Tigers Fans Who Always Care.

The past century of the storied baseball annual “Who’s Who in Baseball” has been kind to the Detroit Tigers -– at least when it comes to the cover. The very first edition, published in 1912, featured an illustration of Ty Cobb. And why not? At this stage in his career, Cobb had won five American League batting championships in a row, had taken the Tigers to three consecutive World Series, was tearing up the basepaths like nobody’s business, and at the age of 25 was almost universally recognized as the greatest player in the game. For some reason, Baseball Magazine, which published “Who’s Who,” didn’t come out with another annual until 1916. But who graced its cover yet again? Indeed, …

With the 110 some-odd World Series under our belts, it’s interesting to note the dearth of managers and abundance of players from The Great Lake State who have participated in the Fall Classic. (Birth city is in parentheses.) Among skippers, only three are Michigan natives, a figure that pales in comparison to those from other large northern states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. A discussion of possible reasons is reserved for another day. The managers are: Joe Altobelli (Detroit) – Succeeded Hall-of-Famer Earl Weaver and led ’83 Orioles to the Birds’ most recent World Series Championship; Clint Hurdle (Big Rapids) — Current Pirates’ skipper piloted ’07 Rockies and got swept by Red Sox; and Terry Collins (Midland) …

Even though I had been a member of the Mayo Smith Society for 10 years, I had never been able to carve out the time to make it back to my home town of Detroit to coincide with the Society’s Annual Gathering. Well, there was that one time in 1994 when I was going to go, but the players’ strike foiled that. I had a job interview in Monroe, about halfway between Detroit and Toledo, the day before the now-canceled event, and after the interview (I didn’t get the job), I continued south to Toledo to take in a twi-night doubleheader at old Ned Skeldon Stadium between the Toledo Mud Hens, Detroit’s Triple-A affiliate, and the Richmond Braves, Atlanta’s top …

When you’re a kid, you don’t think much about them. “Them” are the players nobody really wants, the ones that cause a disappointed sigh when you open your card pack, the ones who don’t even have a team logo on their caps because they’re always being traded or cut, the guys who never make it on a poster. They are the ones who end up folded at the top and attached with a clothes pin in the spokes of your bicycle. You know who they are. Guys like Whammy Douglas or Jerry Kindall or Herm Wehmeier. The bubble gum is barely in pieces in your mouth and you see them and know that they have no future in your cigar …

I attended the 2008 convention in Cleveland of the Society of American Baseball Research. I always like looking for Tigers-related presentations -– and in the absence of those presentations, I look for more general-interest talks. Chris Jaffe of Schaumberg, Ill., delivered a terrific presentation, “Evaluating Managerial Tendencies.” In the 20 minutes he was allotted to speak, he tore through any number of slides showing which managers (generally with 10 years of big-league managerial experience) rated best or worst at a host of different categories. I was scribbling furiously when I saw the names of past Detroit skippers like Sparky Anderson, Ralph Houk and Billy Martin come up. But the one slide that struck me dumb was “managers whose teams do …