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Published: January 29th 2014
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Juan Berenguer
Dinner with Senior Smoke! Today the games began. But first a note about last night. We had a dinner that celebrated the 1984 Tiger World Champs. I sat with Juan Berenguer and Billy Scherrer and Dave Rozema (or, as he is known here, "the great Dave Rozema"). Listening to them swap stories and run down each other as they spoke was a treat.
This morning I headed over to Tiger Town and started in the training room with a heat pack to loosen up the old back. Then some batting practice before the 'picture day' activities. After photos we hit the fields for our first games.
I would love to tell you that I drove in runs, made stellar plays at second, and helped seal a victory. In fact, we lost both games in the final innings and, while I handled three grounders hit to second none of them would have made a highlight film. In game one we jumped on the opposing team for three runs in the first, all of them pretty much scored on walks. We kept the lead into the fourth, tacking on a couple of runs here and there to lead 5-1. Then, the doors came off. In
Rick Leach
Points out he is a Wolverine to all Buckeyes. the fifth our opponents scored 5 times (all that are allowed per inning) on a series of fielding blunders and walks. While we tied it up in the sixth and took a lead, we gave it back in the bottom of the sixth with, yep, another error. The games are only 6 innings due to wanted to protect the valuable investment the Tigers have in the players. So we went into extra innings in which we failed to score and, after walking the bases loaded, we cut down one runner headed to home but the next batter walked to push home the winning run.
The second game was much the same. In the first we loaded the bases and I took one for the team getting drilled in the left calf to drive in a run with a hit by pitch. Our failure to capitalize on several other opportunities meant we were up 4-1 going into the fifth. Again, the wheels come off. One of our players convinced our manager, Steve Kemp, that he could pitch....13 pitches later he had walked the bases loaded. Five runs later we were down headed into the final inning where we could not
score. Ouch.
We soothed our wounded pride with Strohs in the parking lot and enjoyed Dave Rozema stories about the old days when Strohs was all that was available in the Tigers clubhouse. "None of this craft beer sh.. the players get now, the pansies," he said.
It looks like rain all day tomorrow, I should not complain given the weather Marcia is braving back home and having to take care of the barn and the horses.
Oh, and for you baseball fans out there, you should know that some of the 'real' ball players are around. I was laid out on the training table getting the heat treatment next to Phil Coke, Bruce Rondon was throwing some heat while we were waiting for our photos and I wandered over to watch that, and, yes, there has been a Justin Verlander sighting (no Kate Moss, however...)
GW
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