This Is The Big Time

Usually teams are worried about when they play heavy hitters on the road out of their ballpark. However, for our Detroit Tigers it's quite the opposite.

Baseball's two best teams come to town this weekend, with Cleveland coming in tomorrow for a three game set and then Boston on Friday for another three game series. Cleveland is 1.5 games up on the Tigers right now and Boston is running away with AL East again after getting the shit scared out of them by the Yankees a few weeks ago.

From all appearances, the Tigs and the Indians are two teams headed in different directions right now. The Indians are coming off of a sweep over the Tampa Bay Rays and retaking the lead in the Central. Meanwhile, the Tigers just salvaged a win in a series loss to Minnesota after dropping two of three to the Texas Rangers. This series has nearly the same look as the one last season when the White Sox came to town in July shortly after the All-Star Break. That's the series when Craig Monroe hit a monster grand slam in the second game to turn the tide in two different teams' seasons, spurring the Tigers on to playoff glory and the White Sox to third place in the Central.

It might take some of the same types of heroics if the Tigers are going to survive the Tribe. Not to put a reverse jinx on Cleveland or anything (I would NEVER do that), but the Indians have the look of a team right now that's going to roll through the rest of the schedule. C.C. Sabathia is pitching like a man on fire and the line-up that hits for him is putting up runs like it's nobody's business. It's really unfair for a struggling team like the Tigers to run into such a buzzsaw at this point in the year. One can only hope that they take it easy on our boys.

Boston meanwhile, is 10.5 games up in the AL East and has the makings of a World Series contender. They are in the midst of a rough road trip right now, having been swept by Seattle last week and had two of three taken from them against the Rangers in Arlington. However, they still are the best team in baseball with a 49-31 record and are going to be a rough, rough test for our Tigs going into the Break.

These are going to be six excruciating games in a ballpark where the Tigs have not played all that great this season, just 20-18 at the CoPa this year. Winning each series should be the goal for the Tigers, but going .500 for this week would be a big, big step. This is going to show us a lot about the resolve of our boys heading into the All-Star Break next week- let's just hope that it's not in the negative.