Zumaya Has Simple, Yet Difficult Choice to Make

They came to Lakeland six Februarys ago—two restless kid pitchers already fed up with the bus rides and playing in leagues referenced by the frequency of the letter “A.” One was 21 years old, the other 23.

The Tigers were still not over the nightmare of 2003, when they lost 119 games. Management had canned sacrificial lamb manager Alan Trammell, giving Tram the ziggy once their use for him dissipated.

Trammell was the transitional manager and Tigers hero, used by the team to navigate through treacherous waters until an infusion of genuine big league talent arrived. Then Trammell, never given a chance of winning, would be cashiered and another, more experienced manager could be brought in.

Jim Leyland was that new manager in 2006. Older, more experienced, grizzled—that cliche word.

The grizzled (ah!) Leyland was effusive in his praise of his two young guns—the 21-year-old Joel Zumaya and the 23-year-old Justin Verlander, two right-handed fireballers.

But would the praise be enough to keep them on the 25-man roster that would be heading north in April? One was a reliever. The other, a starter. Would they stay, or would they play for Toledo?

Leyland, with a wink to the media, held off on telling Zumaya and Verlander whether they had made the club until the last minute before the 25-man list had to be submitted. In a devilishly sadistic way, Leyland enjoyed watching his kid pitchers squirm. It was all in good fun—for the skipper.

Then the news came. Zumaya and Verlander would both be breaking camp with the big league team. No more bus rides, lousy food and bumpy infields for them.

Neither pitcher made Leyland’s decision look foolish. Zumaya made the seventh inning—the seventh inning—fun again, blazing 100 mph fastballs past big league hitters. Verlander showed amazing composure as a starter, also with a blazing fastball among his repertoire.

The two young guns helped lead the Tigers to the 2006 World Series. Verlander was the official AL Rookie of the Year. Zumaya was probably someone’s ROY, somewhere. He might have been the fans’, for sure, who were enamored with his triple digits on the radar gun at Comerica Park, even if it was trumped up on occasion (shhh).

Now it’s 2012 and Verlander has continued on the path to greatness, entering his seventh season as a big league starter. His accomplishments by age 29 are mind-boggling.

And Zumaya?

The words screamed at me as I read my Sunday paper.

“Zumaya lost for season,” was included in the headline.

It was another slug in the gut, even though Zumaya was no longer a Tiger and instead a member of the rival Minnesota Twins, who signed him to an incentive-filled, one-year deal this winter.

I still felt sick for him, even if he was in an enemy camp.

More elbow trouble for Zumaya—after just 13 pitches during a workout over the weekend.

The prognosis is of the bottom line variety: Tommy John surgery; no ifs, ands or buts about it.

It’s either that, or retirement. The options have boiled down to those for the 27-year-old Zumaya.

Twenty-seven!

Who retires at age 27? Not even a punch drunk boxer does that.

Zumaya, reports say, will take a day or two to discuss his future with his family, which is the only faction of people he ought to discuss it with.

The options are simple, but also incredibly difficult to wrestle with.

Do the surgery and put himself through another exhaustive, long rehab, or hang up his mitt.

That’s it.

Zumaya, it is said, is intrigued by those pitchers who have found success after Tommy John surgery—and older pitchers at that. But he’s also unsure whether he has another long rehab left in him, both physically and mentally.

Well, of course he’s unsure.

Joel Zumaya has been coming back from one thing or another since 2007.

His last big league pitch came, ironically, in Minnesota in the summer of 2010, when he broke his elbow in a frightening and sickening scene.

On pitch number 13—yeah, 13 (how appropriate)—in his first official throwing session of spring training for the Twins, Zumaya felt pain. He walked off the mound, maybe for good.

Afterward, Twins GM Terry Ryan said of signing Zumaya, “It was a risk. It didn’t work out.”

Note that Ryan spoke in past tense, and in certainty—that Zumaya was through, done.

We’ll see in a couple days whether Ryan was premature in his comments, or dead on.

What different paths that were taken by the two young kids who showed up to Tigers camp in 2006, eh?

Will Success Spoil Tigers’ Rock Star Verlander?

Classify this under the “Time really flies, doesn’t it?” department.

Justin Verlander is about to begin his seventh big-league baseball season. You heard me. Seventh. But that should be of no bother to Verlander, who’s approached his career as if he was trying to experience everything it can offer before age 30.

It’s as if Verlander, the Tigers‘ ace, came to Lakeland six Februaries ago armed with a bucket list—and age 30 was the drop-dead date, so to speak.

Win Rookie of the Year. Done.

Pitch in the playoffs. Done.

Pitch in a World Series. Done.

Make the All-Star team. Done.

Pitch a no-hitter. Done, and done—and almost done a couple more times.

Win the Cy Young award. Done.

Win a League MVP award. Done.

 

Be the ace of the Tigers’ staff. Done, like dinner.

Anything else?

Well, you know what’s not been accomplished yet? It’s that thing that prompted owner Mike Ilitch to bust open another piggy bank and sign Prince Fielder.

Verlander has pretty much done it all, except be part of a World Series-winning team.

He’s only 29, however. He still has the 2012 season in which to do that, and knock off his list by age 30.

After that, it’s all gravy.

Verlander is back in Lakeland for spring training number seven, and by all appearances, he’s relaxed, confident and playful.

Last year at this time, Verlander spoke of the small monkey on his back—the one that represented slow starts in April. He was, frankly, tired of starting every season like a distance runner with an anvil attached to his ankle.

So he put his mind to working hard, focusing even harder and treating the normally benign spring training games as if they were happening in September, with a pennant race in full gear.

 

No more molasses starts for him.

It worked, for the most part. Verlander racked up a couple of April wins for a change. His ERA for the month didn’t look like the price of a New York breakfast.

Another mission accomplished.

But then Verlander followed up his strong April with a garlic-like rest of the season.

Quite simply, Verlander didn’t lose the rest of the season. And I almost mean that literally. From May 1 to the end of the season, Verlander went 22-2. It was Denny McLain, 1968-ish.

Oops. Sorry. But the comparison to McLain is apt in this case, even if it makes your stomach turn a little.

McLain had swagger and confidence when he showed up to Lakeland in 1969, coming off his 31-6 campaign. Denny spent part of the offseason touring the country, playing the organ and showing up on the late-night talk shows.

Of course, those shows were hosted by the likes of Johnny Carson and Tony Bishop, but we’re talking 43 years ago.

McLain was the first man to win 30 games since Dizzy Dean in 1934, and while it took 34 years for it to happen again, we’re at 43 years post-McLain and no one has really come close to doing it again. Likely, Dennis Dale McLain will go down as the last of the 30-game winners.

 

Like Verlander, McLain was the undisputed ace of the Tigers’ staff. Like Verlander, McLain won the AL MVP and Cy Young awards in 1968.

See? An apt comparison.

McLain followed his ’68 season with another good one in 1969. He won 24 games and shared the Cy Young Award with Baltimore’s Mike Cuellar.

After that, it all went to pot for Denny. Actually, some of it went to cocaine. And racketeering. And embezzlement. It wasn’t pretty, as you know.

McLain was 24 years old when he had his magical season in 1968. By 29, he was out of baseball. By his early 30s, he was trying to outrun the law.

Comparison to Verlander, no longer apt.

But here’s what is apt: wondering how Verlander will respond in 2012 to all the heady stuff that happened last season and throughout the fall and winter.

Verlander appears on the cover of MLB 2K12, the video game. He’s in commercials with swimsuit models, also for 2K12. He looked dapper and comfortable telling funny stories on Conan O’Brien’s TV show this winter. He revealed an odd—but apparently successful—pre-start Taco Bell diet, which no doubt delighted the T-Bell marketing department.

And now he’s in Lakeland, the seriousness of the upcoming baseball season approaching, and he’s seen clowning with new instructor and former teammate Kenny Rogers—having fun and enjoying his now cemented status as one of the top young guns in baseball.

 

The Tigers even cajoled Verlander to place a call to free-agent fireballer Roy Oswalt, in an effort to convince Oswalt to sign with Detroit.

So how does Verlander handle all this stuff?

It’s a question that doesn’t so much concern me as it does fascinate me.

No Tigers pitcher has come off a season and offseason as Justin Verlander is right now since, well, Denny McLain in 1969.

Jack Morris, the Tigers ace of the 1980s, never won a Cy Young Award or an MVP, but he did win a World Series and started in an All-Star Game. He was the undisputed ace, but Morris wasn’t a media darling. He didn’t have the Hollywood good looks that Verlander has, or the magnetic personality.

The media was quite content to leave the snarling Morris alone from October through January. And he was happy to be left alone.

Morris did his talking on the mound, which was fine.

Verlander does that, too, but he is the Tigers’ rock star, on top of being their best pitcher. He’s handsome, jovial and easy to talk to. He’s developing a sense of humor that he delivers with a wink to the media.

It is quite possible, maybe even damned likely, that Verlander won’t replicate, in 2012, what he did last year. He may never, period.

Every superstar player/pitcher, if you look at their year-by-year stats, has that one season that sticks out among all the rest. Sometimes it happens early in a career, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes even late. But it happens.

Verlander may have had “that” year in 2011.

He’d trade it all for a World Series ring. Every one of them would.

Denny McLain has one of those, by the way. Not that it did him any good.

Red Wings Draw “21″ In More Ways Than One

Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena, as the clock’s final few minutes ticked off, 21,000-plus fans stood and shouted, as if they were at a blackjack table at one of the city’s casinos.

“Twenty-one!! Twenty-one!!”

It was a night where no one left early to beat the traffic. The score was out of hand, but that was the point.

The Red Wings were about to put the Dallas Stars away and, thus, ring up their 21st straight home victory.

Just the latest accomplishment by the best franchise in pro sports.

And appropriate that the chant be “21!”—because that’s also how many consecutive seasons the hockey team from Detroit will have qualified for the playoffs after this 82-game season is in the books.

I wonder if we truly appreciate and understand what it is that we’re seeing here with this Red Wings—as they say in Canada—”organ-eye-ZAY-shun.”

It’s not just that the Red Wings qualify for the postseason as reliably as Punxsutawney Phil rises from his hole every February 2nd. It’s that the Red Wings don’t just make the playoffs—they annually expect to be the last team standing in June, hoisting the Stanley Cup over their sweaty heads.

With the exception of 1991, when the streak began, there hasn’t really been a year among the 21 straight playoff appearances when the Red Wings haven’t been in the discussion as serious Cup contenders. Oh, they’ve been more serious in some years than others; but for the most part, you would be remiss to exclude them from at least the Final Four conversation.

There have been first-round disappointments and Finals heartbreaks, and wins and losses in series in between. But can you think of a spring when you didn’t think they could go all the way?

It has no precedent in sports, really. The Celtics of the 1960s were an amazing unit that racked up championships like dirty dishes at a diner during the lunch rush. But even the Celts didn’t make the playoffs 21 years in a row.

The Yankees of the 1940s and into the ‘60s were almost annual World Series pre-season picks. But they had some down years mixed in, when they weren’t a factor in the pennant race.

Les Canadiens du Montreal—winners of the most Stanley Cups on Earth—never put together two decades straight of championship-caliber teams.

The NFL’s dominant teams are neatly segmented into decades. The team of the 1950s (Cleveland); the 1960s (Green Bay); the 1970s (Pittsburgh); the 1980s (San Francisco); the 1990s (Dallas); and the 2000s (New England). But no 20 years of consecutive excellence for any of them.

What haven’t the Red Wings provided us since 1991?

Record-setting seasons? Check (the 1995-96 club won a league-record 62 games).

Stanley Cup Finals appearances? Check (six of them, including four wins).

Individual stars/future Hall of Famers? Check, check, check and dozens more checks.

Player development? Check (an unbelievable amount of the Red Wings’ key contributors were drafted in the lower rounds; Tomas Holmstrom, who recently played in his 1,000th game and who has 240 goals, was a 10th-round draft pick).

Stable, competent management? Check (the hierarchy of owner Mike Ilitch, VP Jimmy Devellano, GM Ken Holland and assistant GM Jim Nill have been working together since the Reagan administration).

Last spring, however, it looked like some of the Red Wings’ luster was tarnishing.

After a second round exit in 2010, the Red Wings trailed the San Jose Sharks—their 2010 vanquisher—three games to none in the second round of 2011.

Too old! The window has closed! The Red Wings’ time has passed! The end of an era!

And that was from the fans, uttered on sports talk radio and the like. The national pundits joined in, too.

Nobody gave the supposedly old and decrepit Red Wings a prayer to make the Sharks series competitive.

But Detroit won Game 4 and then stole a stunning victory in Game 5 in San Jose. In Detroit for Game 6, the Red Wings played as if they refused to accept that the Sharks were the better team. It was a tight, low-scoring affair that saw the Sharks edge in front in the third period by a goal, despite not being the best team on the ice that night.

The Red Wings sneered at their supposed fate and stormed back to snatch Game 6 and force a Game 7 that had earlier in the series been as expected as a man winning a fight with his wife.

The Sharks held on and captured the series, but I don’t know that I’d ever been as proud of a Red Wings team as I was after they made the unthinkable thinkable.

Just when you thought they were old, done, over with as a dominant NHL team. Last year, the Red Wings struggled to win at home. They were a very mediocre 21-14-6 at the Joe, which is the NHL’s way of saying they were 21-20.

Not done with giving us thrills and chills, this year’s Red Wings have again made Joe Louis Arena a house of horrors for opponents. They again lead the entire league in total points.

If you can come up with some sort of NHL record, this Red Wings “organ-eye-ZAY-shun” is likely to break it. And they have yet again, besting the 1930 Bruins and 1976 Flyers for most consecutive wins at home in one season.

“Twenty-one!! Twenty-one!!”

People often ask me if I ever think I’ll see the day when the Lions win the Super Bowl. Before I answer them, I remember that there was a time where I never dreamed I’d see the Red Wings win a Stanley Cup, let alone four.

Joe Louis Arena was barren, devoid of fans and excitement. The biggest cheers came during intermission, when cars were handed out for free by a desperate Ilitch ownership, in its formative years.

I remember knocking off work several times in 1985-86 and deciding, on a whim, to head up I-75 from Taylor to downtown and catch a Red Wings game, all by my lonesome. Parking was a breeze. There was no line at the box office. I paid my 15 bucks and sat in the lower bowl. I could stretch out quite comfortably.

The Red Wings would lose, but that was OK. It was NHL hockey on a shoestring, without the crowds. I could skip to the refreshment stand and get back to my seat and barely miss any action.

I thought of those days as I gazed out from the press box, covering Game 7 of the 2009 Cup Finals, during a stoppage of play. How far this franchise has come, I thought.

The Red Wings lost on that night, too.

They haven’t done much of that over the past 21 years, have they?

Holmstrom Proves It: Hockey Players Are Nuts

When is someone going to officially declare that hockey players are certifiably nuts?

I mean off-their-rocker nuts, totally and completely out of their minds?

It’s a sport played by Kamikazes, who zoom around an ice rink surrounded by non-giving hardwood boards, with sharp objects all around them: skates, sticks, corners of elbows and teeth—those that haven’t been spit out on the bench, that is.

You think football players are tough? Maybe so, but they also have all their marbles, because the NFL hasn’t seen a leather helmet since World War II. The face mask started to come into vogue in the 1950s.

Jacques Plante, the legendary Hall of Fame goalie, tried to put a thin, flimsy mask on his face in the mid-‘50s and was all but mocked out of the league. It wasn’t until Plante took one too many vulcanized rubber discs between the eyes and refused to play without facial protection that Montreal coach Toe Blake consented to the wearing of the mask—with conditions.

If Plante had trouble seeing the puck, Blake said, then the mask was history and so was Plante if he had a problem with Toe’s disclaimer.

Plante could see the puck—or, he told his coach that he could see the puck.

Not that any of Jacques’ brethren followed his lead right away.

Goalies continued to mostly go maskless until, unbelievably, the 1970s. Only then did the last few bare-faced netminders vanish.

I always thought a goalie not wearing a mask, facing pucks being fired around his head at upwards of 75 MPH, was akin to a race car driver refusing to wear a seat belt.

While all this insanity in hockey was going on, the NFL did away with leather helmets and as the years went on, the quality of the headgear got increasingly better.

Meanwhile, the NHL eschewed helmets like a dieting woman waving off a slice of cheesecake.

A few wore them, and they too were derided, as Plante had been. Again, not until 1979 did the NHL mandate helmets for its players. But there was a grandfather clause that said players who signed contracts before ’79 had the option to wear helmets or not.

That’s why Red Wings fans were treated to the balding head of Harold Snepsts from 1985-88.

The hockey players’ shoulder pads until the Reagan administration were a rumor.

Don’t get me started on visors.

Willie O’Ree, the NHL’s Jackie Robinson—the league’s first black player—was in Detroit several years ago, sponsoring an initiative to get more African-American kids playing hockey in the inner city.

I knew of O’Ree, of course, but I didn’t know that he hid the fact that he was blind in one eye.

Come again?

“Oh yeah,” O’Ree told me as we chatted in a RenCen lounge. “I was afraid if they found out I couldn’t see in one eye, they wouldn’t let me play anymore.”

The irony is that because we’re talking hockey, not only would they have let O’Ree play, the powers that be might have sent their scouts looking for more one-eyed prospects.

Hockey players lose teeth, have their faces gashed open and break their legs—sometimes all before the first intermission. They might miss a shift or two—or however long it takes a doctor to pull, stitch or set whatever needs to be pulled, stitched or set.

Toronto defenseman Bob Baun beat the Red Wings in the 1964 Stanley Cup Finals with an overtime goal—playing on a snapped ankle.

O’Ree played with one eye.

Amazingly, there has been only one fatality in a game—that of Minnesota’s Bill Masterton, in 1968, whose head hit the ice after a check. And we’re talking about 100 years of this ice hockey stuff.

Masterton’s death, by the way, had no effect on players wearing helmets. They continued to not don them.

I remember watching video of Buffalo goalie Clint Malarchuk bleeding from his neck like a wide-open faucet after his carotid artery was slashed by a wayward skate. I can still see the white ice below his neck turn deep red within seconds.

Malarchuk almost died, but he kept playing after his neck healed.

If you need more convincing that hockey players are coo coo, look no further than the Red Wings’ Tomas Holmstrom.

Holmstrom played in his 1,000th career NHL game Friday night. Good for him. That’s not an insignificant milestone.

But that also means that Holmstrom has subjected himself to 1,000 games of being hacked, whacked, face-washed and throttled—not to mention putting himself in the crosshairs of powerful slap shots from the point.

Holmstrom is that guy you’ve seen camping out in front of opponents’ nets since 1996 with utter disregard for his own well-being. Nothing good can come from stationing yourself where Holmstrom does during a hockey game, but a whole lot of bad can happen.

Well, there is one good thing that comes from it: scoring goals.

Holmstrom, before Friday’s game, had scored 240 goals in the NHL. I’ll bet 200 of them have come with a very expensive physical price to pay.

Holmstrom isn’t the flashy goal scorer who uses sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors to deposit pucks past goalies while nary being touched.

Oh no.

Holmstrom is the crazy guy in the war movies who tosses himself onto a grenade in a fox hole. Only the fox hole, in this case, is the goal crease. The grenade is the puck. And Holmstrom has allowed his body to be battered and bruised all in the name of moving said puck across the red line—for 1,000 games.

You figure that if Holmstrom plays about 15 minutes a night, then his 1,000 games represents 250 hours of punishment in front of the net. Can you imagine being slashed and cross-checked and making yourself a target for shooting pucks for over 10 days straight?

Holmstrom is the typical hockey player—which means he’s as crazy as a box of yo-yos. What does he think of all the abuse he’s endured for 1,000 games?

“It’s fun, for sure,” he told the Free Press the other day. “People just are like, ‘Congratulations, 998, 999. One to go.’ Frequent reminders. It’s fun.”

I’m telling you, these guys are looney.

Congratulations, Tomas—you crazy SOB.

Eli’s Coming

The supposedly vaunted New England Patriots, the closest thing to an NFL dynasty since the 1980s 49ers, haven’t won a Super Bowl in seven years.

Meanwhile, Eli Manning and the New York Giants have won two in that time frame—actually, in the past five NFL seasons.

Both times, the Giants made the Pats their patsies.

Is this a baton passing we’re witnessing? A changing of the guard? Out with the old, in with the new and all that rot?

Eli Manning is all the rage now, as he should be. He’s up, 2-1, in Lombardi Trophies over his big brother, and is just one behind Hall of Fame-bound Tom Brady, whom Eli victimized twice.

Could Eli follow both those quarterbacks into Canton? Will we one day see the kid toting his own bust, posing for photographers in front of the Hall?

As Keith Jackson would say, “Whoa, Nellie!”

Super Bowl success does not, as some would have you think, punch you a ticket into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But it could help you scalp your way in.

Eli Manning has the most time left in the NFL of he, Peyton and Brady. And as impressive as Eli has been, growing up before our very eyes, any HOF talk is premature.

Let’s see if he can grow some facial hair first, for example.

Remember when the Giants were the team all Lions fans wanted to play in the playoffs? Remember when the Lions’ loss to the Packers on the regular season’s final Sunday was rued, because it meant a trip to New Orleans instead of New York?

Remember the fury in Motown when it was announced that Eli Manning was named to the Pro Bowl instead of Matthew Stafford?

Hey, remember when it looked like the Giants might not even make the playoffs?

From such humble post-season beginnings did Eli lead his team to Super Bowl XLVI glory.

There’s something different about Eli as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

He’s got a lot of “Aw, shucks” about him, number one.

The championship quarterback is supposed to be a cocky, reckless gunslinger who is in TV commercials and on the covers of video games. He is supposed to be tall, Hollywood-handsome and frequently seen with a striking beauty on his passing arm.

He makes guarantees and kicks his offensive linemen in the shins when they don’t block. He tells the coaches how to coach and gets into the face of a receiver who breaks off his route too early.

The championship QB isn’t supposed to shake his head in wonder of what he just accomplished—he knew it all along.

Eli Manning still looks like the 12-year-old little brother whose hair the adults ruffle after they realize that he’s in their presence—after fawning over the big brother.

“That’s cute, kid, the way you throw a football,” the adults say. “Now go take a bath while we talk to your brother.”

Eli Manning plays in New York. That’s about as bodacious as he gets, and that’s just a matter of geography. He wanted to play there, of course—but mainly because he didn’t want to play in San Diego.

Truth is, Eli would be out of place in both cities.

He’s not a New Yawker and he’s not a California beach bum. Unless the NFL opens up shop in Des Moines, I don’t know that he fits in anywhere.

But he has authored two stunning, gripping, game-winning Super Bowl drives, in the final minutes, staring down the barrel of Brady’s gun both times.

Eli Manning doesn’t fit in anywhere, except under center.

Is he a Hall of Famer? No, not yet.

But, to quote Three Dog Night, “Eli’s comin’!”

Tigers Need a Fourth Boesch

There have been, by my count, three Brennan Boesches who’ve worn No. 26 for the Tigers since 2010.

There was the hotter-than-a-firecracker Boesch who burst onto the scene in May 2010, rocketing moon shots into the baseball night, exhibiting that classic, smooth uppercut lefty swing that has been the trademark of everyone from Willie Stargell to Ken Griffey Jr. to Josh Hamilton.

That Boesch, the first one, hit the tar out of the baseball and for a time was so impervious to big league pitching that manager Jim Leyland nestled him behind perennial MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera in the batting order.

For a short time, Boesch provided some decent protection for Cabrera. No one knew how to pitch this kid Boesch, who hails from California, where so many of the baseball greats have called home. That’s partly because the kids in California are able to wield baseball bats even in the wintertime, instead of shovels.

At the All-Star break of 2010, Boesch No. 1 had American League pitching as his oyster. He was seeing the baseball as if it were as big as that spheroid the folks used to blow up and knock around the center field bleachers at Tiger Stadium.

Boesch, some felt at the time, was a lock for Rookie of the Year honors.

But after the break, Brennan Boesch No. 1 had been stashed away somewhere and replaced by a doppelganger—Brennan Boesch No. 2.

This Boesch was an evil twin. Rather, a wretched one.

Boesch No. 2 couldn’t have hit the ball even if it was placed on a tee.

His numbers sank faster than Newt Gingrich’s in Florida leading up to the primary. He struck out more than the class nerd looking for prom dates.

The second Boesch was a combination of Mr. Magoo, 2011 Adam Dunn and the last kid picked in gym class.

The protection for Cabrera went from Brinks to Barney Fife, almost overnight.

The second Boesch trudged home to California after the 2010 season forced to prove himself worthy to be on the 2011 Tigers. His roster spot, when the Tigers gathered in Lakeland last February, was hardly a given.

Thankfully, here came Brennan Boesch No. 3.

Boesch III made the Tigers quite easily. He was one of the best hitters in camp. Two games after Opening Day in New York, Boesch III went 4-for-4, including a home run, and had four RBI. He also scored four runs.

Boesch III played with a quiet confidence. He didn’t have any more of the first-year jitters that doomed Boesch No. 2. The silky smooth uppercut lefty swing was back.

It was nothing more than rotten luck that took Boesch III away from the Tigers prematurely last year.

A stubborn thumb injury, suffered in August, was the only thing that derailed him. This time it wasn’t pie eyes or a feeling of being overwhelmed by big league pitching that shook Boesch back to Earth.

The Tigers cruised to the AL Central title with Boesch in the dugout, cheering instead of playing.

But don’t let that fool you. Don’t let the fact that the Tigers ran away from the pack with a perfectly-timed 12-game winning streak in September make you think that Boesch III wasn’t integral to the team’s success.

That much was evident in the playoffs.

Oh, what might have been, had the Tigers had Boesch III available to them as they tried to slug it out with the Texas Rangers in the ALCS.

Boesch wasn’t the only Tiger who was either lost entirely or less than full strength in the postseason, but he was among the most important.

As the Tigers prepare to gather once again in Lakeland in a couple weeks, Boesch has no concerns as to whether he will be on the team on Opening Day. Boesch III put those fears to rest.

But I submit that there should be some more question marks surrounding Boesch, only this time it has nothing to do with having confidence in him as a big league hitter.

I propose that the Tigers create a fourth Boesch.

Leyland has told the media ad nauseam that he has written many, many lineups down on paper following the season-ending knee injury to Victor Martinez, both before and after the Tigers signed Prince Fielder. That’s nothing new; Leyland loves to jot lineups down. If Leyland were a scientist, he’d be of the mad variety, working in a dusty cellar surrounded by beakers of various colored liquids.

Sadly, it appears that every lineup has Austin Jackson leading off, unless Leyland is keeping something to himself.

This is where Boesch IV comes in.

Few in Tigers Nation are thrilled with the prospects of another year of Jackson, the nifty center fielder, starting games by striking out.

The Tigers must have led the league in having their No. 2 hitters walking past their leadoff hitter going from the on deck circle to the batter’s box.

Jackson shouldn’t be batting leadoff any more than Ben Wallace should be the Pistons’ new starting point guard.

Why not make Boesch the new leadoff hitter?

Dump Jackson down to ninth, where he belongs.

Boesch IV, the leadoff version, will likely hit .270-plus, start the occasional game with a home run, and—most importantly—he won’t strike out 175 times. He’s got some speed, is a competent base runner and he won’t strike out 175 times. He’ll get on base with surprising frequency. Did I mention that he won’t strike out 175 times?

Indulge me for a moment. This time, I’m jotting down a lineup.

Boesch RF/DH

Peralta/Dirks SS/LF/RF

Cabrera 3B

Fielder 1B

Young DH/LF

Avila C

Dirks/Peralta LF/RF/SS

Raburn 2B

Jackson CF

Actually, I don’t care what Leyland does with spots two through eight, as long as he gives my Boesch at leadoff/Jackson at ninth thing a try.

A fourth Brennan Boesch?

So far, we’re 2-1 with Boesches. I say we try for 3-of-4.