No, Tigers Fans Still Aren't "Spoiled"

     It's that time of the year again, where the Tigers' writers start telling us how to be better fans.

     I haven't written about the Tigers here since the trade deadline, mostly because apart from the abrupt firing of Dave Dombrowski last month, there's been very little of importance to cover. The team has been in complete free fall since the All-Star break, though they weren't exactly setting the world on fire before then. By the time you read this, it's likely that Detroit will be three games away from playoff consideration entirely. And while Justin Verlander has come back and shown why he was once regarded as the best pitcher in the game, and Drew VerHagen and Alex Wilson have been among the few bright spots in what has been an atrocious bullpen, there just isn't much worth covering this season, other than the impending firing of Brad Ausmus.

     And in this town, it seems that once there's nothing left to root for apart from a change in management, talk always starts to turn to who's a "real fan," and how fans are supposed to think and feel about their team.

     Back in the day, these types of articles were left to the Jerry Greens and Chris McCoskys of the world, the ink-stained wretches who would savagely rip the blogosphere a new one for simply existing, in part because the blogs were breaking more stories than the beat writers, and even more so anyone who would dare to boo a sub-par performance from their team. And we dismissed them as the out-of-touch relics we are, and went on with our day. That was the way it was, and it worked! (Now git off my lawn!)

     Unfortunately, now the Detroit sports blogosphere itself has picked up the torch of policing the fanbase, and they've stooped to the same level as their print brethren.

     It started last year, after Joe Nathan flipped off booing fans following a game at Comerica Park, prompting Kurt Mensching over at  fan site Bless You Boys to post this about how spoiled a fan base that hasn't seen a World Series in 30 years is, for which he was soundly ripped, and rightfully so. And that was the last we heard of that for a while.

     Until last week, when Victor Martinez decided to remind everybody that he still holds a grudge against Tigers fans for booing last October, which was promptly followed up by Justin Verlander chiming in on the boos raining down on Brad Ausmus when he went out to pull Verlander from Friday night's game with two outs in the 9th, only to have Alex Wilson give up the game-tying run and send them to extra innings. Of course, the booing that night was followed up by a standing ovation for their ace on his walk back to the dugout, so clearly the message was lost on nobody, even Verlander himself.

     Of course, none of this stopped a couple of the more prominent Detroit fan sites in town from wagging their fingers at the fans in the stands. Fansided's Tigers site Motor City Bengals posted this, which seems to posit that the reason the Tigers got swept in the playoffs last season is... the fans weren't cheering loud enough. Even though V-Mart has apparently been holding it over our heads ever since, I still find it somewhat difficult to believe that guys who make millions of dollars to play this game decided they were going to go out and suck at their jobs because they weren't getting enough praise from their fans.

     That was then followed by a post over at Detroit Sports Nation, which clearly had about as much time and thought put into it as a typical Brad Ausmus decision. That post begins by criticizing the beat writers for not being supportive enough, using a fairly innocuous tweet by Oakland Press writer Matthew Mowery, the guy who's criticized the Tigers less than possibly anybody else covering them.

     Our writer then asks this: "Can't we just enjoy the good parts of the team?" 

     At this point, I'm not convinced this isn't V-Mart himself, trolling us all.

     Which good parts, exactly? The part where we're the second-worst team in the American League? The part where Ausmus completely gave up on the team until it was too late to save his job? The part where this team is already eliminated from contention of any sort two weeks before the season is over, and was done for all intents and purposes before the All-Star break?

     For your convenience, the dumbest Tigers-related question asked by anyone this year is immediately followed by a link to retweet the article you're currently in the middle of reading, and a pre-written comment so you don't have to go to the trouble of having an opinion of your own on it. How considerate of you, DSN. The writer goes on to list three individual accomplishments, which amount to Ian Kinsler getting some milestone counting stat, Miguel Cabrera doing Miguel Cabrera things, and Verlander no longer being awful like he was earlier this year. Good for them, but none of it means a damn thing if they can't make the playoffs, which wasn't going to happen this year at any rate.

     Anybody with a brain could have seen the Tigers set themselves up for trouble in the last offseason. Relief pitching wasn't addressed at all, unless you count signing Tom Gorzelanny, claiming washed-up Neftali Feliz off waivers, and really, really hoping Bruce Rondon (who has instead already been sent home for the year) would finally put it together as addressing the bullpen. And there's no way anybody can possibly argue that replacing Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello with Shane Greene and Alfredo Simon was an upgrade, or even a lateral move. This team needed to upgrade in a few areas to make it further than a first-round sweep this year, and instead managed to get worse at them.

     And yet, faced with all of this, the Tigers still tried to sell us on this being the year, up until the day of the trade deadline, and now their apologists are going to turn on us and lecture us for having high expectations? What kind of logic is this?

     But apparently we need to lower our expectations, because "It's a team with a rich history, exciting present and compelling future," and it's high time we recognize that. (It should be noted that the 'exciting present' linked to an article from April that proved to be hilariously wrong about this team's playoff prospects.) Try telling Lions fans that they should stop tearing their team a new one because of their 'rich history' and see where that gets you.

     Sorry to break it to the Kool-Aid drinkers out there, but sustained success breeds higher expectations. Especially when the team in question also has a championship drought stretching over 30 years. And truthfully, a lot of the fans' frustration would be somewhat placated were it not for that. Case in point: the Red Wings haven't missed the playoffs since I've been alive, and have already won four Stanley Cups in my lifetime, and even though the most recent was seven years ago, damn near every Wings fan out there has watched their team raise the Cup in their lifetime, in relatively recent history to boot. They don't owe anybody a damned thing. Meanwhile, the Tigers have lost two World Series in the last 10 years, and all the Central Division titles in the world can't make up for the fact that they haven't been able to get it done when it really mattered.

     Would anybody like to tell Mike Illitch how much his team has spoiled him? I doubt he'd agree with that assessment by a long shot.

     You know what else breeds high expectations? Outspending your division competition by $50 million every year, and possessing the talent that the Tigers have. They have possibly the best pure hitter of our generation, and a guy who was among the best pitchers in the league for a long stretch of time, and haven't been able to win a title with them. The fans don't have the right to be upset with that?

     Anybody who came up as a Tigers fan in the 90's and early 00's remembers just how miserable it was to be a fan then. Randy Smith was unquestionably the most hated executive in Detroit sports until Matt Millen came along and set a standard for incompetence that hopefully will never be seen in this town again. I sat through countless games in that beyond-abysmal 2003 season, for reasons I still don't understand. Clearly nobody wishes to go through that ever again. And obviously things have changed for the better within the last 10 years, but it's not unreasonable to expect them to contend for a title, which they've yet to win in all of this. And the fact that any Tigers fan is going to tell the rest of us that having any sort of expectation of their team makes them less of a fan is downright insulting.

     Plain and simple, fans can't be 'spoiled' by a team that hasn't won a title in over 30 years.

     And just because some Tigers fans are willing to settle for mediocrity, doesn't mean the rest of us should.