| 07 October 2006 Greatest Living Tiger Al Kaline is the greatest living Tiger. I make that bald assertion calmly and without bombast. It is simply true. Al's position in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown is secure, along with his non-steroid enhanced statistics: I twenty-two seasons, he was both the youngest and older player in the American league. He wears a World Series ring for the miracle 1968 victory over St Louis. He went to the plate well over 11,000 times, and finished with a batting average of .297. He was a complete player, always steady, with an outstanding slugging percentage and a glove of gold. He was inducted into the Hall in 1980. To me, he is the Tigers, since he started playing the game at the old Briggs Stadium in Detroit when I was just a baby, and he finished he career the year after I graduated from college. He was asked what he thought about the dreaded Yankees coming to town for the play-offs to determine who is going to the American League Championship. He said the Yankees' lineup was the best he had ever seen, but that there was an awful lot of pressure on them. I fell asleep in my brown chair during the top of the eighth inning, just as I was beginning to feel that at least for this moment there might be a challenger to Al's mantle as the Greatest Living Tiger. Kenny Rogers was hammering the Yankees, and the last thing I remember about Game Three was six runs for Detroit and nothing at all for the Goliaths from New York. Rogers looks like the ballplayers from Kaline's era. He had not beaten the Yankees since 1993, but last night he was untouchable. Alex Rodriguez, the fabled A-Rod, said he was producing heat like Sandy Koufax. I did not find any of that out until after I walked the dog this morning in the pre-dawn. My thoughts were swirling with the fog and chill mist. It is play-off season, and it is October. The dog liked it, since he has a fur coat, and I shrugged in my jacket to stay warm. It is good that there are rhythms in the world that have nothing at all to do with the shredding of the world order, or madmen with weapons of mass destruction. Three years ago the Tigers were an abomination of a baseball team. This year they appear to be contenders. One thing I can say about those blue-collar boys from the rustbelt town on the river, they always show up every couple decades and win it all. Maybe this is the year. We will see if there is a contender to challenge for the title of the Greatest Living Tiger. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra Important Correction to Multi-Path: Our Ombudsman reports that the switchboard lit up with indignant readers immediately after publication of the essay “Multi-Path,” (copyright 2006 Socotra Enterprises Worldwide). Former representative Gary Condit was erroneously described as “R-CA.” He actually was a fiscally and socially conservative Democrat, elected seven times to Congress from the 18th district of California, which encompasses the northern San Joaquin Valley. Management should have remembered him as a Blue Dog from his days in the House Intelligence Committee, where Vic recalls seeing him in mid-2002 after the world changed. There had been rumors that as a member of the Gang of Five in the California House he had a plan to ally himself with the Republicans to topple powerful Democratic Speaker Willie Brown. Although the effort failed, it may account for part of the confusion. Of note, Condit appeared in the 1988 film "Return of the Killer Tomatoes" as a pizzeria patron, a role which further scrambled his political affiliation. Management regrets the error and apologizes to the Republican Party and Mr. Condit's former constituents |