Interior Alaska in August is a fair approximation of heaven. Imagine being there on your own for your first-ever visit, and you’re learning a whole new office and a whole new forecast area, and you’ve also got an area the size of Indiana to explore. You would feel like you didn’t want to waste any second, wouldn’t you?
I didn’t want to waste a second, especially those off of work. In fact, Elizabeth stills teases me about bringing my PS5 all the way to Fairbanks only to never bother taking it out of my suitcase. Which, you know, fair. But against that kind of backdrop, wouldn’t you be excused for forgetting about your mediocre favorite baseball team?
That’s certainly what I did. The 2024 Detroit Tigers had just punted on their season right before I left for Fairbanks. Ignoring the Tigers late in the season had become something of an annual tradition for me anyway, even when there weren’t glaciers with caves that you could wander out to. Against that backdrop, there wasn’t a way in the world that I wanted to watch some guy named Keider Montero. And that’s why I didn’t notice something for a little while: the Tigers weren’t fading away.
Sure, it took a little while. On August 10, the day before my flight, they lost to the Giants 3-1 to fall to 55-63. Fangraphs had their playoff odds all the way down at 0.2 percent at the time. But they bounced back to beat San Francisco the next day, and then swept the Mariners in Seattle, and then split their first two games of a series against New York. That brings us to the first time I can actually remember a Detroit game up in Fairbanks, on Sunday the 18th of August. I was working an evening shift and had a chance to watch their game against the Yankees, which was played at the Little League World Series stadium in Williamsport. The weird thing about watching sports in Alaska is that you’re 4 hours behind Eastern time, which meant that Sunday Night Baseball starts at 3:00 pm Alaska time. Eventually the Tigers (who, true to form, had let Tarik Skubal leave in line for the loss down 1-0 after 6 innings) were down to their last shot in the 9th. A Colt Keith double and then a Jace Jung single later, we were going to extras in Williamsport. The Yankees scored in the top of the 10th, but Zack McKinstry singled home the ghost runner, stole second, and was standing there when Parker Meadows got a 1-2 pitch moments later:
A fun Tigers game! Who would have thought?
The win moved them to 61-64, still well outside the Wild Card race. Then they went to Chicago and lost 2 out of 3 to the Cubs to drop to 62-66. I didn’t see any of those games because Alaska beckoned. But that was fine. I was way too much of a battered fan to ever expect them to compete. As long as I got a few entertaining memories, there was nothing more to expect.
Well…
The Tigers remained in Chicago to play the White Sox next. Here’s the thing about the 2024 White Sox: they cured whatever ailed you. They were 4-26 in the second half entering the 4-game series with Detroit; the Tigers ripped off a 4-game road sweep. The last one was particularly unbelievable to me because I’d watched the Tigers play footsie with .500 in 2021, 2023, and 2024, but never actually get over the hump to get to .500. But the win on Monday, August 26 (while Michael and I were busy trying to dam up the Chatanika River near Fairbanks to pan for gold) had them suddenly at 66-66. What was happening?
On Tuesday, August 27, the Tigers returned home to face the Angels. This had always been the spot on the schedule where they were going to have to try to make a move if they could. The Angels weren’t “White Sox bad”, but they were bad. Brant Hurter, a 25-year-old rookie with a 5.80 ERA in AAA Toledo on the year, was the starter for Detroit. He threw 5 innings of two-run ball, then handed it over to the bullpen who slammed the door shut. The “any person with a pulse” method of picking a starting pitcher was working better than it had any business doing. Meanwhile, the Tigers got 3 runs in the 6th, the last two when Kerry Carpenter hit a 2-run homer to continue his hot streak since returning from the injured list two weeks prior. 5-2, Tigers win. Detroit was 67-66.
The buzz was palpable at this point. Before, the mini hot streak they’d been on had been noticed only by fans of the team. But all of a sudden, things started breaking containment. I saw like 50 tweets that were a variation of this:
https://twitter.com/Castellani2014/status/1828639466979729440
Riley and I were texting each other daily about the Tigers all of a sudden. I was even texting Elizabeth meaningless messages. Not only were they above .500, but with the Twins in a mini-slump, all of a sudden Detroit was only 5.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot. Did they have a good chance to make the playoffs? Of course not. Was I enjoying actually caring about their games? Yes.
My family arrived in Fairbanks on the next day, August 28, while the Tigers were beating the Angels 3-2. If I had been busy before while it was just me (then just me and Michael) in town, the following week with my parents, sibling, and Elizabeth were even busier. We kayaked, we visited museums and wandered downtown Fairbanks, we even drove to Denali and saw grizzly bears. Unlike earlier in the month, I now kept a relatively close eye on the Tigers – disappointment when they lost two in a row, then elation when Skubal outdueled the Red Sox, the team directly ahead of them in the standings, to help take 2 out of 3.
September might be the most “where has the year gone?” month of the year. All of a sudden, summer is over, football is on, and the holidays are around the corner. For baseball teams who aren’t in contention, this is the time of year for empty stadiums and die-hards watching prospects who are getting their first cup of coffee in the big leagues. At most this time of year earned a cursory glance from me from 2017-2023. But not now. Here in 2024, you could find me putting Dan Dickerson’s voice on the radio while I did the 06Z Fairbanks TAFs as the Tigers completed their final West Coast trip of the year. There was a heartbreaker where they took a 5-run lead over the Padres, only for rookie starter Keider Montero to blow it. Then there was the game one day later, where the Tigers suddenly scuffling offense was stifled by the electric San Diego bullpen until the 9th inning. Then a single by Justyn-Henry Malloy and walks from Jace Jung and Colt Keith were enough to get Parker Meadows to the plate with two outs against closer Robert Suarez.
https://twitter.com/RealBullyBall/status/1831890452334903370
A completely out-of-the-blue 4-3 win for the Tigers on a 2-out, full-count grand slam in the 9th. How could you not love baseball? Bobby (the lone Mets fan in all of Fairbanks) and I went wild when it happened, there on my last night in town.
When this post began, it was early August and I had every reason to think about everything but baseball. Now here we were, on September 6. I was going back home to sweltering Norman with every reason to think of nothing but baseball. The Red Sox and Mariners kept losing, and the Tigers had a clear path upward to the Royals 5 games ahead in the final Wild Card spot.
As my plane made the long, long trek southeastward toward Seattle, and thence on to Oklahoma City, Riley’s why-not attitude had rubbed off on me. After all, why not?
