The Dead End in Detroit

A nation of baseball fans is watching the Detroit Tigers right now, and that nation is laughing its collective ass off. In between the standard Bostonian curse-related neuroticism and the perennial deliberations about why not to give Alex Rodriguez the Most Valuable Player award despite the fact that he's the most valuable player in the league, the 2003 Tigers are chasing after the title of Worst Team in Modern Baseball History. And, unfortunately for me and others who have been brought up to the masochism that is Detroit Tiger fandom, they're pouring it on as we enter the final week of the season.

The previous record-holders were the 1962 New York Mets, an expansion team that featured nearly washed-up Richie Ashburn, future pitching coach Roger Craig, and several other players whose names have entered the annals of all-time ineptitude thanks to the strategically deployed wit of manager Casey Stengel. They won 40 games and lost 120, with two rainouts not made up, presumably due to general apathy.

That general apathy is a point of acute concern to our Tigers, who are trying to at least better the Mets' record but currently boast a record of 38 wins and 117 losses, with seven games to go in the season. They have earned every loss. We have no outstanding players, no good players, precious few average players, and several players whose badness has been simply astonishing. We have a bunch of young players who could develop into good or adequate major leaguers, but no one who shows promise of greatness or even excellence. We have the first twenty-game loser in 20 years in Mike Maroth, and he hasn't even pitched as badly as Jeff Suppan has for the Red Sox; that should give you an idea about our offense. We're paying left fielder Bobby Higginson $11 million this year to be the worst player at his position in the major leagues. The only reason I'm not calling Higgy the worst player in baseball this year, period, is that he has such stiff competition from his teammates. The team has found bizarre and baroque ways to lose along the way to challenging this longstanding milestone; click here for a painfully thorough summary.

Blame for this situation can be laid at the doorstep of former general manager Randy Smith, whose record of overpaying for deteriorating mediocrity, drafting impressive physical specimens with no knowledge of how to, you know, play baseball, and refusing to acknowledge the talent of youngsters like Frank Catalanotto and Phil Nevin before trading them to the four winds may be unrivaled. Mike Ilitch, who made his billion selling America nasty-tasting pizza, kept him employed. Now the demonstrably competent Dave Dombrowski has taken over the general manager's office, but it'll take a while to repair the infrastructure destroyed during Smith's tenure.

Alan Trammell, the best player on the great Tigers teams of the 80s, has had to endure the managership this year. Tram was my hero as a young fan, and even signed a couple baseball cards I sent him; he's a hard-working, upright, smart man whose heart is tattooed with the Olde English D. Watching him bear up under this astonishing badness is painful. Nevertheless, he's never had a public tantrum about his team's play, unlike Phillies manager Larry Bowa, even though the Tigers actually deserve someone's wrath. He preaches patience and teaching and imparting knowledge, and I'm sure in most situations it would be a successful philosophy. He just doesn't have the mental or physical talent on this team to make it work.

In that regard, some note that Dombrowski traded Mark Redman, our best starting pitcher of 2002, and let Rob Fick, one of our best hitters of that year, depart via free agency. Both men have played well in their new homes. However, what's the difference, really, between (say) 43 wins and 38 wins right now in terms of getting the Tigers back to the World Series? (And I would like to remind all the Red Sox fans out there that 1935, 1945, 1968 and 1984 are all way more recent than 1918.)

In terms of present embarrassment, though, there's a big difference indeed. For some reason, the word "losingest" has been allowed to worm its way into the language to refer to having the most losses in some category; for the Tigers to avoid being the "losingest" team in modern major league history, they would have to win five of their last nine games, giving us a final record of 43-119. (The reason we keep having to say "modern," incidentally, is that the 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20–134 after their owners bought the Brooklyn Superbas and transferred all the Spiders' best players to the BK. Look for Carl Pohlad and George Steinbrenner to try to overturn the rule that presently forbids owners from doing this.)

Alan Trammell, a winning ballplayer if ever there was one, does not deserve to be tainted by association with The Worst Team in Modern Baseball History. But — as much as I wish this wasn't true — his players sure do. What can we root for?

Those two rainouts give us an out: The Tigers should go 3–4 in their final seven. This would give them a final record of 41–121. While we would then have the most losses in modern major league history, we would not have the worst winning percentage in modern major league history; due to those rainouts, the Mets come in at .250, while the Bengals would eke out a .253 percentage. (And Detroit wouldn't even be close to the super-pathetic .235 of the 1916 Philiadelphia Athletics.)

This seemingly trivial distinction would nevetheless mean Tram's managing had given the Tigers a better chance to win every time they went out than at least a few teams. It would mean that the Tigers themselves would know that they had nevertheless produced a truly loserlicious season. It would let Dombrowski press for more improvements and let Ilitch know that he might need to spend some money on actual good players rather than on Bobby Higginson. And, most of all, it would confuse the nation of baseball fans that is presently occupied by snickering at our plight. Anything to cut off the laughs for a little while when I'm wearing my Olde English D cap.

But, of course, we've lost nine in a row and looked as bad as we've looked all year doing it. And so, in a season in which everyone connected with the Tigers has had to shed much dignity, we're probably not even going to get a fig leaf by the time the final weak grounder trickles into the opposition's glove. Wait 'till next year, though: We might keep our losses down to double digits. Maybe. I hope so, anyway, for Tram's sake.

We went 43 and 119 after going on a streak the last week of the season. The streak was greatly aided by the fact that we were playing the Minnesota Twins, who had clinched the division and were putting essentially a Double-A team on the field. It was pathetic, even more pathetic than actually achieving the title of The Worst Team in Modern Baseball History would have been. This whole season has been all about getting my hopes up and then dashing them mercilessly.

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