Tigers Minor League Baseball Blog

Wishing a Happy Easter to everyone from down here in Lakeland, I am relaxing and enjoying nice sunday off. I guess it is fitting that our first off day falls on Easter sunday, so that we all get time to sit back and reflect on how fortunate we [players] are to be given the gift to play professional baseball. For me it would be nice to be able to spend this day with family, but I have become accustomed to spending Easter away from home and somewhere close to a ballpark. It reminds me of the movie “Bull Durham” when the opening scene has a church organ playing along with a picturesque tour of an empty stadium, and Susan Sarandon saying that this is her religion; the church of baseball. To a degree, I find this true for me as well. Not saying that baseball takes the place of religion, but for us it really takes on a different meaning. When you think about it, you have a sanctuary that people come to everyday looking for hope; there is a story that unfolds in each game; and there is plenty that can be translated from the game into everyday life. Baseball has a way of bringing people together and giving hope to the otherwise hopeless. Take my lifelong journey with my favorite team and now current employer, the Tigers. I assume most people who read this are a Tiger fan to some degree, but how many years there in the mid-late nineties did we say, “Alright, this is THE year. We’re gonna make the playoffs this year I can feel it.” Then somehow find out that two months in we were mathematically eliminated already. Ha, but did that detour us from our fanhood and abandon the team the next year. No, and why? Faith, faith that this season we would win ninety games. Or that Bobby Higginson would finally earn that paycheck, or that maybe we would pick up a big free agent who would win a Cy Young. It took a long time for the relationship to return the favor, but I will never forget what I felt like when I saw that ball leave Magg’s bat and the Tigers were going to the World Series. I usually don’t like to blend baseball and religion, I think that each is sacred in its own right and usually one is used to amend the deeds done by the other (I think we all know which the first is there). But when you think about the similarities and how each can be used in life, baseball and religion are not so different. That home run, by the way, probably restored some Detroit fans’ faith in religion again, because I’m sure the words “There is a God” were uttered throughout.