[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by SAllen2556

Well, I live here and I went to my first Tiger game since 2018. Attendance is ticking up, but it's been 4 years of awful baseball and there's just not much attention being paid to the team until just recently, and the attention is mostly about the prospects coming up like Mize, Skubal, Torkelson, and Greene. And, of course the pandemic and the short season really took a toll on what little attention would have been paid.

And Miggy has been, overall, really bad. He has occasional moments, but he's a shell of what he was. I guess for 30 million a year I'd be playing too, but it must be tough on him. And the thing about Miggy is, unlike Verlander, he's never really opened up to the fans much. His english is still lousy and he doesn't do too many interviews. I guess for what he's paid there's no reason for him to worry about marketing himself, but it's a shame really how he's not revered here like Al Kaline was or Steve Yzerman is, because he should be. He's the best baseball player I've ever seen. There was a time when you'd watch him bat and it was like he was playing slo-pitch softball while everyone else was playing fast pitch. He could hit the ball anywhere he wanted, whenever he wanted. He would swing and miss on purpose just to mess with a pitcher.

He's a good example, I think, of why baseball is not as popular as it used to be. Players who do as little as possible when it comes to interacting with the fans or the media. Players who don't live year-around in the cities they play in. Players with language barriers. Norm Cash used to work in Detroit in the off-season as a sales rep, lived in the area all year round, and he went to the same bars after the game as the fans did. Imagine such a thing today.

I hope this doesn't come off as politically incorrect, but I think something inevitably is lost when the player isn't really fluent in the language. And there is a fair amount of that with such a high percentage of Latinx (did I use that right?) players in this era.

PS It's never comfortable to see great players hang on where they aren't even good any more. Without looking to start a steroid discussion, as a Red Sox fan, I was glad to see Ortiz exit while still very productive.