You know why the Tigers are facing playoff elimination tonight against the Oakland A's?
Their bats have gone cold, sure, but the real problem, if you believe Mitch Albom's latest column, "Despite smack talk, Detroit Tigers on brink of elimination," might be the team's lack of old-fashioned values.
Freep: To add insult to injury, Martinez, a Tigers clubhouse leader, got embroiled in a bench-clearing confrontation with Athletics reliever Grant Balfour in the bottom of the ninth, a profanity-laden “you talking to me?” sort of exchange that sadly was the most compelling thing fans got into all afternoon.
“Don’t come with that attitude to me,” Martinez said, still angry, in the clubhouse. “I don’t take that from anybody.”
That’s fine. That’s noble. But unless the Tigers can start hitting with their mouths, it will be meaningless.
Based on that explanation, if you didn't watch the game, you'd think Martinez instigated the fight instead of focusing his energy on winning. One problem. It didn't happen that way, and don't take my word for it. Here's how Albom's own paper described events.
Freep: Detroit Tigers DH Victor Martinez hit a foul ball off Oakland A’s closer Grant Balfour. Then the screaming started.
Balfour screamed at Martinez.
Martinez screamed at Balfour.
Tempers flared in the ninth inning Monday at Comerica Park and both benches emptied due to the exchange, before calm was restored.
Sounds like a fairly normal, fundamentally insignificant incident between two teams in the heat of an intense playoff series. What it doesn't sound like is the Tigers running their mouths instead of focusing on the task at hand.
Are we to believe that Martinez would have hit a home run if he only responded to Balfour's "smack talk" (which didn't seem to affect his performance, by the way) with a hail-fellow-well-met apology for the errant foul ball? No. No reasonable person believes that?
So why is this Red Smith Award-winning sports writer trying to connect the Tigers cold bats and the Martinez-Balfour incident? Probably because it feeds the illusions of old codgers who want to think this team would have already wrapped up the World Series by now if they only played the right way, like old-time greats and true class acts like Ty Cobb, Chick Gandil, or Cap Anson.
Hopefully, smack talk or no, the Tigers bats wake up tonight and force a game five.
