The Tigers announced today that Nate Robertson is headed to the bullpen.  I’m watching the game now and Dave Dombrowski was on and said it was more to work on Nate’s slider.  You wonder if this were June whether they would have tried to push Nate Robertson down to the minors.  I don’t know where he’s at option wise but with the minor league seasons winding down, it makes little sense at this point.  My guess is, they’ll find a few blowouts and let Nate work through things with some extended relief innings.

Every year I write up one of my historical diaries, I fall behind and this year was no exception.  With some persistence though, I’ve finally caught up and today marks the day that Dick McAuliffe literally knocked Tommy John out of a game. 

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First off, it’s been another busy weekend and I never got a chance to plug a roundtable discussion I took part in with Billfer, Lee Panas and Geoff Young over at Ducksnorts prior to the series.  It was a pretty good discussion so be sure to check it out.  The most important part was where I was the deciding vote between Johnny Grubb and Ruppert Jones.

Todd Jones took a ball off his leg today and he stayed in to pick up his fourteenth save of the season.  He didn’t even use one of the two runs the Tigers gave him so he was really locked in.  Joel Zumaya made his second appearance of the season and he gave up two hits, a walk and a run in one inning.  And what about Justin Verlander.  He walked five but struck out a season high ten batters in just 5 1/3 innings.  The win pushes his record to 4-9.

Magglio Ordonez and Ivan Rodriguez both went yard in this one.  Ordonez drove in three while Edgar Renteria singled, drew a walk and scored twice.  Pudge was a perfect two for two with two walks.  It was the first time Pudge drew two walks in the same game this year and the last time he did was last August.

The Tigers have now won four straight series and they’ve won 10 of their last 12 games.  The White Sox play tonight but at worst, the Tigers will be six games back.  Unfortunately, the Twins have caught fire too and they’ve won six straight and they lead the Tigers by three games in the loss column. 

Next up are the Cardinals after an off day tomorrow.  There’s going to be a lot of stuff going on with regard to the 1968 World Series and this is a good time to push Sock It To ‘Em TIgers, which was a collaborative effort between the Mayo Smith Society and SABR.  It’s a pretty definitive guide to the 1968 Tigers and it includes bios on everybody who got an at bat with the Tigers that season.  My contributions were bios for Les Cain and Wayne Comer, and while both are lesser known players, both had a very interesting story.  I’m working on something similar for a book on the 1984 Tigers set for release next year and my player is catcher Dwight Lowry.

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The 1968 Tigers’ season kicked off yesterday and you can relive it at my 1968 Tigers Tribute Site.  I was hoping to do more season retros but never got the chance.  Still, most of the names should be somewhat familiar because this team was stacked.

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2008 marks the 40th anniversary of the Tigers World Series win in 1968.  Similar to what I did for both the 1984 and 1935 Tigers, I’m going to a run a day by day diary of that team’s exploits.  I set up a seperate website for the diary and I’ll also be writing season retrospectives throughout the postseason.  My first retrospective is up on Denny McLain.

It seems like I’ve done more work on the 1968 Tigers then any other subject.  I wrote a brief synopsis of the 1968 Tigers in Tigers Corner 2007 and I have two articles in the 2008 edition coming out next March.  I also wrote two biographies (Les Cain and Wayne Comer) for an upcoming book that contains biographies of all of the 1968 Tigers that’s also being published by Maple Street Press.  Finally, if you want a lead in, you check out the 1967 American League Pennant Race website because a lot of the guys on that 1967 were key players in 1968.

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