Baseball

A posting on sports is a great rarity on this blog—this one is the first I think. The reason for this is because any kind of active involvement on our part (speaking narrowly for Brigitte and me) only arises when either the Detroit Tigers or the Minnesota Twins are in some significant manner prominently featured, thus in the post-season. Well, this year, both teams were front and center in a hard-fought tie-breaker for the American League Central Division title, and the two of us were up well past our bedtime as the Twins, in the bottom of the twelfth, at last, settled the game at 6 to 5 in their own favor.

This was an odd experience for us. We used to be fervent Twins fans when we lived in Minneapolis and have become Tiger fans here in recent years as the team has taken on a genuine character under General Manager Dave Dombrowski and Coach Jim Leyland. The usual emotional registers don’t work properly when, during a tense and hard-fought, indeed a very exciting, game the victory of either team is pleasing, one for sentimental reasons and the other because it is “our” team. In truth we were a little sad that Detroit got shouldered out. When you don’t closely follow a team—and we no longer follow the Twins—the players become strangers, especially for very occasional fans like us. Our own here, however, are like members of the family, and when Granderson or Inge or Ordonez or Polanco are up—or perform some feat in the in- or out-field, it feels to us, at our age, as if we’re watching our own children play.