By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
June 21, 2014

I was born on September 16, 1972 at the old Sinai Hospital on Outer Drive. It only took 19 days for a Detroit sports team to disappoint me when in Game 5 of the American League Champion Series the Oakland As eliminated the Tigers by a score of 2-1.

Okay, okay. I OBVIOUSLY don’t have any memory of Blue Moon Odom ‘s gem at Tiger Stadium that fall afternoon — or, for that matter, the mohel chopping part of my cock off 12 days earlier — but it did take almost 11 years before I witnessed a Motor City team’s season end with them raising a trophy.

And no, my math isn’t off™ (Rod Allen). The first title I celebrated didn’t occur in 1984 when the Tigers defeated the San Diego Padres. Nope. It occurred a year earlier when the Michigan Panthers won the inaugural USFL championship by defeating the Philadelphia Stars.

And anyone who doesn’t consider that title credible wasn’t around for the excitement of that season. This wasn’t some Arena Football League gimmick. (Sorry, I don’t have any fond memories of the Detroit Drive titles.) This was a team that had legitimate NFL players like Bobby Hebert on it and a league that employed superstar talent (Herschel Walker, Steve Young, Reggie White, etc.).

In one season, the Michigan Panthers gave me more joy than the Lions have in 41 and, as an added bonus, they never even called the cops on me. So, fuck off if you think otherwise.

Since that Panthers title, the city of Detroit and its surrounding suburbs have never had much of a championship drought. It only took a year for the Tigers to win their last World Series. The Pistons then won their first NBA title five years later.

When the Wings finally got off the schnide in 1997 there had been a seven-year gap between parades which, as of this writing, is the longest drought since John Corker and Novo Bojovic were household names in this town.

But it has now been SIX years since the Red Wings lifted the Stanley Cup and you have to wonder if we are about to enter a “Grapes of Wrath” period based on our teams’ current rosters and collectively inept management.

Everyone presumed the Tigers would be the next in line to win the whole damn thing as they enter almost every recent season as Vegas’ favorite to capture the Commissioners’ Trophy, but after the offseason (Doug Fister says “Hi”) and the putrid last month, is there much doubt that this core group will go down as one of the most talented teams to NEVER GET IT DONE?

Noted DSR contributor HeathBlizzGuy posed the following question recently:

Has there been a recent team with as much talent (multiple Most Valuable Players, Cy Youngs, Triple Crown winners, etc.) and opportunity (default playoff berths playing in the AL Comedy Central) plus inherent postseason advantages (our starting pitching in a short series) not to win ONE ring?!!?!?!

If this core (Miguel Cabrera, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Victor Martinez) never accomplishes the ultimate team achievement, they will have to go down as the baseball equivalent of the Buffalo Bills (Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed.) Maybe we can even get Ice Cube to remix the lyrics to “Wicked” and include Detroit’s baseball team. Unfortunately, “fat mad skills” doesn’t really rhyme with Tigers though.

And while nothing could be as dramatic as losing FOUR Super Bowls in a row, the Tigers’ decade of disappointment is in the ballpark when you add up the World Series embarrassments against inferior opponents, Game 163 and the David Ortiz grand slam.

And it’s not like ANY of the other Detroit sports teams are about to pick up the slack for the Tigers either.

If past performances are indicative of future results, we can all expect to drop dead before the Lions ever win a god-damn thing and this offseason has only given us more evidence of that.

The Lions did the same thing they ALWAYS do when replacing their head coach and overcorrected for the last jerkoff’s faults. They replaced a smart (at least he thinks he is), brash, egomaniac with a dumb and humble guy who has a career winning percentage around Tony Gwynn’s lifetime batting average when Peyton Manning isn’t his starting quarterback.

Then they utilized a top-ten draft choice on a TIGHT END when, just a few months earlier, they re-upped with ANOTHER first-round TIGHT END. Because you can never have enough first-round tight ends on your team. I mean, it’s like putting gold rims on your 1983 Chevy Citation.

And as the franchise has done for approximately five decades now, they completely ignored their need at cornerback. Well, I shouldn’t say they completely disregarded that position in their transactions. They DID get rid of Chris Houston.

(And in true Detroit Lions fashion, they couldn’t even handle Houston’s release without bungling it. Management gave the exclusive story of waiving Houston to their OWN team reporter propagandist, Tim Twentyman, who promptly Tweeted that it was a medical buyout. It wasn’t.)

How bad is the Lions cornerback epidemic? Not only do the current CBs cause the team headaches, even the OFFSPRING of ex-Lions cornerbacks wreak havoc.

You might remember Bruce McNorton. He played for the Lions in the 80s; I use the term “play” very loosely — unless you think watching Willie Gault and James Lofton burn you left and right is the definition of “playing.”

Anyway, Bruce McNorton has a daughter named Brittney McNorton who is currently dating Calvin Johnson. Brittney is the one who threatened to “Molly Wop” CalJo’s baby’s mama a few weeks back in Georgia.

Of course, if Brittney did “Molly Wop” (whatever the fuck THAT means) Calvin’s ex, it would surely be more physical than her dad ever got with Jerry Rice or John Taylor.

How bad are things in this city? The management of our teams can’t even figure out how to utilize the compliance buyout option included in recent Collective Bargaining Agreements!!!!!

Instead of the Pistons using that GIFT to erase the awful Ben Gordon contract they instead traded away a future first-round pick to the Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets, which means they are left without a first-round pick in the deepest draft in years.

And Ken Holland is no better than Joe Dumars in this regard. After the NHL lockout of 2013, the league handed out two compliance buyouts to every team in the league.

And how has Holland utilized those “Get-Out-of-Jail-Free” cards? He wasted one on the minute contract of Carlo Colaiacovo and the other on Jordin Tootoo.

And why did the most overrated GM in the history of professional sports use the buyout on Tootoo? Because he was doing the Inuit thug a favor because he didn’t want the offensively-challenged winger to have to spend another season in Grand Rapids.

Instead of doing Kellie Pickler’s ex-boyfriend a solid, Holland should have done HIMSELF a favor by amnestying that piece of garbage Johan Franzen — because that is what the compliance buyout is for!!!!!

(Please see: Lecavalier, Vincent and Richards, Brad.)

You don’t exorcise yourself of expiring 1.9-million-deals. You get rid of odorous and anchor-like contracts that you never should have inked in the first place — like the beaten Mule’s.

Franzen will be 35 years old this season (with the scrambled brain of a 92-year-old because of multiple concussions) and is signed through the 2019-20 season with a cap hit of about $4 million per!!!!

2020. Think about that for a second.

Does Ken Holland believe Franzen will get better with age, which only goes against every law of science when it comes to forwards with the passive Swede’s personality????

After Franzen’s total disappearing act after the Olympics — which included a postseason where he didn’t score a goal against the Bruins and then refused to own up to his awful play by avoiding the media like they were camped in front of the opponent’s crease —  Holland should have used a buyout on this piece of trash and given the forward plenty of time to prepare for his acting debut in the sequel to “Now You See Me” with Woody Harrelson and Isla Fisher.

Do you remember when the Red Wings were like the Tigers and the minute the Stanley Cup playoffs ended Bavada installed our city’s hockey squad as 4-to-1 chalk? Those days are long over; instead the Wings are 22-to-1 to win the Cup in 2015 and you wonder how much of that is based on name recognition at this point.

Red Wings summers used to be as fun as the season itself as we waited for July 1st to see what free-agent the team would nab on the open market. Now, the intelligent part of the fan base sits on pins and needles waiting for Holland to fuck something up (David Legwand for Calle Jarnkrok and a second-round pick); we haven’t had to wait long this offseason.

Not only has Holland decided not to use the amnesty on Franzen, he decided to bring Jonas Gustavsson back instead of challenging Jimmy Howard with Petr Mrazek, who is more than likely the best goalie in the organization today.

And now Holland is inexplicably in talks to bring Daniel Cleary back for another season!!!!! Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

All we heard last year was how Holland didn’t want Cleary back LAST SEASON and only offered him a slap-in-the-face contract because Mike Babcock insisted upon it. Cleary then rushed to take the lowball offer, which led to Gustav Nyquist starting the season in the AHL.

So why the fuck is the injury-riddled Cleary on the verge of another contract in Detroit after registering eight points in 52 games played — including plenty of time on the team’s first power-play unit?!?!?!?!?!!

And please spare me the song-and-dance that this will be a two-way deal and Holland will have the option of sending the winger to Grand Rapids. If there is anything we know, it’s that Cleary is to Babcock what Don Kelly was to Jim Leyland. If he’s around, he will find a way to utilize him.

I can’t wait until Anthony Mantha starts the season at Van Andel Arena because Cleary is “good in the room.”

And speaking of Don Kelly and his .280 slugging percentage, let’s finish this up by getting back to the Tigers. If they never win that World Series ring, I guess you could make a case that the last BASEBALL team this talented and with so many inherent advantages not to get a ring would be the mid- to late-1990s  Indians.

You might remember Carlos Baerga, Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, the Alomars and more. And if this article wasn’t depressing enough, now I am comparing Detroit to Cleveland. Ready to jump off the Ambassador Bridge yet?

And if the Tigers go the way of those talent-laden Indians teams and never get it done they will have one thing in common.

They can both blame Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland.