Yesterday we looked at the part that timing can play in picking your MLB team, or perhaps more accurately an MLB team picking you.  It’s therefore safe to state that not many baseball fans that came to the sport between 1994 and 2005 would have been desperate to join up with the Detroit Tigers.

No, during that period they were not very appealing at all. Even Detroit lifers would have found little reason to get too excited about their team.  Things appeared to have come to a depressing head in 2002 when a combination of Phil Garner and Luis Pujols led the Tigers to a 55-106 record.  However, someone somewhere must have tempted fate and stated that things couldn’t get any worse. 

Because they did. 

Alan Trammel had obtained legendary status during his twenty-year playing career with the Tigers and was presumably the only person who cared so much about the team that he was prepared to take on such a tough job.  Tigers fans must regret that decision now as his achievements on the diamond will always be accompanied by the footnote of his 2003 managerial season.  Detroit finished the year with a 43-119 record, the second-worst performance in Major League history.  Only the historically hopeless 1962 New York Mets have ever lost more games (40-120) and they at least had the excuse of it being their first season. 

There may be a handful of people that saw the Tigers’ 2003 season as a personal challenge.   If you were committed to avoiding the ‘glory hunter’ tag, picking Detroit as your MLB team would have been the most extreme measure to take.  Everyone else would have held their hands up, said ‘nothing to do with me’ and quickly walked away from the mess.

That would have been a great shame because the Tigers do have a compelling history. 
Detroit has been the home of many outstanding players, with Ty Cobb heading the list.  The Georgia Peach’s savage attitude (both on and off the diamond) didn’t endear him to many of the people who crossed his path, but there’s no doubting that he was one of the greatest players of all time.  Sam Crawford was a kind of Lou Gehrig to Cobb’s Babe Ruth, a gifted ballplayer who often had to live in the shadow of his more domineering teammate.  He still has a rightful place in the Hall of Fame though, as do the likes of Hank Greenberg and ‘Mr Tiger’ himself Al Kaline. 

Sparky Anderson sports a Cincinnati Reds cap on his Hall of Fame plaque thanks to his reign at the controls of the Big Red Machine; however he managed over 2,500 games for the Tigers and in 1984 took them to the most-recent of their four World Series championships.  

Such success looked a long way off in 2005 as the Tigers put together their twelfth straight losing season, spelling the end of Trammel’s term in charge.  Veteran manager Jim Leyland took over with expectations suitably low and responded by leading Detroit to a surprise World Series run.  They came up short in five games against the St Louis Cardinals, but it was still a remarkable turnaround, one that would have gained them the support of a good proportion of the 2006 British baseball newcomers.

Things haven’t gone quite so well since then, in particular with a disastrous 2008 campaign where they were expected to compete for a World Series and ended up finishing dead last in the AL Central.  The start of 2009 has been more promising and Detroit look well-placed to put last year’s disappointments firmly behind them.

More generally, Detroit combine an interesting history with current financial clout.  They have the fifth highest payroll in MLB this season and have the resources in place not just to spin major trades like the acquisition of Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis from the Marlins over the 07/08 offseason, but to lock those players up for years as well.  That’s not turned out to be such a great thing with Willis, but the prospect of having Cabrera on your team until 2015 is a good reason to reach for a Tigers cap.

That cap also brings up one of two additional features about Detroit that may appeal to a Brit.  Firstly, their logo includes an ‘Old English D’, which is surely a good omen.  Secondly, their centre fielder Curtis Granderson is an active ambassador for baseball throughout the world, a role that even saw him take part in Channel Five’s British coverage of MLB via their ‘Ask Curtis’ feature during the 2007 season. 

The Tigers have much to commend them, so long as they don’t revert back to their 2003 form any time soon.