Congratulations Tigers!

While it is true that, when the chips were down, the A's unhappily wound up showing about as much backbone as your typical Congressional Democrat, the Tigers deserve much props for their recent demolition of the American League. What a feelgood story this has been for, really, any lover of the game, regardless of team loyalty. The local fans have been so, well, pastoral in their reception of this team. The payroll is low, the hitting timely, the defense magnifique, and most importantly the PITCHING is nasty and only getting nastier.

Harrogate is happy to see the game of baseball prove, once again, that it is bigger than the economic comedy of errors that continually threatens to strangle it. As a metonym for the Uhmerrikahn soul, baseball has always stood in handily: the leaguewide corruption of the late teens and early twenties nicely mirrored, for example, the nation's sophomoric, Puritanical/hypocritical, hilarious attempt to banish alcohol sales from the national discourse; when the civil rights struggle was gaining momentum, there was Jackie Robinson making a huge impact in the right direction; at the apogee of that struggle we were treated to Henry Aaron getting a standing ovation in Atlanta, the Heart of Dixie, as he broke the record of that ultimate white sports icon, the Babe.

Now, with Uhmerrikah in the thick of its orgiastic celebration of corporate power at all levels of society, it makes sense that the game of baseball would be aping that orgy as well. The Yankees can clock in with a 200 million dollar payroll because they own a heavyhitting television station and operate in the biggest media market on the face of the Earth. Yet for the past six years they have been blanked, and except for in 2004 (Red Sox) they have been blanked by teams with a payroll stratospheres below them.

Having learned from the Marlins who came before them, the Tigers understand that baseball's grandeur inheres in the multiplicity of approaches it rewards; every champion will look different, there is no model for excellence, no matter how much the price tag says. They took a core of young kids and developed them over the course of several losing seasons, now it is at fruition with pitchers throwing harder than Tim Robbins in Bull Durham. They add a couple of key veterans like Kenny "The Gambler" Rogers and Ivan Rodriguez. And the list goes on.

In the end, the Yankees looked like a parody of Uhmerrikah's $ Worshipping underbelly: no soul, no art, no soup for them. Harrogate thanks Detroit for keeping the dream alive.