Eight in a row! The Tigs equaled the longest winning streak from last year's successful season and matched longest streak in the bigs this year by beating Seattle tonight.
Sitting up in the nosebleeds, it was a very entertaining game, even if we Tiger fans had to suffer through yet another bumpy first inning from Jeremy Bonderman. Bondo gave up a three run homer that semi-stifiled the 30,000+ fans who came out to the park. However, the second inning allowed us to breathe a bit easier when Magglio Ordonez, Omar Infante, and Brandon Inge all had doubles to bring the Tigs even.
For as well as Bonderman pitched early in the season, after his start against the Angels, when he allowed six runs to cross the plate, he has pitched the exact opposite. While waiting in line for some hot fries, I caught him wincing on TV, so I'm assuming the blister was bothering him yet again. That needs to get healed up real fast for him to be effective. But, since that Angels start, Bondo has two wins while letting in a combined nine runs, which seems more than he allowed all year to that point. Regardless, he's winning and that's what matters.
Infante straight lit the place up tonight. He started in centerfield, as he does when a lefty starts, and went 3-4, falling a homer shy of the cycle and driving in four runs, which was a career high for him. Gary Sheffield picked up that homer for him though, hitting a bomb in the seventh which was just gone from the start. He doesn't really hit majestic homers- they are just line drives that are out in a hurry.
The best part of the game, though, was the ninth inning with two amazing catches by Craig Monroe and Magglio Ordonez. Both balls looked liked base hits all the way, but some how these lumbering corner outfielders got to them and took our breath away with some great effort. The second out, a long drive to center that Curtis Granderson tracked down, was one of those balls that make me glad to be a Tiger fan, because in any other park that's the game tying home run. I wish I was keeping score so I could right down 7-8-9 in those last three spots on the card.
Great atmosphere in the upper deck tonight, with what seemed like a lot of college kids going to their first games of the year. It says something about what winning can do for a ball club when 30,000 fans show up on a Tuesday night to watch a team that would have been lucky to draw 18,000 on the same night two years ago. As well as the Wings and the Pistons are doing, Detroit is still, and always will be, a baseball town above all, and it's just great to see the fans coming out like they are.
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