Mitch Albom: Detroit reborn as baseball town thanks to Tigers magical run

The leaves are falling, the air chills, yet somehow, magically, summer has been extended. A tarp has been yanked off our city, and green grass and brown dirt now cover our streets.

We are once again a baseball town.

The Detroit Tigers are going to the playoffs. Phones will be streaming games. Radios will be tuned in. Morning coffee shops will buzz with talk of relief pitchers and stolen bases.

And something old is new again.

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These are not your daddy’s Tigers, kids. But the feeling is. Believe it or not, once upon a time, we expected this kind of thing. In 1968, the Tigers won the World Series, in 1984, they did it again, and from 2011 through 2014, they went to the playoffs every year.

But that was a decade ago. And a decade is a century in sports. It’s not only been that long since a postseason, it’s been nearly that long since Detroit’s baseball team won more than it lost.

Five years ago, the Tigers dropped a stunning 114 games. Four years ago, they limped through a coronavirus pandemic-shortened losing season. Three years ago, A.J. Hinch arrived and got them to 77 wins and 85 losses. The next year they went backwards. Last year, they still lost six more than they won.

And this year? Well. This year. There is almost no explanation. It was like watching a baby roll around in its crib from April until August, then suddenly jump to its feet, pull itself over the rails and sprint out the door.

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“They’ve learned how to win, that’s the reality,” Hinch told reporters Friday night after the blazing hot Tigers clinched the postseason with their 10th win in 11 games. “I know when we passed the 81-win mark, that was a big deal because we got to be a winning team for the first time in a long time. But we’re not done yet. We get to play some more.”

Summer, longer.

An incredibly young roster

Now, if you’re just rubbing your eyes at this suddenly sun-kissed baseball team, know that it is young and energetic and young and opportunistic and young and good defensively and excellent in one-run decisions and at coming from behind, and, also, oh, yes, young.

“They're playing like they don't even know they're in a race,” former Tigers manager Jim Leyland said last week. “They're just going out to win ballgames, and they're doing it. … A lot of people thought maybe not yet, not this year. But, you know, with the collapse of some of the teams and the way that we've played, here we are, right there.”

Leyland took the Tigers to the postseason 11, 12 and 13 years ago. Those teams were expected to do well. They featured veteran superstars such as Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Miguel Cabrera.

These Tigers are not those Tigers. These Tigers would use those Tigers to get them into R-rated movies.

Riley Greene, Detroit’s current offensive leader, is all of 24, his beard so dark it screams youth. Second baseman Colt Keith, 23, is in his first big league season and playing beyond his age. Parker Meadows, a huge boost in the outfield, didn’t join the big leagues until last year. And Detroit’s ace, Tarik Skubal, who went 18-4 this year and is a shoo-in for the American League Cy Young award, is a whopping 27. Get him a rocking chair.

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“I think we’ve been surprising a lot of people, but we haven’t really been surprising ourselves,” Meadows told me last week. “We knew we were capable of doing this, to make a push like this. We just look forward to coming to the field every day. Guys are playing cards, playing ping pong, and, you know, just having a good time. And we carry it right into the game.”

Cards, ping-pong, baseball.

Summer, longer.

Detroit becomes a baseball town again

Now, the truth of sports towns is that enthusiasm comes in waves. In the late '80s and early '90s, Detroit was a basketball town, with our Pistons winning back-to-back titles. Later that decade and into the 2000s, we were a hockey town, with the Red Wings capturing four Stanley Cups and always in the hunt. Most recently, we have become — dare we say it? — a football town, with the Lions coming within a whisker (or maybe a field goal try) of making the Super Bowl.

But now baseball comes around again — unexpectedly, delightfully, like a brightly painted carousel horse that we hop aboard in a familiar mount.

Yes, we remember what this feels like. We’ll be watching every Tiger pitch, and wincing every time an ump calls a ball. We’ll be hanging on the bats of Greene or Meadows or Spencer Torkelson or Kerry Carpenter, hoping for a long shot over a wall. We’ll be debating every pitching change, because Hinch makes A LOT of pitching changes. This winning stretch, 34-17 since Aug. 1, is the best in the major leagues, and has featured box scores that read like a Little League team that tried to get everybody’s kid to pitch at least one inning.

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“The way A.J. manipulated that pitching staff, and using the bullpen when he didn't have his starters,” Leyland marveled, “it's been one of the most unbelievable manager jobs I've seen.”

Starting Tuesday, we’ll see if the magic continues. The Tigers must play three straight road games on three straight days against either Houston or Baltimore. If they somehow win two out of those three, they will play two more road games next Saturday and Sunday in the ALDS before coming home to Comerica for Game 3 in a best-of-five series.

That would be a hell of a week. Five potential road playoff games? A daunting challenge to any team, but maybe less so to one that has defied the odds, flown under the radar, and may be too young to even think about what it’s doing.

But no matter what happens, something undeniable has already taken place. Enthusiasm for the national pastime has returned to the Motor City. The Old English "D" is fronting endless caps. And while the calendar says autumn, the Tigers are saying, “Not so fast.”

“This is going to be a team to contend with for quite a while,” Leyland predicted. “And you know, it might start right now. Who knows once you get in? Nobody knows what's going to happen. … I know what they've been doing for a month and a half now. … They haven't just been beating the cellar-dwellers. They've been beating the good teams.”

They get to try it now in October. It’s the month of Halloween and leafless trees and breaking out the winter coats. But here comes a most unexpected baseball team who may just change all of that. Keep an eye on summer. It ain’t over yet.

Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com . Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com . Follow him @mitchalbom .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Detroit reborn as baseball town thanks to Tigers magical run