Flow It, Show It, Long as I Can Grow It. . .

My friend Flutterby posted, not too long ago, about the history of her hair, which got me to thinking that there was probably a story or two for me to tell, along similar lines. . .

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I grew up in the 60s (which really lasted into the early 70s, but that's a different topic for a different time). My senior year of high school and freshman year of college, I, uh, grew my hair long.

Before that, my dad and my coaches generally conspired together to keep said growth in abeyance.  It is difficult to describe to folks who weren't there for the fun, but the years of my adolescence were marked by seemingly endless conflict between young men and their fathers over the length of their hair (the sons' hair, not the fathers').  It almost seems comical now, but even the 1964-vintage Beatles haircuts could inspire men of my dad's generation to something close to apoplexy (and hey, how could I pass up an opportunity to embed a Beatles photo in my blog?).

Dad used to grumble, when he saw a 'long-haired' young man on the street, "You can't even tell he's not a girl, if you see him from behind."  If I pointed out that his butt was not nearly wide or round enough to be a girl's, Dad would get on my case for looking at girls' butts too closely.  It was seriously no-win.

My senior year, though, Dad took a new job in a city 500 miles away, and during the six months or so before the family moved to join him in the new city, he only saw me on weekends, during which he was pretty much sleep-deprived, and had other things to deal with than keeping track of the length of my hair.  And Mom was a bit mellower about it.  Through a rather convoluted set of circumstances, I also didn't play football that fall, so my football coaches also  lost such traction as they'd ever had on my fashion sense as pertaining to the length of my hair.  And, to be perfectly, brutally candid, if they all hadn't made such a fuss about the length of my hair, I quite probably wouldn't have felt the appeal of growing it long ('cuz, yeah, I'm just that kind of contrary, when I put my mind to it, although I was generally quite compliant toward the authorities in my life; but when that authority was no longer in force, well, then, woo-hoo!).  I promised myself that I would never fight with my kids over their hair the way my dad had fought with me (*sigh*; mohawks and piercings hadn't occurred to anyone yet. . .)

In the fullness of time, at its longest, my hair eventually reached almost to my shoulders, thick and wavy, and parted down the middle. Once, one of the ladies at church grabbed me and asked, "Who does your hair?"  When I told her that it just grew that way, and all I did to it was wash it, she made a sour face, and muttered, "I would KILL for hair like that, and you just get it for free. . ."  Well, didn't I just feel so blessed. . .

At its longest, I could just pull it together into a pony-tail.  Which, in the long, hot summer of '73, working as I did at a manual-labor-type job, was something of a practical necessity.  Sometime during the fall term at college, I got a girl I knew to cut it back to something more like jaw-length.  Between how hot it was, and how long it took to dry after I washed it (to say nothing of shampoo expenses; those 59-cent bottles of cheap shampoo could really add up), I decided to scale back on the sheer bulk of my hair, to something just a tad more manageable (at least by mid-70s standards; it was still long enough to keep my ears warm in the winter, without having to resort to a hat).   By the time I finished college, I had returned to parting my hair on the side, and even though it was still fairly long and thick by today's standards (the 70s were famously renowned for 'helmet-hair'), I was a much more conventional-looking young man by then (here is a photo from our wedding, in the summer of 1980).  And it wasn't many years after that, before I became engaged in a stubborn (and, alas, probably ultimately futile) holding-action against follicular attrition.

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When 1F was somewhere around 6 or so (thus dating the event to the late 80s, when I'd have been in my early 30s), she was poking around in my desk one day, and found my old freshman ID card from college (reproduced here for your edification and enjoyment; the photo was taken roughly 3-4 months before max-length).

She checked it out for a minute, and couldn't quite wrap her young mind around what it seemed to be saying, that this was, by golly, a photo of her dear ol' dad.  She brought it to me, asking, "Is this a picture of you, Dad?"  When I confirmed that I had, in fact, looked like that in an earlier lifetime, she fell on the floor laughing, and said, "You look like a mommy!"

"Yeah," I answered, sighing, "that's what my dad said, too. . ."

It's Official. . .

Yeef; I am NOT an every-day poster.  I'm not even sure that, back on my old blog, when I posted quite a bit more frequently than I do lately, that I ever posted three days in a row (or five times in a week).  But, you know, stuff keeps happening. . .

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This morning, on my drive in to work, I encountered the first snow of the season.  And it wasn't that thin, wet, almost-rain stuff that you can only tell it's snow 'cuz it makes a little *splat* on your windshield.  These were big flakes, coming down in earnest (and almost horizontally), even accumulating a little on the grass.  Together with the 50-mph wind, it made for a truly, um, interesting driving experience.

Back when I was growing up, Up North, it was actually fairly typical for the first snow to fall within a few days of Halloween, and I recall numerous times as a kid, trick-or-treating in the snow.  But down here in south-central Michigan, where I've spent the last, jeez, almost 40 years, October snow is pretty rare.

I took a glance at the weather map, and it seems that Super-storm Sandy (or Mega-storm, or Storm-of-the-week, or whatever they're calling her) is extending her baleful reach all the way into Michigan.  Some weather-guys were talking about 20-foot waves on Lake Huron; one forecast I saw said 20-to-33-feet.  I kept imagining what that might look like at the breakwater in Lexington, which is maybe five miles from where Jen grew up, and where we've taken the kids swimming on numerous occasions.  I'm guessing a leisurely stroll out to the end of the breakwater is out of the question. . .

That thought reminds me of a story a buddy of mine told me, about the time he was driving home after visiting family in the Upper Peninsula, on the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.  He ended up staying the night in St. Ignace, because the waves were breaking over the north causeway of the Mackinac Bridge.

As I write this, things outside are quite a bit less intense than they were earlier this morning.  The rain/snow has stopped, and the wind has abated to only 25-mph or so.  Hope all my blog-friends in Sandy's path are high and dry, or failing that, at least hunkered down someplace dry, and with a good roof. . .

Well, That Was Quick. . .

(*sigh*)

The World Series is over, and for the second time in the last six years, my Tigers are left wondering what the hell hit them.  The Giants played the whole Series with lightning bolts shooting out of their eyes, and my Tigers. . . didn't.  They just kicked our asses every way they could possibly be kicked, and hats off to 'em.  Not much doubt as to who was the better team for those four games. . .

I won't belabor the things you can read elsewhere.  Our best pitcher got rocked, and our best hitters (especially young Mr. Fielder) struggled.  Frankly, all season long, our hitters, aside from Cabrera and Fielder and Jackson, were disappointing, and prone to long, frustrating slumps.  It was bad timing for them to fall into another of their familiar funks in the World Series, but whatchagonnado?

Our pitching actually wasn't that bad.  Fister and Sanchez were very good, and deserved better from their bat-wielding teammates.  Not to take anything away from the Giant pitchers, but when you hit .159 for the Series, you're not gonna win much.

I don't really mean this as the lame excuse that it's gonna come off as, but, one of these years, I'd like to play one of these things without having to sit for a week before we get there.  It's tough to come back from a week off and jump in against a team. . . well, you know, that lightning-bolt thing. . .

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Anyway, we'll have a couple weeks of post-season awards, and Tigers have a decent shot to win a couple of 'em.  Then we start the process of looking forward to next year, and wondering if we'll be better or worse, or if we can make the playoffs again.  For a World Series team, we've really got quite a few holes in our roster, and it would be nice if a few of the more glaring ones could be upgraded.  But, overall, we've got enough talent to have realistic hopes of being back in the post-season with some moderate regularity.  Perhaps.  And once we get there, who knows?

But for now, baseball season is over, and we will return to our regularly-scheduled programming with the next post. . .

A New PR. . .

All the leaves are down,
And the sky is gray. . .

OK, not quite all of the leaves are down, but about 90% of 'em are, and the ones that are left are mostly all brown and shriveled.  But the sky today was a friendly bright blue, with a few puffy white clouds scattered about.  The temperature topped out just below 50F, so I broke out the sweats for my ride yesterday.

I did 32 miles, bringing my total for the year to 1617, a full eight miles more than I did two years ago.  And still roughly a month left in the riding season, before the snow and ice and cold of winter set in in earnest.  So there's still a decent chance that I could go above 1700 miles for the season, and wouldn't that be cool?

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And things are not going well for my Tigers.  Their ace aside, they've pitched well enough.  Actually, they've pitched REALLY well.  But their bats have utterly deserted them, especially in clutch situations, like bases-loaded, one out.  In a 3-0 hole, it will take a comeback verging on the miraculous (yes, Suldog, I know about your '04 Red Sox; but that's one in how many hundred 7-game series?).  This could be over tomorrow, if we don't start getting a few timely hits.

(*sigh*)

At least my Spartans won. . .

Random Thoughts on Game 1. . .

I really hadn't planned on doing game-by-game commentary on the World Series (and I still don't), but a few thoughts are oozing out of my perfervid brain this morning. . .

First, I feel like I should apologize to my Giant-fan friends - that was not the real Justin Verlander you saw last night.  I think it's safe to say that a week off didn't do happy things for his sharpness.  Truthfully, though, even The Best Pitcher in Baseball has his off-nights; it's just that Game 1 of the World Series is a god-awful time to have one.  His record this season was 17-8.  Sometimes, his hitters didn't hit behind him; sometimes his bullpen left him with a no-decision in a game he should have won.  But he did have a couple games this year (unlike 2011) where he got rocked around a bit.  I'm not old enough, though, to remember the last time he left after four innings.  He has occasionally been prone to getting 'over-geeked' and overthrowing when things go against him.  I think that Pagan's freakish little double with two out in the third flustered him, just a bit (and Scutaro's single was just the dictionary definition of 'clutch').  Then he started trying to throw the ball through the wall, and when he does that, it never goes well for him.  The fourth inning, he was all over the place, and when Zito got the RBI single. . . well, you just throw your hands up and realize it's not gonna be your night. . .

And Pablo Sandoval. . . what can I say?  Did somebody give him an injection of blood from Babe Freakin' Ruth?  This guy hit 12 homers this year?  With 63 RBIs?  No freakin' way!  And his second homer off Verlander was a low-and-away fastball; not exactly a fat pitch.  So now, including the All-Star game, Sandoval's batting line against The Best Pitcher in Baseball is - three plate appearances, two homers and a triple, six RBI.  That's a slugging percentage of 3.667.  I'm sure even Sandy Koufax had guys who were inexplicably hard for him to get out, but that's ridiculous.  I can only echo Verlander himself and say, "Wow!"

But then, it's only one game.  And my Tigers made a whole season out of grinding their way back out of a hole of their own digging.  I'm sure it's already forgotten, and their minds are on tonight's game (at least, they'd better be).  I was a little annoyed at the way so many of the national commentators were saying that it was all over if the Giants beat Verlander in Game 1.  It's not like our other starters are dogmeat; I can believe that they might not exactly be household names around the National League, but Fister, Sanchez and Scherzer are pretty darn good in their own right.  So I'm not remotely conceding defeat.

Besides, I think the Giants are falling into their own trap, jumping out to an early lead in the Series.  They're never gonna get enough elimination games for themselves if they keep playing like this. . .

It's On!

The World Series starts tonight, Game 1 in San Francisco as my Detroit Tigers go against the San Francisco Giants, much beloved of Uncle Skip and others.

We'll see if the six days off between dispatching the (stunningly hapless) New York Yankees and the beginning of the next round translates into 'rusty' or 'well-rested'.  The same thing happened in 2006, and it didn't work to my Tigers' advantage.

We've got the Best Pitcher in Baseball on the mound for us tonight, and the Best Hitter in Baseball (who just happened to win the Triple Crown this year) playing third base for us.  And a few other decent players, besides - our first baseman and center-fielder are pretty darned good, and our other three starting pitchers (NOT named Verlander) are pretty good, too.

That said, the Tigers are far from a perfect team; they're not the '84 Tigers, just cruising through the playoffs on their way to coronation.  Beyond the three guys I just mentioned, our hitting has been, uh, sporadic for most of the season, tho a couple guys have decided to get hot at the best possible time; hopefully, they can keep that going for a few more games.  Our defense isn't very good, either, but when Verlander and Scherzer are striking guys out by the bushel, that might possibly be less of an issue.  And our bullpen has struggled for much of the year; it's a good thing our starters have been so amazing in the post-season, because there's not a lot to inspire confidence once they leave the game.

So we will see.  I don't know that much about the Giants, beyond the fact that their pitching might be just as good as ours (Verlander aside).  I'm told that young Mr. Posey is quite a ballplayer, and of course, there's the matter of that bases-loaded triple that Mr. Sandoval hit off Verlander in the All-Star game.  So I take nothing for granted.

But it's baseball; it's the World Series, and it's the Tigers.  I do intend to enjoy the ride. . .

World Series Bound (Again)

Once again, for the eleventh time in history, and the fourth time in my young life (and the second time in my bloggerly existence), my Tigers are headed to the World Series.  Woo, as they say, Hoo!

I don't know if I can handle this properly, or not; the Tigers, in my lifetime, have been pretty much of a once-every-twenty-years-or-so team, when it comes to the World Series.  For them to make a third post-season appearance (to say nothing of that Game-163 thing in '09), and a second World Series, in six years, just seems sorta, I dunno, extravagant.  I mean, is it our turn again already?  Not, mind you, that I'm complaining. . .

As things turned out, it was the Tigers' unpleasant duty to bring an end to the Oakland A's Feel-Good-Story-of-the-Year in the first round, but not before getting to the winner-take-all 5th game.  But then, Justin Verlander (known in these parts as The Best Pitcher in Baseball, or TBPiB, for short) just kinda squeezed all the life out of the poor A's in the deciding game.  Somewhere along the way, we started noticing that, hey, ALL our starting pitchers are pitching REALLY well; not just Verlander, but Doug Fister, Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez, were just stifling the opposing bats to a pretty incredible degree.  Against the A's, our four starters had a combined Earned-Run-Average (ERA) of 1.30, and only allowed 21 hits in 34-2/3 innings; the A's hit a combined .176 against them.  For those of you who don't follow baseball, or for whom baseball statistics are drooling-stupor-inducing, I'll just say that those are just mind-bogglingly good numbers, and all the moreso against a team that was good enough to make the playoffs, and had won 9 of its last 11 games, and 33 of its last 46, before the playoffs.

After dispatching the A's, we moved on to face the dreaded New York Yankees in the League Championship Series, and our pitching got even better (altho, to hear the New York media tell it, the Yankees were a bunch of mentally-defective degenerates, so the Tigers could hardly help sweeping them away; but those degenerates somehow managed to win 95 games this season).  The Yankees only scored six runs total in four games against the Tigers, and four of those were in a single, epic melt-down of an inning, against our erstwhile one-time closer, who has struggled all year, but most especially in the playoffs.  In 27-1/3 innings, our starters allowed two runs and 13 hits; those are simply ridiculous numbers.

Honestly, it feels a little odd to be sitting here, waiting for the World Series to start, after the season we had this year.  Virtually everyone expected the Tigers to run away with the Central Division this year, especially after signing Prince Fielder to augment what was already a pretty potent offense.  But the team seemed to be playing in molasses all year.  Doug Fister, who had pitched so well for us in 2011, spent the first half or more of the season on and off of the injury list, and Max Scherzer got off to a horrible start.  Our hitting was inconsistent, and maddeningly un-clutch; I can't think of how many times a runner on third base with no outs failed to score, or how many times we hit into double-plays with the bases loaded and one out.  Plus, when our starters pitched well, our bullpen would blow the games at the end.  58 games into the season, the Tigers' record was 26-32, and they were six games behind the division-leading Chicago White Sox.

Eventually, they started to play better, but all season long, it was three steps forward, two steps back.  They'd go on a 13-2 run, and follow it with a 2-6 stretch, followed by a 6-0 run, then 1-5.  As late as September 17, they lost a critical game against the White Sox that left them three games behind with 16 to play.  And on the 23rd, they lost both ends of a doubleheader against the Twins (the freakin' TWINS!), when winning even one of them would have pulled them into a tie for first.  As a fan, it was continuously, maddeningly frustrating.

But the Tigers won eight of their final ten games and surged past the White Sox , who were stumbling just as we were hitting our stride.  At the same time, Miguel Cabrera went on a personal tear of his own, that ended with him winning the Triple Crown, the first hitter since 1967 to accomplish that feat.  We ended up winning the division by three games.

And I recalled thinking that, if we could just make it into the post-season, our pitching was good enough to possibly carry us pretty far.  Little did I know. . .

At the moment, it looks likely that we'll be facing the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, for the fourth time (unless Uncle Skip's Giants can pull off another three-game, come-from-behind miracle).  The Cardinals beat us the last time we were in the Series, in 2006, so there's a certain sentiment in these parts that wants to see the rematch.  But, really, we just want to play the Series against whoever shows up, and, hopefully, win.

It's funny - the first two times I watched the Tigers in the World Series, in '68 and '84, they just kicked ass all season long, and carried it over into the playoffs.  I'm not used to this sneaking-in the last couple days thing.

But - good times to be a Tiger fan.  Good, good times. . .

Go Tigers!!!

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It's actually kinda nice, in a way, that the World Series doesn't start until next Wednesday.  My Spartans play their annual Rivalry Game against our Sister School from down the road this weekend, and it's nice to have a brief break from the Tigers, so we can concentrate all of our passion and energy on the football game for the weekend.  My Spartans have won the last four in a row against the maize-and-blue (well, they call it maize; we call it corn), but this season hasn't gone quite as well for the ol' alma mater.  Not that the Wolver-persons are all that and a bag of chips, but for us to extend our winning streak against them would be a bit of an upset.  We'll see. . .

Go Green!  Go White!  Go Spartans!

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(add, 22 Oct)

(*sigh*)

Well, my Spartans couldn't extend their winning streak over their in-state rivals this past weekend, losing 12-10 on a last-second field goal.  The game was right there for them to win it, but it's just been that kind of season for 'em.  Ah, well; I suppose we have to let 'em win every five years or so, or they won't want to play with us anymore. . .

But hey, maybe there'll be some kind of karmic balance, and it'll bode well for my Tigers in the World Series.  We still don't know who we're gonna play come Wednesday night; Uncle Skip's Giants came back from the brink, and play a deciding Game 7 tonight, the winner of which will be our World Series opponent. . .

Technology and Me

A little while ago, my friend Suldog posted about the first arrival of HIS WIFE'S cell phone within the previously cell-phone-free walls of their house, which provoked a memory or two from my own young life (which is not quite as young as Suldog's, but whatchagonnado?), with which I shall now proceed to regale you all, to the best of my meager ability. . .

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Just to set the introductory levels for this post: my first job out of college, with my freshly-minted engineering degree (the minty-fresh smell of my diploma was an unexpected bonus), was for a wheel company, since I live in Michigan, and here in Michigan, 376% of the state economy is related to automobiles, and automobiles need wheels. When I told folks that I worked as an engineer for a wheel company, they would invariably look at me oddly, and ask something along the lines of, "Really? How much engineering is there in a WHEEL? You make 'em round, right?" Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. How very droll.  Such touching, unsophisticated simplicity. Of course, we made them round.  Any idiot (hell, any sufficiently clever caveman) knows you make 'em round.  The trick is to make them round in stylish and interesting ways; and to make them light and strong at the same time.  But yes, just to forestall it coming up in comment-space, our engineering department took as our informal, in-house motto: "Re-Inventing the Wheel Daily." Just sayin'.

Ever since we got married in 1980, Jen and I have never been techno-gadget trend-setters.  Coincidentally enough, 1980 was also the year of my own personal first exposure to a VCR (even before we got married; not sure if it was VHS or Beta); a buddy of mine recorded the 'Miracle on Ice' hockey game, and a group of us, who hadn't seen the 'original' broadcast, got together to watch his tape.  Which was very cool.  Even as we were sitting there watching, the awareness was creeping through the far back corners of our brains that this could change everything, when it came to how we watched sports on TV.

And speaking of TV, our first TV as a married couple was a 12-inch black-and-white set, for which we still had to walk across the room and turn a dial to change the channel.  When one of our friends was upgrading their own TV, we swapped in their old 13-inch color set, which no longer had a rotary dial to change the channels, but had preset buttons for all the channels, both VHF and UHF, that were available in our area.

We got our first microwave, as well as our first VCR, sometime in the 90s (and not the early 90s, either). It was around the same time that it became hard to find replacement needles for our turntable, forcing us to finally make the transition from 12-inch black-vinyl record albums to casette tapes, just as CDs were arriving in the marketplace to drive out the casettes (but hey, at least we missed 8-tracks).  And we finally made the switch to a cordless land-line phone when our kids kept clothes-lining themselves on the 25-foot cord we got, so Jen could effectively talk on the phone from anywhere on the main floor (and even so, we still kept an old cord-style phone around for things like power outages, which has paid off for us several times).  You want to give these new-fangled technologies time to work the bugs out. . .

I got my first cell phone on a special deal from my car insurance company, back in the 90s (I guess we figured that we should at least get caught up with the waning milennium's gadgetry, before it left), when I started commuting more than 10 minutes (and more than 40 miles one-way) to work. It seemed like a good idea to have some way of calling for help, in case I got stranded by the side of the road, 30 miles from home.  The phone itself was maybe half again as big as a deck of cards, and weighed nearly a pound.  For the first 5 years I owned it, I made about three calls a year on it, only if I had a roadside emergency, which was why I got it in the first place. And I was pretty happy with that.  Calling home to chat?  Why would I want to do that?

Maybe 8 years ago, one of our kids talked us into getting a cell phone 'family plan'. Since, you know, that way we could always be in touch with each other. By that time, Jen and I had lived through enough grief trying to track down our kids, that we found the idea quite appealing.  What s/he didn't say was that nothing FORCED a teen to actually, you know, answer a call from Mom or Dad, especially if, say, they weren't where they told us they'd be on, say, a Friday night.  We also quickly became aware that our teen having a cell phone gave them ready access to more people than just their parents; and it gave other people than their parents ready access to them.  In fact, their ready accessibility to the parental units was actually quite far down their list of priorities.  One morning, one of our kids came to the breakfast table dragging his butt behind him in a wheelbarrow (in case anyone is in doubt, the whole 'wheelbarrow' thing is figurative speech).  When we asked him why he was so tired and dragged-out, he told us that a girl from school had called him at 3AM.  What on earth did she want to talk about at 3AM??  "She said she was horny, and asked me if I wanted to come over to her house."  As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up (and I'll confess that there was also a part of me that wondered where the hell those girls were when I was in school).  We were at least gratified to know that he had declined her offer.  After that, we instituted a policy of collecting the kids' cell phones at bedtime.

The company I work for has legitimate concerns relating to 'industrial espionage', and for many years, we were forbidden to bring into the office any cell phone which included a camera.  Which, in the fullness of time, made it a bit difficult for me, when I became eligible for an 'update' of my cell phone.  I basically had to walk into the phone store and say, I need a phone that doesn't have a camera.  Which would elicit a pained expression on the face of the salesperson, following which, they would commence searching in various obscure cabinets and drawers, to see if they still had any such phones in the building.  Then, a couple years ago, the company came through and removed all our desk phones, issuing us cell phones to replace them.  Cell phones with cameras in them.  When I asked my boss about the incongruity of issuing us camera phones while forbidding us to bring our own camera phones into the office, he smiled and shrugged and said that the company couldn't get non-camera phones anymore, and that the policy had been changed.  So the next time I'm due for a new phone, I'll have a few more available options.

Working, as I do, in an engineering office, a non-trivial number of my co-workers are bona-fide techno-geeks.  I still can't get used to the phenomenon of walking down the hall and encountering someone animatedly talking to him/herself, only to discover, as I draw nearer, that they're talking on their bluetooth.  There just seems to be something vaguely inhuman about that. . .

By now, we've mostly adapted to our cell phones, and in many ways, we'd have a hard time living without them now (it actually turns out that confiscating a recalcitrant teen's cell phone can be a very effective disciplinary measure).  Our kids have mostly trained us that IMing them generally works better than, you know, actually calling them.  I'm not sure exactly what that portends; I have a vague suspicion that it's somehow pernicious in the long run, but it's what works for now.  Perhaps in the future, we'll all just have micro-chips imbedded in our scalps, and we'll only need to think at our kids, dispensing with any need for actual verbal conversation whatsoever.  But I sure as hell hope not. . .

Regrets. . .

That I never took a photo of the situation I'm about to describe to you here (which, alas, no longer exists) . . .

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In Our Town, there used to be a large Planned Parenthood clinic at the edge of an even larger open-air mall.  It's sort of a giant strip mall, on the 'plan' of those huge outlet malls, with shops all around the perimeter, and a massive parking lot in the middle.  The PP clinic was in one of the 'strip' buildings that formed the southern edge of the rectangle, and was actually on the 'outside' of the mall (ie, on the side facing away from the huge central parking lot).  Right next to the PP clinic, to the east (ie, to its right as you faced the common front) was a much smaller veterinary clinic.

Thus (and it was especially prominent after dark), an observer would see a large, brightly-lit 'Planned Parenthood' sign, leading the eye smoothly and naturally to the vet clinic's sign, which was considerably smaller, but no less brightly-lit, saying, 'Spay/Neuter Surgery'.

You can't make this stuff up. . .

Go Get 'Em, Tigers!

OK, I know that there are not so many avid baseball fans among my readership, but you'll indulge me for one short post, won't you?  'Rejoice with those who rejoice,' and all that, right?

My beloved Detroit Tigers are division champions again this year.  Taken together with their division championship from last year, it's the first time that they've made the post-season in consecutive years since 1934-35, in the years of Hank Greenberg and Charlie Gehringer and Mickey Cochrane, and lots of other guys whose playing careers were over many years before I was born.  Honestly, the whole 'post-season' thing is a little bit lame; up through 1968 (coincidentally, the Tigers won the World Series that year, transporting my 12-year-old soul on clouds of bliss), only one team from each league qualified for the 'post-season', which in those days was simply called the World Series.  From '69 thru '93, the American and National Leagues were both split into two divisions, and each league had a 'Championship Series' between its divison winners, and that winner moved on to the World Series; so there were two rounds of 'post-season' in those years.  From '95 to the present day, four teams from each league qualify for three rounds of post-season playoffs.  So, whereas in 1968, two of 20 major-league teams qualified for the 'post-season', now eight of 30 do.  So, qualifying for the 'post-season' isn't quite as hard to do as it once was.  But then, the only way to get to the World Series is to make the post-season first, so there you go. . .

At this stage, my own feeling about the season is more one of relief than exultation.  From the time the team signed Prince Fielder to a contract last winter, the expectation was more or less that the team, which had run away from the division in 2011, had just gotten significantly better, and 2012 would be something of a cakewalk to the division title.  It, uh, didn't quite work out that way.  Lots of the guys who'd had good years in 2011 didn't come close to duplicating them in 2012.  The team's hitting, which had been expected to be an over-arching strength, struggled for most of the season, especially when it came to the kind of timely, clutch hitting that contributes to scoring runs.  The pitching staff was disrupted by numerous injuries, and the bullpen, which had been amazingly solid in 2011, was considerably shakier this year; they lost way too many games in which they had a lead in the late innings, because the relief pitchers couldn't hold them.  And the team's fielding, which hadn't exactly been stellar before, became very shaky indeed, with the addition of Fielder at first base, which necessitated Miguel Cabrera (of whom, more later) moving to third base.  So lots of batted balls which last year's team would have fielded, wound up getting through the infield for base hits.

That's a lot of 'baseball talk' (and I am grateful for those of you who are still reading, this far into the post) for saying that it was a long, frustrating summer, watching the Tigers struggle and stumble when we had expected them to win, and win easily.  As recently as September 23, they lost both games of a doubleheader to the lowly Minnesota Twins, to stay securely in second place.  Over the course of the full season, they were actually in first place for something like 40 days (and probably 30 of those were in April and early May).  But just in the nick of time, they put together a late run (and it didn't hurt that their main competition, the Chicago White Sox, went into a tailspin at the same time), and clinched the division title this past Monday.

(*heavy sigh*)

So now, they're in the playoffs, and once you're in the playoffs, anyone can win.  They face the Oakland A's in the first round of the playoffs, starting this Saturday.  The Tigers' pitching, especially their starting pitching, is solid, starting with Justin Verlander, arguably the best pitcher in the game right now, and it has been getting even stronger in recent weeks.  And strong pitching is about the most important thing a team can have in the post-season.  Our hitting is capable of putting up impressive scores, but whether it will or not remains to be seen.

But you can't win if you don't get to play, and just making the playoffs is the key first step.

So, congratulations to my Tigers.  From here on in, we will see what we will see. . .

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I also need to say something about Miguel Cabrera, the Tigers' third baseman.  He is arguably the best hitter in the game right now (and gee - if we have the best hitter and the best pitcher, how is it, again, that we just barely scraped into the playoffs?).  But this season, he did something truly rare and remarkable - he led the American League in all three of the 'classical' hitting stats - Batting Average, Home Runs, and Runs Batted In - which, taken all together, are called the Triple Crown.  Winners of the Triple Crown are quite rare; the last Triple Crown winner was the Boston Red Sox' Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, 45 years ago (oddly enough, the Baltimore Orioles' Frank Robinson also won the Triple Crown the year before Yaz did).  Heck, it's noteworthy when someone leads his league in even two of the Triple Crown categories the same year (especially if one of them is Batting Average; Homers and RBI tend to go together much more often).  Since 1901, there have only been 14 Triple Crown seasons, by 12 hitters, and all of them except Cabrera (for the simple, obvious reason that he's still playing) are in the Hall of Fame.  So, this is a Big Deal, and it is our privilege here in Michigan to get to see Miguel Cabrera hit every day, during the baseball season.

As a personal aside, last night was one of the more interesting nights of following baseball that I've ever experienced.  Cabrera went into last night's games leading in all three statistical categories, but his leads in both batting average and home runs were slim enough that he could have been passed by the second-place hitters.  In home runs, the Texas Rangers' Josh Hamilton was only one behind Cabrera, so I brought up the live-game summary of the Rangers' game on my computer, to see if Hamilton hit any homers.  He didn't, so I switched to the Los Angeles Angels' game to check on Mike Trout, their young hitting phenom.  If Trout had a 4-for-4 game, he could pass Cabrera if Cabrera went 0-for-4.  So, when Trout made an out on his second plate appearance, the Triple Crown was essentially sewn up.  Shortly after that, Tigers manager Jim Leyland removed Cabrera from their game, allowing him a curtain call in front of the fans in Kansas City (and a bit of rest in an otherwise meaningless game), who showed real class, recognizing what they were seeing.  There was a bit of late heartburn when the Yankees' Curtis Granderson hit a second homer in their game with the Red Sox, leaving him tied for second in homers with the aforementioned Mr. Hamilton.  But Granderson came out of the game soon afterward, leaving Miggy's crown in place.  It was really kinda fun to watch it all unfold.

So, congratulations to Miguel Cabrera.  The likes of him don't come around very often. . .