They could be rivals. Maybe even should be, considering the history they share.
– “Ground ball to short, hold on, Al Cowens runs out to the mound instead of to first. What the heck is he doing?”
– “He’s nothing but a weasel and a yes man. Oh, yeah? Well, he’s a punk manager.”
– “Two outs in the ninth, Wilcox still has a perfect game–and here’s the pitch to Hairston.”
– “Uh, oh, Parque hits Palmer. All hell is going to break loose now.”
– “And the fans are dousing Robert Fick with beer.”
– “Stick around, folks, we’re going to blow up some disco records between games of the doubleheader.”
Over the years, a lot of weird stuff has taken place in games between the Tigers and White Sox. Stuff about grudges, about fights, stuff about beer and music.
It hasn’t all been about baseball.
This week it finally will be about baseball–or most likely will be, because the Tigers are in first place in the American League Central and the Sox are in second. Plus, it’s July, so it’s not “still early.”
There are those who don’t look at the White Sox as rivals.
“A rivalry has to be something personal,” Tigers closer Todd Jones said. “We don’t have a rival except ourselves. We’re our own rival.
“We haven’t done anything in 15 years, so there’s been no reason for anyone to take notice of us. All this time, the Tigers have been trying to be legitimate enough to warrant a rival. But I don’t think it would take much to make it a rivalry.”
There are those, however, who believe the pennant race begins in earnest Tuesday night with the first game of a three-game series at Comerica Park between the White Sox and Tigers.
There are those who also believe this is the biggest series for the Tigers since 1987–when the Tigers and Blue Jays headed down the stretch and Kirk Gibson said in Toronto, “We could be setting the biggest bear trap of all time.”
And there are those who could be right in what they think on the matter because it hasn’t been every day that first place has met second place in Detroit.
It hasn’t been every year.
It hasn’t been–period.
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Not only that, the final decade at Tiger Stadium wasn’t exactly pennant-packed either.
“Let’s put it in perspective,” Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge said. “The biggest series before this, in this ballpark, was when we were trying not to finish with 120 losses. Now to be fighting to be extremely on top, you compare the two.
“You decide which one you like better.”
What makes it spicier, of course, is the fact that it’s the Tigers and White Sox, instead of some team with which the Tigers have a milder history.
Whether the current rosters know it or not, the Tigers and Sox have a past of not liking each other–and showing it. Jones knows it. He was fined $750 for his part in the brawl that took place on April 22, 2000, at Comiskey Park.
Magglio Ordonez knows it, too, because as a member of the White Sox, he was suspended five games for the same altercation.
That was the brawl that resulted in suspensions totaling 82 games for 16 members of the Tigers and White Sox.
“It was a good one,” Jones said. “Best one I’ve been in.”
Actually, it was two brawls. After getting hit by a pitch, in apparent retaliation for Jeff Weaver hitting Carlos Lee earlier, Dean Palmer of the Tigers charged pitcher Jim Parque.
“Palmer was the wrong guy to hit,” Jones said.
The fight spread into right field, where Fick got drenched with beer by the fans–while beckoning to them, as he said back then, “to bring it on.”
Two innings later, it all broke out again when two more Tigers got hit by pitches. Although he’d been ejected, Palmer came storming out of the Tigers’ clubhouse to get back in the action.
“The bottom line is we won the game and killed them,” Parque said at the time. “I hope they have enough players so we can beat them again.”
Such talk led to speculation that another fight would erupt the next time the two teams met, but it didn’t.
The stiffest suspensions handed out were to Palmer, eight games; White Sox manager Jerry Manuel, eight games; and Tigers coach Juan Samuel, 15 games.
The Tigers have had more altercations with the White Sox than any team in the Sparky Anderson-and-later era, however.
There was the bench-clearing fracas precipitated in 1980 when the late Al Cowens, then a Tigers outfielder, charged Ed Farmer, now a Sox broadcaster, instead of running out a grounder to short.
Cowens’ jaw had been broken the previous season by a Farmer pitch, and this was the way he chose to get even.
There also had been a brush-back incident involving pitcher LaMarr Hoyt of the White Sox and Alan Trammell, then the shortstop of Tigers–after which Dick Tracewski of the Tigers and Tony La Russa, the manager at the time of the Sox, did some verbal jousting.
Tracewski called La Russa a “punk manager.” La Russa labeled Tracewski “a weasel and a yes man.”
It wasn’t pleasant.
Disco Demolition Night in 1979 at Comiskey Park resulted in a forfeit by the Sox, not a brawl, but the one-out-to-go disappearance of Milt Wilcox’s perfect game on Jerry Hairston’s single in 1983 resulted only in disappointment.
Both events are part of the colorful history between the two teams.
History isn’t required for the class of 2006, however. The Tigers and White Sox aren’t looking back, let alone that far back, and they probably won’t spend much time looking ahead either.
That’s because, in the one-game-at-a-time world of contending, there is Tuesday’s game to be won. Followed in due course by thoughts of Wednesday night’s game.
But are the Tigers excited about this series? Are they looking forward to it? Sure they are.
“We’re not going to take it too much differently,” Inge said, “but everyone knows how big a series this is. They’re lying to you if they say it doesn’t mean anything.”
It’s more a must series for the White Sox, though. The Tigers still would be in first if they got swept. The Sox would be 7 1/2 back if they got swept.
Big deal either way, right? Playoff atmosphere?
“No, I don’t think so,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. “They are three tough games on the schedule, but I don’t think anybody is going to separate anything.
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“It’s going to be a race all year long.”
Which is what a manager should say.
“It’s his job to downplay it,” Inge said, “and he does a very good job of it. He keeps us level-headed. We prepare for one game at a time, but it’s human nature: We have the White Sox coming in. We want to beat them.
“We really do.”