And speaking of ridiculous, one of those papers I'm finally getting in gear on is about the baseball teams I followed in 2005. (It's gonna be thirty pages by the time I'm done, and we're workshopping these. Everyone is going to hate me so hard. But whatever, that's what happens when my instructor basically tells me to write a shitty first draft and put down everything that my brain vomits up.) And you know, I tend to refer to the 2005 Tigers as a giant soap opera, but, unless I take a few minutes to really dredge it up, I forget how
fucking insane that team really was.
Highlights include!
* Signing Magglio Ordoñez, putting language in his contract to protect the team from his bad knees, and losing him for half the season to a HERNIA about five seconds after the press conference.
* Signing Troy Percival, losing him immediately to injury, using Ugueth Urbina to close games, getting Percival back, trading Urbina two days later after he caused trouble on the team plane, Percival getting himself re-injured and never playing as a Tiger again, using Kyle Farnsworth to close, and then trading Farnsworth and having NO ONE to close. It doesn't QUITE rival the
2007 A's Ongoing Catching Saga for sheer psychosis, but only because nobody was actually told to avoid preparing for a role that they were subsequently asked to fill.
* Ugueth Urbina later being charged with attempted murder in his home country of Venezuela, where he is currently serving a fourteen year sentence. No, I'm not making that up. Go ahead and read it again. I'll wait.
* And let's not forget Roman Colón, one of the players we got for Farnsworth, going berserk last year and breaking the Mud Hens catcher's face. Neither of these things technically occurred in 2005, but they really augment the overall madness quite nicely.
* The brawl with the Royals. This remains one of my top five moments in baseball. "Kyle Farnsworth with a big-time takedown!"
* The entire team pretty much packing it in a month early, leading me to wish that the season would freaking end already so that the torment would stop.
* Jeremy Bonderman being shut down for the season for elbow problems with about a month to go. He would later admit that the elbow had been bothering him SINCE SPRING TRAINING.
* Pudge Rodriguez laying the blame for the team's sucky play as his teammates' feet.
I still feel as though I'm forgetting things. And let's not forget that I was ALSO following two other teams at the time, both of which made it to the postseason and one of which made it all the way to the World Series. How did I not just have a complete fucking nervous breakdown during the season? It's little wonder that I gave up on devoting equal attention to three teams after that. I burned out.
