3-2

I know, right?

It’s easy to forget just how fucking intense the playoffs are when you don’t have a team in the fight. Well, I mean you can understand it because the tension is palpable regardless of who’s playing but when it’s your team, the team of your youth, the team who first introduced you to the idea that sports fandom was an actual thing, involved, that tension goes to another level entirely.

Look, I have an incredibly hazy memory of Lance Parish hitting a grand slam against the A’s in 1984 at Tiger Stadium. It’s one of those memories which was formed so early, which so predates any understanding of the world that isn’t purely instinctual, that it almost feels raw and animalistic. It’s just a memory, pure and undiluted by something so profound as reason. It’s hard to explain what reason does to the mind, to memories, how it twists and taints and colors and bends the mind to the needs and wants of right now. But without it, there is a primal purity that is hard to explain.

I only bring this memory up to let you know that my fandom predates even basic reason. Sure, sure, by that age I was starting to read and obviously understood how to think things through on a simple, basic level but as a sports fan, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. All I knew was that this dude who played for a team that I loved even though I didn’t understand what the hell was happening or why I was supposed to love that team, had just hit a ball really fucking far and people around me were freaking out.

It’s not a memory connected to anything other than the moment, to the actual raw footage which lives inside of my head. Shit, the colors even look different, hazy and yet vibrant at the same time, like some Technicolor treated old newsreel, artificial and real at the same time. I’m not sure what it is I’m even trying to say here other than this series made me think of that moment, of that newsreel which somehow survived all the massive rewrites my brain has undergone since then, and I think it’s because it touched that same nerve center which has allowed that memory to live.

I’m not a goddamn brain surgeon (although I play one on the internet from time to time) so I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about but that’s fine because honestly, when it comes to this series, there’s a part of me that doesn’t know what the hell it just watched. All it knows is that there were moments when it felt like my heart was going to pick itself up and drive a fucking van straight out of my mouth and it knows that there were other moments when it felt like I could shoot lightning out of my fingers or resurrect the dead.

Obviously that is ridiculous but then again, so is fandom. What I’m left with are impressions more than actual thoughts, of memories and ideas which make me smile like a mongoloid, of Jim Leland getting choked up just because he was so, so happy for Don Kelly, of Papa Grande coming through even while the whole world was making fun of him, of dancing when he danced, of laughing at Alex Rodriguez and cursing the announcers on TBS just because they weren’t saying the right things, man. Sometimes rationality is beside the point and sometimes all you’re left with is a childish connection to the events taking place before your eyes and when this happens it can be both devastating and absolutely wonderful.

There were times when I felt like the whole universe hated both me and the Tigers, when I was envisioning Bud Selig in a trench coat screaming at his underlings to fire up some super-secret weather satellite to ensure that Justin Verlander was kept from ascending to his proper place in the heavens. These were not rational thoughts, but I still felt cheated somehow and honestly, to the fan in me, that’s all that mattered.

But there were other times when the world seemed like it was made just for me, when I felt charmed and in possession of some brilliant secret that left me giggling like a fool and wanting to sing songs with my friends. Every time the Tigers took the lead in this series my whole body began to buzz and I began to dream of bigger, better things, even while a team made up of mega-millionaires wearing the baseball uniform equivalent of some terrible Nazi SS getup were waiting to tear it away from me.

I’d be lying if I said that the fact this came against the Yankees didn’t magnify all of this – all the good and the bad – and I have a feeling that the sort of elation this series drove me to just wouldn’t be the same had it involved, say, the Rays. This was a goddamn Holy War, a fight between good and evil and combined with my own intense desire to see my team move on in the playoffs the effect was something more like watching the US Hockey Team take down the Soviets in 1980 at Lake Placid than just another baseball series.

Obviously that is hyperbolic as hell, and yet, there it is. Every moment, every damn pitch of that series felt bigger than it normally would have just because it came against the Yankees. There is a part of myself that hates that, that doesn’t want to give the Yankees and their insufferable fans even that much credit because this moment didn’t belong to them. It belonged to me and it belonged to people who remember stupid things like Lance Parish hitting a grand slam even though they didn’t even know what a grand slam was at the time. But I can’t lie either. I can’t sit here and pretend that because the Yankees were involved that the stakes didn’t feel extraordinarily heightened. It would have hurt worse to lose to the Yankees just because, well, fuck the Yankees, you know? But it feels so much better to beat the Yankees than some other team because, well, fuck the Yankees.

I’m still having a hard time translating my baseball feelings into baseball words here and I realize that I haven’t even talked about many of the particulars of the series but that’s because I’m not sure I can without devolving into a gibbering mess of HEY REMEMBER WHEN THAT HAPPENED foolishness. The Tigers won and all three of their wins were tense, Here Take This Paper Bag For When You Hyperventilate kind of games. Going into the 9^th last night I tweeted that I was going to throw up. I didn’t, but goddammit, I felt like it. Meanwhile, both of the losses felt like some deleted scene from one of the Saw movies or something, just a gory shit show that refused to end and left me questioning not whether or not I believe in God, but whether or not God believes in me. Or, you know, hates me.

Kendall has already written about that moment in the bottom of the 8^th when Jeter almost hit that ball out, but I’m going to talk about it anyway for a second. When he hit it, and that crowd of infernal beasts went wild with the glee they so maddeningly believe is their birthright, I closed my eyes and said, for just the briefest of moments, that I was never going to watch baseball again and I fucking meant it. But then the ball landed in Don Kelly’s glove, the crowd’s joy died in their throats and . . . well, Kendall has already done a fine job explaining the symbolism of the moment, but for me it was more than just the feeling that the Yankees were finally beaten, it was the feeling that this whole damn thing might work out after all. I think, until that moment, the weird energy which has accompanied this whole season for Tigers fans felt like it was just a tease, something vaguely surreal that could evaporate – and would evaporate – at any second. But after that catch, it felt somehow more solid, somehow worthy of the attention and belief that it was demanding of all of us. It wasn’t just that the Yankees were dead, it was that the Tigers – my Tigers – were, and are, unquestionably alive. And so is that little kid who remembers Lance Parish and remembers a time when things were simpler, unclouded by anything other than the flight of a simple ball into a sea of screaming people.