I'm still here. Tired...brain dead....but still here. With all that's happened this year (work/stroke/pregnancy), I'm barely hanging on by a thread. But I have a mighty good grip on that thread. My biggest emotional crutch this year has been watching the Tigers play ball. I purchased an eight game package this year to go with my Dad, Bill and my father in law. I figured it was a last ditch attempt to do something with the family relatively close together. Next summer Bill gets married and moves downriver while Julie and I were suppose to move north. Now the wedding is still on, but my Dad had a stroke, Julie's pregnant and plans to move are on hold for the forseeable future as we see how this all shakes out.
So here we stand. The world is chaotic, the Tigers are in the World Series and, it's hard to describe, but they hold all of my emotional hopes right now. Watching Rogers pitch with the intensity he's shown has been nothing short of inspirational. I watch these games yelling and screaming like a madman (vocabulary 80% clean right now, seven months or so to keep working on it). Here's my favorite quote from Mitch Albom's column this morning. Click on the link and get lost in the excitement.
Remember, this isn't one of those "Who are the Beatles?" kids on the mound. This is 41-year-old Texan, a guy who Saturday was answering questions about whether he'd considering retiring in spring training: not this spring training, three years ago!
"At that point my mind-set was that I probably wasn't going to play anymore," he said.
Thank goodness somebody called him and offered him a job. That was several jobs ago, of course. He has bounced around a lot in his long career, but, man, has he found a home in Detroit. I don't want to say Comerica Park has been very, very good to Rogers, but if he does this one more time, they might not only rename the stadium, they might rename the bank.
