"I feel much better,” Miguel Cabrera said after his first homer in three weeks during Tuesday's night's 6-2 win over the Seattle Mariners.
That lowers the Tigers' magic number to six over the Cleveland Indians in the push for a third straight American League Central Division title.
It also brought another crank-up-the-volume locker room scene, a new September routine that CBS Detroit sportswriter Ashley Dunkak described earlier Tuesday.
In the Detroit Tigers clubhouse after Monday night’s 4-2 win over the Seattle Mariners, the music pumped louder than usual, the players looked downright joyful, six or seven bouncing a soccer ball between them as they yelled and laughed. . . .
“The last week or so, we’re just trying to dig deep because September hits, sometimes you get kind of laid back, and you get tired, so we just try to pump ourselves up, and after the game we always try to turn the music up loud and jump up and down and huddle and we started screaming loud for no reason – I don’t know why we do that,” veteran right fielder Torii Hunter said with a laugh.
“It exerts a lot of energy and we have a lot of fun, but we want to do it again, so we have to win. Only time we get to do it is if we win, and I think that’s – we’ve got to have something to motivate us because it’s September, and sometimes you can see the team getting down, so you’ve got to do something to pump it back up.”
Cabrera's 44th homer, which came in the bottom of the sixth, was his first since Aug. 26, Tom Gage reports in The Detroit News. He couldn't conceal cockiness afterward, taunting the Mariners' dugout by holding his arms apart in the "we're ahead" gesture pictured above.
Rick Porcello, who pitched in Monday's win, shows sImilar buoyancy, Dunkak reports:
“Guys are coming in with energy. It’s September. Everybody’s had a long season, but everybody’s coming in with energy and good focus, and we’re playing good, hard baseball.”
