not a kid. I am a grown man and I don’t need some shithead athlete to set examples for me. If your kid now thinks it’s cool to get shitfaced and drive around for a while just because Miguel Cabrera did then your kid is a damn idiot and you should have just drowned him in the bathtub as soon as he exhibited signs of said idiocy.

I love cheering for fat drunks and inveterate degenerates. They are the dudes I want to see win. You see, I am quite capable of blending in with the, uh, let’s call it the square world for lack of a better term. I can button up and shake hands and drink tea with Lord Tightass before a friendly game of croquet. But that doesn’t erase the wild eyed rebel streak which is a fundamental part of me. I can laugh at Lord Tightass’s banal jokes and I can sip his tepid tea and I can admire his collection of antique cat figurines that he bought during his business trip to Southeast Asia and I can listen to him yammer on about how it surprised him that they are actually people and not just little yellow devils and I’ll laugh as he recounts story after story about what they served for breakfast at the hotel or about how he almost got hit by a dude riding a bicycle and how it shook him up so much that he had to go back to his hotel and watch Seinfeld reruns dubbed in Thai, but the whole time I will be waiting for him to get to the part about balling hookers and then running from an angry pimp naked through the streets of Bangkok but it will never come and I will get restless and bored and have to restrain myself from getting shitfaced and pissing all over his figurines and then fucking his wife and then beating him to death with a croquet mallet.

That is the side of me that wants to cheer for a fat drunk like Miguel Cabrera. The story of him having an open bottle of whiskey in the car and continuing to drink it even while the cops questioned him made me giddy. Yeah, that’s my boy! Fuck Lord Tightass! I will cheer for Miguel Cabrera until the end of time just because of that.

But then I remember that when Miguel gets fat and drunk his play starts to slip and then the selfish fan part of me who doesn’t give a shit about anything other than winning or losing starts to get nervous and starts to curse Miguel out for not being able to stay sober and thin. What can I say? I am a complicated man. I love Miguel Cabrera the dude. I want that Miguel Cabrera to be a fat drunk who gets wild and has to be thrown out of clubs and who chugs whiskey in front of the cops while they attempt to shove a breathalyzer in his mouth. That dude is of my tribe and he has the heart of a warrior. But I want Miguel Cabrera the baseball player to be sober and thin and I don’t want him to do anything else but take batting practice and hit home runs and win the Triple Crown.

I feel comfortable around a man like Miguel Cabrera. I can talk to him. There’s no bullshit, no pretense. He’ll tell me that story about running from an angry pimp naked through the streets of Bangkok. He isn’t conquered by stupid shame. He doesn’t let other people convince him that he should be something different. He doesn’t think “I shouldn’t do this because it might make some uptight dude in Grand Rapids uncomfortable.” He is who he is and he’s good with that. Fuck everything else. It’s not about being a fat drunk or a fuck up or anything like that. I don’t care if that’s who you are or if you just like to chill at home and watch movies and play board games. Do your thing as long as it’s what you want to do, and not because it’s what you feel like you’re supposed to do. Lord Tightass, meanwhile, smiles and says and does all the right things and then he goes home and beats his wife and cuts himself before beating off to tranny porn and then crying himself to sleep at night. Fuck him. He probably has a whole stack of Mickey Mantle cards in his attic.

But I don’t give a shit what kind of a dude you are when you’re on the field. I just want you to hit the ball, make a few plays in the field and win the damn game. You can be a piece of shit or you can be the most awesome man in the world. I don’t care. If you can kick ass for me, then I will ignore everything else. But that cuts both ways, you know? If you are stumbling around and your bat speed is just a touch slower because you are hungover and that means that you just struck out and cost me the feeling of celebrating a division title then fuck you, pal. I like you, but goddammit, my Baseball Feelings are childish and selfish and they only care about what you can do for me.

Look, Babe Ruth was a fat drunk and he was awesome. If you can do both then I will love you forever and will hold you up as the pinnacle of humanity. If you can’t, then I will want to hang out with you but I will also secretly hope that you get your shit together so that I can watch you morph into a Terminator on the field. It all comes down to this: If Miguel Cabrera can hit like, well, like Miguel Cabrera even though he is taking shots in the dugout and pissing in Jim Leyland’s bag in the locker room, then shit, have another one, Miguel. But if it causes him to get sloppy and hit like a mere mortal, then goddammit, someone hide the bottle from him and get him a gym membership. That is selfish and kind of shameful, but to hell with all that, there are baseball games to be won. This is important shit.

I guess what I have to do is separate Miguel Cabrera the person from Miguel Cabrera the ballplayer. I don’t really want to. What I really want is to be able to cheer for him and then encourage him to go out and get hammered. I don’t want to have to scream and cry and demand that he get sober because that would make me feel ashamed of myself and I would always feel a little bad that I had to destroy the man’s spirit in order to get my way as a baseball fan. But the thing is, is that I know that I will be watching a game in July and Miguel Cabrera will strike out and then without even thinking about it, I will curse him for being a fat drunk. It will happen. Like I said, I am a complicated man, but these are complicated times and none of us can afford to be simple men or lady men.

Right now, I like this team. And by that, I mean I like the dudes on this team. Miguel Cabrera got shitfaced, went for a drive and then drank whiskey out of the bottle while the cops hassled him. I want that guy on my team. Yeah, yeah, public safety, blah blah blah, think of the children, etc., but the wild eyed rebel in me identifies with that and screams fuck yeah and throws up the metal horns. Fuck the man, Miguel. That is childish and stupid and incredibly immature and there is a side of me that recognizes that, but I would be a liar if I tried to deny that it was there and I would end up hating myself if I tried to stomp on it and I would be secretly ashamed of myself if I wagged an angry finger at Miguel Cabrera just because I was supposed to. Other people are demanding that he be traded now because he’s more trouble than he’s worth but fuck that noise. It just makes me want him to be a Tiger even more than I did the day before. And it’s just not him. Joel Zumaya is another fat drunk who can throw a baseball really, really hard. He’s a huge fuckup and he gets hurt all the time but that’s the sort of dude I am preconditioned to root for, you know? And then there’s Joe Dimagglio (What’s up, Mrs. KS?), who honestly believes that his ability is tied to the length of his hair, like he’s Samson or Ric Flair or Keri Russell. I would be psyched to spend a week or two just hanging out with Cabrera, Zumaya and Maggs. I just want them to be paid week to week. That’s all.

In the end, I hope Miguel Cabrera hits 70 home runs this year, hits .450 and then gets shitfaced and rides a dirtbike around the diamond after hitting the game winning home run in the 7^th game of the World Series. I hope he pops a wheelie at second base, crashes, staggers back to his feet laughing and then he pulls Jim Leyland’s wife out of the crowd, gets her all liquored up and the two of them ride off into the sunset, him steering with his dick because he’s got a bottle of Jack in one hand and an American flag in the other and her laughing and topless, shaking her tits and rubbing up against Miguel while her husband stands at home plate and smokes the contents of an entire R.J. Reynolds factory, happy to share his lady because Miguel is just that great a man. That’s Miguel Cabrera’s American dream right there, and since this is the land of opportunity, the place where dreams come true, and since baseball is the most iconic of all American games, I say that this is what must happen. Call me an idealist, but I won’t be ashamed when I am wiping away tears and I won’t be surprised when this replaces Field of Dreams as the ultimate American baseball story.

I’m not sure how to end this, but that’s because I don’t want to. I want to revel in a world where Miguel Cabrera is a fat drunk and Superman. I don’t want him to have to choose and I’m afraid that as soon as I’m done writing this, I will have to come to terms with the fact that he will have to choose. And I think that’s what makes me saddest of all about this story. In my dreams, a man can have it all. But reality is cold and cruel and mean and the real world makes a man like Miguel Cabrera sober up and it makes him go to A.A. meetings and I guess I know that my choice is to either cheer for a fat drunk who I know will let down the fan part of me or I can cheer for a soulless machine who reads the Bible before he goes to bed alone every night after drinking a glass of milk and calling his sponsor which makes me legitimately sad, but I know that he will make the fan part of me happy, and . . . and . . . none of us should have to make that choice. And yet, here we are and that’s why even after pouring my heart out here, I am still not entirely sure how I feel. And that’s why this story is both awesome and why it really, really sucks.