There’s a section of the Kansas City Star Web site called “Why we still love it.” Baseball, they mean. The Royals, presumably. The Tigers came back from four runs down Tuesday. Thursday, they came back from six runs down and broke a ninth inning tie to win 13-8. I’m not sure if the pattern continues, but frankly, I would not like to see the Tigers trail KC by eight Saturday. Or ever. Even if they won.

Fortunately, the team caught the afternoon flight back to Detroit while riding a six-game winning streak, so that won’t be a problem.

Your final 6 for the day: callup utility infielder Jack Hannahan went 0-6 in his first Major League game. But the picture looks nice!

By the way, from a comment posted by Dave at the Detroit Tigers Weblog, Detroit’s 19 games over .500 is the best by a Tigers team since 1988. Nice find.

We won’t be seeing the Royals for awhile. So I think Tigers fans will join me in rooting for KC, who’ve now lost 13 straight. At least until we play them again. Seeing another small-market baseball town suffer should not be fun for anyone. Yeah, I want to go 19-0 against them this year. That’s not going to change. But I hate to see them suffer like this. But if Detroit is in the playoff hunt in late September, it would really help if those six games against the Royals were in the ‘W’ column for the Tigers.

–UPDATES–

The KC Star wrote the Tigers gave the Royals a lesson in playing all nine innings.

Simply put, Detroit gave the Royals a lesson on what it means to play all nine innings, no matter what adversity comes along in the course of a game.

“It’s all about preparation,” said Tigers outfielder Craig Monroe, who broke an 8-8 tie with a one-out homer in the ninth. “We could have been on the losing end of this today and still felt good about it and said: ‘We didn’t quit. We still battled.’

“I’m telling you, when you play for nine innings, the wins and losses will take care of themselves.”

–end update–
The Star thought that Royals manager (and former Tigers manager) Buddy Bell could take some solace from Tigers manager Jim Leyland. Fortunately, Leyland had some advice.

(Gosh darn it), Buddy, I told you to drink that hot tea.

Wait, that’s not quite it. Leyland was referencing his sore throat on that one.

But the point is, Bell’s not as bad a manager as the Royals’ record would indicate given what he’s been given in the dugout. I hope he gets what he wants, whatever that might be. There’s got to be better situations out there than the one he’s in. But if he likes it, that’s fine by me.

The Tigers now face Cleveland — missing ace CC Sabathia, again — in a three-game series at Comerica Park. A sweep, though unlikely, would give Detroit a 10-2 record against a quality Central Division rival. It’ll be awhile before we face them again, so it’s useful to take care of business and clinch that season-series victory right now. In any case, there’s a nice chance at coming out of the series 20 games over .500.

It’s way too early for scoreboard watching, though it’s kinda fun having the chance to, isn’t it? But the White Sox play Toronto this weekend.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 1:43 am and is filed under KC Royals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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