One fall day in 2003, I inserted a VHS tape into my recorder and programmed it to record WGN during class. It was very important to see this particular double header between the Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates. I came home, rewound my tape, and watched with excitement as the Pirates’ Jose Hernandez grounded into a 6-4-3 double play, ending the game and clinching the NL Central division for the Cubs.

What a time to be alive. The Cubs were headed to the playoffs with Sammy Sosa’s big bat and the “Chicago Heat” duo of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood! I passed the Addison stop every day on the Red Line. Such a fun team and fan base. Wow! The stadium, the long wait between World Series wins. Drinking beer in Wrigleyville. Yes, so many fantastic traditions … that I had adopted not longer than 3 months prior.

As blue-and-red Cubs fever swirled around me, the actual team I grew up a fan of—the Detroit Tigers–was still in the back of my mind. The Tigers were an astronomically bad team in 2003, going 43-119, the worst record in the last 60 years. Not a single player on that team batted over .300, and Mike Maroth lost 21 games in what is regarded as one of the poorest seasons by any major league pitcher in history. Cecil Fielder was not walking through that tunnel. For that matter, not even Tony Clark was walking through that tunnel.

My proximity to the Cubs and their fans during college was a perfect distraction from the total abyss of the Tigers, and 2003 was the first time I considered abandoning them altogether. Many excuses abounded: the Cubs were a NL team and did not conflict with having an AL allegiance (this of course is silly); and the Cubs’ Single-A minor league franchise was the Lansing Lugnuts, arguably my true home team (this of course is also silly).

My proximity to the Cubs and their fans during college was a perfect distraction from the total abyss of the Tigers, and 2003 was the first time I considered abandoning them altogether.

Any notion of switching teams came to a crashing halt less than 3 weeks later, when a man attending a playoff game against the Florida Marlins stuck his hand out and interfered with Moises Alou’s attempt to catch a foul ball. The Cubs went on to lose the game, and the series (which they would have anyway!), and this poor individual was forced into hiding by the screaming baby fan base that I briefly admired. If you’re a born-and-raised Cubs fan, I understand the impetus to put the Steve Bartman Incident behind you, but for me, as a newcomer, it was too much.

Over the last 19 years, the Tigers have had ups and downs, and continuing to be a fan outside of their (admittedly broadly defined) home market has usually meant staying abreast of team developments, watching nationally televised games when I can, and following their record. They strung together an AL pennant run in 2006 while I lived in the Milwaukee Brewers home market, and I had fellow Tiger fan classmates with me to enjoy seeing them win one game in the World Series thanks to Kenny Rogers cheating.

Being an expatriated Tigers fan also means catching the gang when they’re in town. This was especially true for about five years when I was in Minnesota Twins territory. The Twins are an AL Central rival, and their success often came at the expense of Detroit’s, which coworkers loved to rub this in my face. In 2009, the Twins and Tigers played a one-game tiebreaker for the AL Central that went to extra innings. The Tigers could have taken the lead in the game, because at the top of the 12^th inning, a fastball brushed Brandon Inge’s jersey, which should have resulted in Inge taking a base. It was not called. The Twins went on to win the game and advance to the playoffs. So, you know, that was bullshit, and I was never going to become a Twins fan.

The most recent string of legitimate Tigers teams came not long thereafter. I was in the Twins market during the 2011-2013 seasons, which all were very good for the Tigers and produced another unsuccessful World Series appearance. 

I found myself in Los Angeles Dodgers territory in 2015, obviously outside of the Midwest and thus among a dwindling number of Tigers fans. The Dodgers were very good, and the siren of NL success began tempting me in a way I hadn’t experienced since the fateful 2003 season. I drove past Dodger Stadium almost every day on the way to work, and the Tigers seemed both geographically and emotionally remote–it did not help that they had returned to the basement of the AL central. The Dodgers lost two straight World Series, one to Justin Verlander and the Houston Astros. I was happy for Justin Verlander that he won a title, even if it wasn’t with the Tigers. I was happier that Verlander won than I was disappointed for the Dodgers. 

Being in Dodgers territory until about 2020 also produced a classic generational conundrum: What team is my son going to root for? Towards the end of the 2019 season, he attended a game with his cousins and me. He wore a Dodgers jersey. Like all children with parents who force sports allegiances on them, this was a break from the usual wardrobe of dad’s preferred team gear (in his case, toddler-sized Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons paraphernalia). I wondered if my dad ever asked the same questions (“is he going to be a Baltimore Orioles fan?”). I wondered when my son would be old enough to ask me why I appear in so many photos wearing a hat with a heavily stylized “D” on it. Does being a Tigers fan mean that I foist the allegiance onto him? Is that even possible? 

Does being a Tigers fan mean that I foist the allegiance onto him? Is that even possible? 

(The answer of course is that he is a human with the right of self-determination and can and will do whatever he damn well pleases. He can be agnostic to my teams or not. He can root for the Dodgers because they win a lot. He can root for the Angels because they have Shohei Ohtani.) 

I might at least have a chance to take him to a Tigers game, because I’m now back in AL territory, in the Mariners market. In 2021, as baseball slowly returned from its fanless pandemic state, being a self-professed Tigers fan meant that I got an invite to a sparsely populated game at T-Mobile Park between Detroit and Seattle. It was the first time I’d seen Detroit play a game in person since living in Minneapolis. I saw other Tigers fans and I talked to an usher about Al Kaline. Detroit won and I went home happy that I got to spend time with a friend and see my team in person.

I might be doing the bare minimum to keep my Tigers fan card, but it’s too late to do anything differently, and fewer totally trivial things are more comforting.

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