How to fall in love... with a mediocre baseball team

The wonderful, and to be honest, quite awful, thing about baseball is that it lasts from April to October. And not like the way the NBA or the NHL do it, where there's plenty of off days, or the NFL, which has a year-round news cycle, but only, say four and a half months of actual action, and then only one day a week. No, baseball's played every day, which means six or seven days a week you have the opportunity to feel a different emotion, depending on how your team fared that particular night.

For a while I didn't understand this, or really could only understand it when it came to October, watching in 2003 in Chicago as Cubs fans died a little inside after game six, while hoping in vain for Kerry Wood to come through against the Marlins, karma, the Fates and probably the Odin-power to win Game seven, while simultaneously the Red Sox and Yankees engaged in the opening act of the now half-decade long drama of Empire vs. Nation, Grady Little leaving Pedro in and Aaron Boone homering off Tim Wakefield. I saw it in '04, when the wealthiest team, in terms of dollars and titles, in American sport managed to blow the most commanding of leads to the team it had perpetually spanked for three-quarters of a century. Even in '05 as the one AL team more cursed than the Red Sox rose up with some spectacular pitching to win it.

But since '06 I've come home, to root hard for the team of my childhood, the Tigers. And while '06 was magical (til the end), and then '07 was nice in its own way, with a batting title and no hitter and a quality team throughout. Then came last year, where it seemed the Tigers put out an nonathletic team that excelled only in depressing its fans with unrealized potential.

This year's different. From the moment Gary Sheffield was bought out in spring training, this team's been flawed offensively. And not just a little bit. Carlos Guillen was barely above the Mendoza line, then went on the DL, and may return in a few weeks. Magglio Ordonez has gone from a batting champ and MVP candidate in '07 to an overpaid singles hitter who kills nearly every rally with a double play in '09. And even players like Curtis Granderson and Placido Polanco aren't hitting as they've done in the past. The pitching's been good, not great, especially watching Dontrelle Willis succumb to The Thing, and Rick Porcello go through the growing pains I suppose all good pitchers go through (I don't know for sure as for the entirety of the 90's the Tig's staff was awful, to the point that acquiring pitching was the single most frequent suggestion on local sports talk radio).

But, over 162 games, or even 81, its watching a team with flaws overcome them that make you love them. Seeing Ryan Raburn or Clete Thomas come up with a big hit, or Adam Everett or Brandon Inge make a great defensive play to save a game makes some of the more painful moments worthwhile. And those painful moments help to temper things, to make you realize that despite their flaws, you have a team where each and every game matters, which makes you want to watch all the more.