It was the first Sunday in October, the day after Yom Kippur, and downtown Detroit was buzzing with excitement.
The Tigers were hosting the Baltimore Orioles in the third game of the five-game American League Division Series.
The Orioles had defeated the Tigers in the first two games in Baltimore, beating former Cy Young winners Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. That Sunday the Orioles had to face still another of the Tigers’ Cy Young winners, David Price.
Before the baseball game began at 3:30 p.m. in Comerica Park, across the street at Ford Field the National Football League’s Detroit Lions were in the fourth quarter of their game, leading the Buffalo Bills. A fly ball away, construction cranes were hovering over site of the new hockey arena for the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings. Downtown parking spaces were going for as high as fifty dollars.
While David Price was mowing down the Orioles, the Lions fumbled away a sure victory, losing their game in the final seconds. Minutes later, with a runner on base, the Orioles’ Nelson Cruz hit a fly ball down the right field line that just inched over the wall on the fair side of the foul pole. It was probably the shortest home run ever hit in the 15-year history of Comerica Park.
The scoreboard showed 2-0 and remained that way until the bottom of the ninth when a run-scoring double by J.D. Martinez (baseball’s best feel-good story of the year) brought the crowd to its feet and the Tigers within a single of tying the game.
With one out, Baltimore manager Buck Showalter intentionally walked the next batter and set his infield for a double play. Two pitches later, a quick double play ended the Tigers’ 2014 season.
The football and baseball crowds filed out of the stadiums like people in shul after Mussaf on Yom Kippur.
There was plenty of interesting baseball in both leagues in the post-season. The two World Series combatants, the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants, were Wild Card teams (meaning they didn’t win their respective divisions) that got hot at the right time. The Giants, of course, went on to win their third world championship in five years.
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J.D. Martinez was released by baseball’s worst team, the Houston Astros, after the 2013 season. Astros management claimed it had several better outfield prospects.
The Tigers took a chance of the 26-year-old outfielder who tinkered with his swing and started to generate more power in spring training. The Tigers sent Martinez to their top minor league team in Toledo where J.D. batted over .300 with 10 home runs in only three weeks.
The Tigers promoted him to the big leagues where he played mostly left field and hit .315 with 23 home runs. Follow him next season to see if he remains baseball’s biggest bargain.
There will be no bargain for the team that signs free agent Max Scherzer. The Tigers’ top pitcher won 18 games while losing five with an excellent 3.15 earned run average. Not quite as good as the year before when Scherzer’s numbers were 21-3, 2.90, but good enough to fetch him more than the six-year, $144 million contract the Tigers offered.
The best pitcher of this era has to be Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers’ righthander was 21-3, 1.77 n 2014 despite missing several starts in April…. Rookie Jose Abreu hit .316 with 36 home runs for the Chicago White Sox, making him the only player in the big leagues to top .300 and hit more than 35 home runs. The Sox got good dividends for their six-year $68 million investment…. 2014 was the third consecutive season that Pirates’ outfielder Andrew McCutchen batted over .300 with more than 20 home runs. Buster Posey proved again that he’s baseball’s best catcher, hitting .311 with 22 homers for the Giants. The best shortstop has to be Troy Tulowitzki. He batted .340 with 21 homers for the Colorado Rockies.