Detroit: Motown Or Titletown?

October 15th, 2006

By: CRS Staff

While watching the raucous celebration by the young Detroit Tigers on Saturday, a seemingly obvious question suddenly occurred to me.  When exactly did Detroit, our Rust Belt and fellow fly-over neighbor to the north, become Titletown?  Sure, the Tigers still need to win four more games versus the Class AAAA/NL Champions, but when that inevitably happens they will become the third different (and perhaps most surprising) Detroit team to win a major sports championship since 2002.  You heard me correctly, that's three different teams, not one dynastic team who pulled off three of their own.  That sort of obscene good fortune might make Cleveland fans happy enough to grant a full pardon to Art Modell.  How surprising was this Tigers run, you ask?  Since 1995, the Tigers have won a whopping 238 fewer games than our Indians over that same span, a ridiculous average of nearly 20 less wins per season.  Yet, I don't need to tell you who won't be representing the AL in the World Series.  Bless that, boys.

In case you're wondering why I'm so interested in another city's sports triumphs, there's a reason - I married into a Detroit family.  After Saturday night's dramatic pennant-clinching victory my wife and I figured out that in our lifetimes (we were both mid-70's babies) her Detroit teams have combined to win seven championships, and are now a 107-mph Joel Zumaya fastball from #8.  In other words, I might as well have married a Yankee fan.  For those of you counting in your head that's one Tigers championship in '84, three Pistons titles in '89, '90 & '04, and three more Red Wings titles for good measure in '97, '98 & '02 (yes, rumor has it there is still an underground professional hockey league somewhere).  Two of those Detroit teams were actually so accomplished and blessed with good health and fortune that they won championships in CONSECUTIVE seasons, which I'm told by my in-laws is commonly referred to as winning 'Back-To-Back' titles (?).  Hell, not that anyone's counting, but even their WNBA team wins titles for crying out loud (the Shock won in '03, and again in '06).  The city of Detroit has produced so much sports excellence they can almost be forgiven for Kid Rock and the Chevy Citation.

Yes, we all know the Indians were supposed to be the young upstarts from the AL Central this season, the ones with just the right combination of young and old pitching, and a batting order so balanced they didn't require one guy to carry the team in October.  That was before we realized Paul Byrd, Guillermo Mota, Jason Johnson and Jason Michaels wouldn't make us forget the 2005 versions of Kevin Millwood, Bob Howry, Scott Elarton & Coco Crisp, respectively (by the way, that's the same Mota who is now the top set-up man for the NLCS Mets...and you wondered why I called the NL 'AAAA' in the first paragraph).  I can only imagine what must have been going through Mark Shapiro's head as he watched Detroit's Carlos Guillen, he of the failed Omar Vizquel trade, hit .571 in the Divisional Series and, through the ALCS, hit safely in every postseason game but one (I picture Shapiro on Saturday hurling his Starbucks double-foam latte at his plasma TV during the 6th inning, storming out of the room after Guillen got on base for the 14th time in October).

Oh well, I guess we've all been here before, haven't we?  Remember when our Browns went to three out of four AFC Championship Games in the 80's, and we all thought we were going to stay among the NFL's elite?  Or when Magic Johnson predicted our Cavaliers would be the 'Team of the 90's'?  Or when the Indians made their perennial postseason runs from 1995 through 2001, when a World Series title was all that was missing from John Hart's resume?  Detroit has titles, we have 'wait till next year' stamped all over our sports memory.  And you don't need to be clocked in the head with a Zumaya fastball to figure out which is the better situation to be in.