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Tigers Win Another Division Title, Stronger Thanks To Season's Struggles

By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak

COMERICA PARK (CBS DETROIT) - With plastic sheets draping the floor and the walls of the Detroit Tigers clubhouse, jubilant players gathered around a seemingly endless supply of champagne and beer and waited until everyone had a beverage - or two - in hand. As soon as "Turn Down For What" blasted from the speakers, the team went crazy, hollering and spraying each other, so raucous in their celebration that they nearly drowned out the music.

No one could stop smiling.

Players posed for pictures, danced together, embraced, doused one another in expensive alcohol and smoked cigars. The atmosphere was one of pure bliss. The Tigers had clinched the American League Central Division for the fourth straight year, and they had done it on the last game of the regular season.

Even before the season began, many people assumed the Tigers would win the division, but it would not be easy.

Going into Sunday's games, the Kansas City Royals trailed Detroit by a single game. The Tigers had lost Friday, 11-4, and Saturday, 12-3, to the last-place Minnesota Twins. Had Detroit lost again, Kansas City could have forced a Game 163.

With the pressure on, however, the Tigers ultimately delivered, shutting out Minnesota, 3-1.

"I think this season's probably been a little bit more of a roller coaster than any team I was on as a player, with the really hot start and then the really cold May, June, but like always seems to happen in baseball, water finds its level, and these guys are talented players," Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said. "As a result, we were able to win the division.

"I don't think it's a bad thing that you have to grind it out all the way to the end," Ausmus added. "I've been on teams, in Houston in '98, we clinched with 10 days or two weeks before. The games kind of, they lose their impact a little bit, so I don't necessarily think [clinching on the last day] is a bad thing. I wouldn't have minded clinching a couple days earlier, but I don't think it's necessarily awful that we had to fight all the way to the end."

Minnesota Twins v Detroit Tigers
DETROIT, MI - SEPTEMBER 28: J.D.Martinez #28 Victor Martinez #41 and Max Scherzer #37 of the Detroit Tigers celebrate a win over the Minnesota Twins and the Central Division Championship at Comerica Park on September 28, 2014 in Detroit, Michigan. The Tigers defeated the Twins 3-0. (Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images)

Tigers closer Joe Nathan, who got the save Sunday, said the fact the Tigers had to battle through the entire season to lock up their division makes the team better going forward. As he gave interviews amid the chaos of the clubhouse, Nathan was ambushed repeatedly by teammates pouring beer and champagne over the fireman helmet he wore.

"To be in this situation is what I came here for," Nathan said. "Guys stepped up. We're stronger for having gone through what we're gone through. We know we've got a tough task ahead of us in Baltimore, with their home field advantage, but we're going to enjoy this one tonight. After a grind, a grind of a season, we're going to enjoy it.

"For us to stick together through the many challenges we had and come out of it on top, it's definitely a good feeling," Nathan added.

Since the Tigers had won the division in each of the past three years, the expectations were sky-high for Detroit all season, and they only rose when the team added starting pitcher David Price in a blockbuster deal at the trade deadline. At times, however, the Tigers struggled mightily, and it looked like Detroit might end up as a wild card or perhaps even miss the playoffs altogether.

Now, of course, the regular season is over, and the Tigers achieved their goal of winning the division.

"We got the monkey off our back," reliever Phil Coke said. "It's been there all year. We came through, and we got the division like we're supposed to. But you know how baseball is - it's never a guarantee. Never ... The expectations are so high, sometimes you don't meet or exceed then, then you're considered as though you might have failed, and we met one of the expectations. That was to win this thing. And from here on, now we can play baseball because we're not sitting here stressing over small stuff that is just a tiny speck in the timeline, it's just a little tiny dot. It's nothing.

"We've had our woes here and there, at different positions, at different points in time during the year," Coke added. "It is what it is. We were still able to figure it out at the end of the day and get it done."

 

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