Triple Crown Me!

Miguel Cabrera has done something that hasn't been done since the Sox' Yaz did it in 1967: he had a better batting average, had more home runs and more runs batted in than anybody else in the American League.I'm a Johnny-come-lately to baseball. My brother, the Amazing AndyMan, was always a baseball fan. I wasn't a great fan, largely because I wasn't a very good baseball player. Football? No problem. A guy might outweigh me by fifty pounds, but I knew I had lots of gear on, and I could hit him back. In baseball, you're just wearing regular clothes. A guy would throw a ball right at you, and if you couldn't hit it- which I could do only rarely- you'd just have to let him. I didn't play it well, and I didn't originally enjoy watching it, because baseball games moved too slowly to suit me. Andy tried to inform me about the rhythm of the season, about streaks and back stories, but for years I remained indifferent to America's pastime. Prior to the advent of the Tampa Bay Ray's, Tampa's "local" team was the Atlanta Braves. The Braves were useless for years, but got good in the 1990's, and I jumped on the Braves bandwagon. I've enjoyed watching baseball ever since. My bride, on the other hand, grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, as an avid Detroit Tigers fan. We struck a deal early on: she'd root for my Florida State Seminoles and the Braves, if I'd root for her Tigers and the Michigan State Spartans. As a bonus, I get to root for the Detroit Red Wings in hockey, if there ever is hockey again. We're free-lancers in professional Football: I can root for the Bucs, and she can root for the Lions as we please. But I digress... It's been a pleasure to root for the Tigers. I even caught a Tigers game in Comerica Park this year. Imagine my thrill to be rooting for a team that has produced the first Triple Crown batter in 45 years!