What a ride it had been back to the promised land. 2014 was 10 long years in the rear-view mirror from 2024. It had been a long, long drought of terrible baseball since the last time the Tigers had made the playoffs. But in a rapid-fire, two-month strike of lightning, the drought was over. Detroit was heading to Houston as the final 2024 American League Wild Card.
I had never been to Houston’s home ballpark. Coincidentally, I had never been to a Tigers playoff game. Why not set a first in both categories at the same time? In truth, the obvious reason was “because of work”. Elizabeth was relatively new at her job at IPPRA and I was scheduled to work on Tuesday, October 1, the day of Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. Still… it was an extra shift for me. If I could convince my baseball-loving MIC to let me work the extra shift on Monday instead of Tuesday, then Elizabeth and I could just drive all the way down to Houston after work on Monday, go to the game on Tuesday, and then turn right back around and red-eye our way home. Norman to Houston is a 6.5 hour drive. It would be kind of grueling, but Elizabeth never blinked an eye. She booked a night at the Hyatt Place in downtown Houston even before the Tigers dropped their last two games of the season to move from a Wild Card Series in Baltimore to one against the Astros. Mark was also very supportive. He told me to have a good time and to beat the Astros, which is what any good Rangers fan would say.
I dropped Scipio off for a night at Fetch and Stay right after work on September 30th and waited for Elizabeth to finish her day. Our timing was sort of perfect. By leaving in the late afternoon, we’d arrive in the DFW metroplex at the tail end of rush hour. We could break up the annoying traffic with dinner and hopefully not have to do too much driving on I-45 after dark.
The plan did in fact work out pretty much exactly that way. I found a BBQ restaurant in Lewisville to get dinner at. Prairie House Restaurant is not the best barbecue I’ve ever had, but it was also far from the worst. And “pretty good” barbecue is better than “very good” of just about anything else.
Elizabeth braved her passenger anxiety after dinner while I drove as long as she could bear down I-45. When she couldn’t take it any longer, we switched back, and she drove the rest of the way to the Hyatt Place Downtown/Texas Avenue. We arrived, got checked in, and headed up to our room for the night.
The game was scheduled for 1:36 pm on October 1 – the first game of the 2024 playoffs. I awoke a fair amount earlier than Elizabeth did and decided to go for a walk in the downtown area surrounding the hotel. Houston was nice enough, but my overall impression was that it was just astonishingly hot and humid for October. How did anyone live in those kind of conditions? It’s one thing to like the warmth, but it’s an entirely different circumstance to live somewhere that fall never arrives.
When Elizabeth awoke, we got checked out of the hotel (this really was a one-purpose visit) and walked outside to look for a place to eat breakfast. On my earlier walk, I’d seen a restaurant on the first floor of a high-rise a block over. Lone Star Taco is apparently a chain (and according to my friend who lives in Houston, not a highly-regarded one). But much like the barbecue the night before, I’m not complaining. The food was decent and the service was pretty good, though I could have done with a little less ball-busting from the cashier for wearing Tigers gear.
It was about 11:00 now. There wasn’t enough time to do any serious sight-seeing and it was certainly too hot to want to walk around much anyway. Minute Maid Park 4 or 5 blocks in the opposite direction. I figured there would be a gift shop or team store that was air-conditioned that would be a nice way to stay out of the heat. Besides, this was a baseball trip. If we got to the stadium early, who cared? Getting to walk around a ballpark before it fills up makes the trip more authentic anyway.
As it turned out, this was the penultimate game at Minute Maid Park before the Astros changed the name. That means I was one of the last people to ever set foot in Minute Maid Park for the first time. We took a half lap around the stadium and entered from the east side. Early impressions: it was quite a large complex with attached apartments and a giant team store. The closed roof made it seem more like an entertainment complex than an MLB stadium. Elizabeth and I scanned our tickets, got through security, and pushed through the doors at one of the back entrances.
…Air conditioning!
In hindsight it seems obvious that the Astros would have to air-condition their stadium. That Houston heat is seriously no joke. But for the two of us, discovering the stadium was 70 degrees and dry was on par with Columbus discovering America. We had absolutely made the right choice arriving early.
We made a stop inside one of the team stores inside the stadium. They really went all-in on the Space City theme, which I can kind of understand given that those colors are pretty sick. There was all sorts of gear from the key players of the 2017-2024 Houston run – Verlander, Tucker, Alvarez, Bregman, and of course Altuve. I was happy enough to collect a pin and move on.
It was about two hours to first pitch now. Elizabeth and I started a slow clockwise loop around the stadium beginning on the first base line. The whole “fire station turned into a modern apartment building” vibe inside a baseball stadium is interesting, but (mostly) good interesting. The Astros seemed to have a pretty good food scene in the ballpark, though if I recall, I was too nervous to eat anything during the game.
The Tigers were taking ground balls on the turf infield when we got to the third base side. There were some desultory security guards posted at the entrance to each section in the lower deck, but they were so inconspicuous that I walked right past them without noticing. Apparently one of the guards did ask Elizabeth if this was our section after I’d gone by, but she explained that I was just a superfan who wanted to watch practice and the guard was content to let me sit in the empty seats for a while. This was neat.
Elizabeth and I continued to wander around the stadium, doing a loop toward our seats in the right field stands. The left field corner at Minute Maid Park is pretty famous among baseball fans. It’s a short porch at just 315 feet, elevated up 20 feet off the ground, and features a narrow seating area ahead of the Union Station/abutting apartments known as the Crawford Boxes. Once again the security guard was laid-back at this time of day – we actually chatted with him for a few minutes before he let us go in there to see what the view from the Boxes was like. I actually even got to touch the left field foul pole.
While Elizabeth and I were chatting with the grizzled security guard (a former Michigander like myself), the Tigers moved into the outfield to start taking some defense out there. It was jarring to realize that with such a young team, a lot of these guys were in Minute Maid for the first time just like myself. Trey Sweeney, Dillon Dingler, Jackson Jobe, and several others would have no memory of what this field played like. It’s weird to reach an age where you start to realize that your MLB heroes are really just guys, many of whom are now younger than me, who are all just learning as they go.
Elizabeth and I went up to the elevated wall along the left field foul line to watch the players take fly balls in the glaring indoor lights for a while. A few other people were in the corner with us in hopes of cadging a souvenir, but I had the advantage -a real, actual female who was willing to do the begging on my behald. It’s a powerful advantage. Eventually, a ball came in kind of funny and squirted into the corner 20 feet below us. A player who I am 95% sure is Zach McKinstry walked over heto retrieve the ball. Elizabeth took her position and held her arms up. Lo and behold, he tossed the ball in her direction. Having some knowledge of Elizabeth’s propensity to struggle with athletic feats when all eyes are on her, and with the ball traveling between us, I made the executive decision to catch the ball on her behalf. We had a baseball!
Now if only the Tigers could come away with the win, this would be a legendary trip. Fortunately, we were finally within an hour of the first pitch, so the two of us rounded the concourse toward the right field bleachers. We were sitting, in my own words, in “Kerry Carpenter” territory favorable for a lefty hitter to put a bomb into our section. Astros fans understandably had their own name for the area. As fans sat down in the seats around us, they starting putting on Burger-King-style paper crowns acquired from parts unknown. Each one had the words “King Tuck” on them in honor of Houston outfielder Kyle Tucker. Fair play to them – that’s a cool nickname.
There was a little bit more fanfare than you would get for a standard MLB game since this was a playoff outing. Both teams had full lineup AND coaching staff introductions on the PA, and there was a pre-packaged hype video. It dragged the actual first pitch time a little past the announced time, but nowhere near as bad as a college football game or an NBA game is with that kind of thing. Houston’s big lefty Framber Valdez strode out to the mound. Matt Vierling, the only Tiger with any playoff experience whatsoever, stepped up to the dish. He grounded out on the second pitch. Playoff baseball was back.
I’d tried to explain to Elizabeth how the MLB playoffs were going to make her feel. It’s not the best overall postseason in sports, or the most exciting, though it’s pretty good in both regards. Where the MLB has every sport beat is in how much you will want to die for every second your favorite team is playing in it. The anxiety in an MLB postseason game is killer. Logically, there was no pressure for the Tigers; they’d entered “anything else is gravy” season 2 months ago and had since poured on gallon after gallon of gravy. Logically, that made sense. Logic has no place in the MLB playoffs, a world of small sample sizes, gut feelings, instant heroes, and constant nerves.
The Tigers got a baserunner when rookie Justyn Henry-Malloy drew a walk, then Riley Greene grounded into a double play to end the first. With that, the team’s one true star strode out to the mound. It was a foregone conclusion that Tarik Skubal, winner of the 2024 AL pitching triple crown, was going to be a unanimous Cy Young winner in a few weeks. His season had elevated from excellent to legendary at the same time that the rest of the pitching staff was melting away all around him in August in September. At this point, there was only one traditional starting pitcher on the roster. Skubal’s defining characteristic was a loud competitiveness, with lots of screams and emphatic fist pumps. He was going to be amped for this game.
Houston had a gameplan ready for Skubal’s overpowering stuff: they were going to jump on his pitches early in the count instead of letting him get two strikes and then turn to his devestating changeup. The problem is that his fastball is also extremely hard to hit. In just 5 pitches, the 1st inning was over.
The Tigers drew first blood in the second inning. With one out, yet another rookie picked up the first hit of the postseason with a Wenceel Perez one-out single. Spencer Torkelson then worked an impressive 7-pitch walk. Parker Meadows, hitting lower in the order because of the left-on-left split, bounced one to second base. Jose Altuve got the ball over to second quickly, but Meadows used his blazing speed to beat the relay to first and keep the inning alive. Elizabeth’s favorite Tigers, Jake Rogers, worked the count 3-0. I asked her, “Do you green light him here?”, figuring the answer was no. As it turned out, that guess was incorrect. He was swinging away, knocking a single back up the middle to score Perez. The pro-Astros crowd groaned and leaned back in their seats with disgust while I let out a curt “Yes!” and pounded my scorebook. This game was occupying the last-ever page in a scorebook that I had probably held for the better part of 2 decades. No pressure, but a win was a must.
That brought us all the way to the bottom of the order, where rookie Trey Sweeney had become one of the team’s few everyday players because of Javy Baez’s injury. Sweeney had an unfavorable left-on-left matchup; how much that mattered to him he showed by lacing a 1-0 pitch into center field to score Meadows from 2nd. The lineup turned over for Vierling, who sent a 2-2 pitch – you guessed it – right back up the middle into center to bring Rogers home. Valdez had to be reeling a bit from the ambush at this point, but he finally rallied to strike out Malloy and end the second. The home crowd had been completely silenced, while adrenaline coursed through my veins. Every single person in attendance and watching on TV must have had the same thought: 3 runs might be enough to win the game with Tarik Skubal pitching.
He seemed determined to make that lead hold up, at any rate. The Astros were just dispatched just as efficiently in the bottom of the 2nd. They finally made him work a bit in the 3rd, picking up a pair of singles to put runners on first and second with two outs. King Tuck stepped to the plate, the crowd got loud again, and the Burger King crowns started appearing all around Elizabeth and me. Tucker was able to get a pretty good swing and a line drive into left field, but right at Riley Greene. Houston threatened again in the 4th inning. Yordan Alvarez, who was fighting through an injury that sapped him of his speed, muscled a single to lead the inning off. Then Yainier Diaz drew an impressive 9-pitch walk. Skubal’s pristine pitch count was rapidly slipping away from him and the Astros had the tying run at the plate. How did Skoob react? By striking out Jeremy Pena and Victor Caratini on 4 pitches each. Pure filth.
By now, a restless energy had taken over Minute Maid Park. The Astros had been to the ALCS each year from 2017 to 2023. When you live with that remarkable level of success, it’s impossible not to feel at least a little entitled. The fans clearly couldn’t believe they were going to be in the hole against the Detroit Tigers, the doormat of the American League for the past decade. Tigers fans were few and far between over in the King Tuck section, but they were loud and clear in the concourses. Presumably, I guess – I wouldn’t know. Elizabeth went to get a hot dog on her own, but I couldn’t leave my seat, and I certainly couldn’t eat. Playoff nerves, man.
The Tigers could have made it a much more stress-free game at any point they wanted. They got a baserunner on in every single inning, chasing Valdez in the 5th and getting into the Houston bullpen. Andy Ibanez doubled in the 3rd inning and got left on 3rd base. The Tigers had two on in the 5th. They managed to load the bases in the top of the 7th. Each time, they couldn’t find the knockout punch, as the Astros made a play to keep themselves in striking distance. They stayed vaguely in the game, though the number of outs left with which to make a comeback continued to dwindle.
With two outs and a runner on first in the bottom of the 6th, Skubal dispatched Yainer Diaz on 3 pitches. At 88 pitches, he was done for the day, and what a job the Tigers’ ace had done. His 6 shutout innings let AJ Hinch maintain maximum flexibility for pitching chaos. The first guy out of the bullpen was Will Vest. Vest had become a dominant force in the bullpen down the stretch, and I felt remarkably relaxed seeing him on the mound in the 7th. He paid off that confidence with a 1-2-3 7th featuring a pair of strikeouts. Hinch left him in to start the 8th, and he struck out Jason Heyward and Jose Altuve as well. 5 batters faced, 4 of them struck out, and the Tigers were 4 outs away from taking a 1-0 series lead. Vest was lifted for the ultimate Swiss Army Knife in Tyler Holton to face lefty Kyle Tucker, and Holton got Tucker to ground out. We were heading on to the 9th.
I felt suspicious. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that it’s never that easy in the playoffs. Why had this been that easy? Now they could leave Holton in to continue his 2024 mission of mowing down everything in his sight.
I’m sure looking back, that’s what Hinch wished he did. The first twinge of unease I had felt all game came when Matt Vierling was caught stealing to end the 8th inning and the door to the visiting bullpen opened. The Astros had the middle of the order up to face the nominal closer, Jason Foley. He’d had a pretty good season overall, but lacked dominant strikeout stuff. The stretch run had been really shaky for Foley, too – most notably the blown save in Baltimore a week ago where Trey Sweeney had completely bailed the team out with his tumbling catch. But still, it was a 3-run lead in the 9th inning. With any luck at all, Elizabeth and I were going to be heading home with a hell of a story to tell and the Tigers would have the dagger poised against Houston’s throat.
And then a hobbled Yordan Alvarez crushed a fly ball off the left field wall and limped into second, and Elizabeth really got to experience what it was like to be a fan of an MLB team in the postseason.
Alex Bregman followed that double up with a soft ground ball that Trey Sweeney had no play on anywhere to bring the tying run to the plate, and then Elizabeth really got to experience what it was like to be a fan of an MLB team in the postseason.
Astros fans all over the stadium started to stand up, King Tuck’s section included. Elizabeth and I reluctantly rose with them, a stoic pair clad in the Olde English D among a sea of grey and neon orange. Diaz hit a weak ground ball past a diving Zach McKinstry and into right field. A runner came in to score, Bregman moved up, and I felt vomit starting to rise in my throat. Every sports fan in the world has a memory of some soul-crushing defeat. Was this going to be another one of those memories?
On a 1-1 pitch, Pena laid down a bunt. I have never cringed so hard in my life – when a team unravels, throws against bunts have a way of ending up in right field. But Jake Rogers calmly fired a bullet down to Torkelson for the first out of the inning. Houston had their tying run on second base. The stadium was officially LOUD now, and Foley’s day was done. I couldn’t see who had been hurriedly warming up in the bullpen, but with Vest and Holton burned there was only one more name that made sense: Beau Brieske. The king of wild variance from pitching chaos, Brieske had made a living from escaping jams over the last two months. Most of those jams were of his own making, but the name “Brieske Business” doesn’t come about unless you have a little taste for the dangerous side.
After an interminable wait for the new pitcher to get warm, action resumed with Victor Caratini. He laced a 1-2 pitch into left field on a line. Elizabeth tensed up, but off the bat I felt like it was going to hold up… and it did, settling easily into Riley Greene’s glove for out number two. The bottom of the order was now up – defensive replacement Chas McCormick. There was a path out of this nightmare. Brieske got ahead 1-2 after several foul balls. Then he threw a couple in the dirt to fill the count 3-2. Now, on the 8th pitch of the battle… he threw ball four. The bases were loaded. Brieske Business at its finest.
That brought up Jason Heyward with two outs and nowhere to put him. The Heyward of 2024 was not the imposing figure that he had been a decade prior, but there was still enough pop in his bat to make Brieske regret any poor pitches. The two of them settled in for the battle of the season. Ball one. I clenched ever harder on my open scorebook. The final page of it seemed to be mocking me now. Elizabeth looked to be about ready to keel over from stress. Foul ball to even the count. Another ball. Please, please do not walk in a run and bring up that little runt Altuve, I prayed silently. Swing and a miss. 2-2 count and for the second straight batter, the Tigers were one strike away from escaping. The 2-2 pitch. A crack of the bat as Heyward jumped all over the ball. It sizzled down the first base line, and my eyes immediately started to settle on the runner on first, who would be the walkoff run if Perez couldn’t get the ball in fast enough.
But then.
Torkelson leapt. And when he came back to earth, the ball came with him. Everyone on the field went limp like they were claymation figures. All of the people in the King Tuck hats seemed to deflate like balloons with a slow leak. Into the sudden quiet of our section I let out a relieved “Yes!” and Elizabeth squealed. I chuckled to myself as dejected fans began to gather up their things to walk for the exits. The Tigers had beaten the Astros 3-1 and now needed to win just one of their next two to continue their improbable playoff run into the ALDS.
I felt like floating all the way back to the hotel. What a day – an impromptu road trip turned into an incredible baseball game with a cool-ass souvenir and a great story. Nothing – not even Houston gameday traffic, not even a seven-hour drive home once we emerged from it – could ruin that.
The next day we were back in Norman. I listened to Game 2 of the Wild Card Series on my phone as I left work to pick Scipio up. The Tigers struggled with Hunter Brown for a while, but Parker Meadows eventually clubbed one off of the right field foul pole to take a 1-0 lead. Bullpen chaos held Houston in check for a long stretch of the game before Hinch pushed things a bit too far and brought Jackson Jobe in to try to squeeze an inning out of. He got into trouble and got a little unlucky, and the Astros took a 2-1 lead in the 7th. The Gritty Tigs were unfazed – in the very next inning they scored four runs off of one of the best closers in the league, capped by journeyman Andy Ibanez’s 3-run double. When the dust settled, Beau Brieske was closing out a 5-2 win to end Houston’s ALCS streak. The Tigers were moving on.
The Tigers faced the Guardians in the ALDS. Cleveland took Game 1, then the Tigers roared back with a legendary 9th inning home run by Kerry Carpenter to win Game 2. They took Game 3 in front of a raucous crowd in Detroit, and could have moved one step closer to a World Series win if they could have just managed a win in Game 4. But it wasn’t meant to be, and there wasn’t any need to panic: Tarik Skubal, the unhittable one, was on the mound in Game 5. He was unhittable once more, until suddenly he wasn’t, and when Lane Thomas hit a grand slam to take a big lead for Cleveland, I realized: it was over.
Looking back now, it all feels like a dream. It also feels as vivid as though it was yesterday. I can still see the Sweeney catch like it was the first time. I can still see Vierling diving into home plate to cap the comeback over the Rays like it was on my iPad. If I close my eyes right now, Heyward’s line drive is still tracing a beeline right at Tork’s glove. Here in 2025, the Tigers have turned the corner. They’re actually a real baseball team that is currently contending for the best record in the league, though they maintain the same stubbornly homegrown core while resisting the urge to bring in big-name mercenaries. I’ve been watching and listening more; so has Elizabeth. To my delight, this team has rekindled a childhood passion.
I love baseball once more.
