Goggles are for wimps.
What's the point of celebratory champagne shower in a championship locker room if you're going to put a hazmat suit on first? So it was in the Tigers' clubhouse Sunday afternoon, when a beleaguered bunch of AL Central Division champs first donned T-shirts, then caps and finally protective goggles before uncorking their bottles of cheap bubbly and spraying them around the room at one another.
Seriously? What's the point?
Just ask Ian Kinsler, who wore neither hat nor eye protection when he was doused by teammates.
He yelped, then used left thumb and forefinger to squeeze the burn out of his eyes. "Ah, that stings," he said.
Exactly.
That's the good stuff, the sting that lingers well after a long shower. He'll surely remember that as an old man when he thinks of this 2014 Detroit baseball team, a band of brothers who endured so much while limping to the finish line.
Burning eyes. Sticky hair that turns brittle to the touch when the champagne dries. Clothes that smell of alcohol -- and preserve a feeling of cardboard, no matter how many trips they make to the dry cleaner.
That's the good stuff.
It's what I recall most vividly from my 15 years as a sports writer in Detroit -- those rare and wonderful celebrations. The best of which, for me, was on June 7, 1997, when the Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup in 42 years. That night, the first guy I ran into in an insanely crowded, smoke-filled, champagne-stained dressing room was Vladimir Konstantinov. Not only was he -- is he -- one of the finest people I've ever met in and out of sports, he would have been my first-round draft pick of any player in the league to share a foxhole with when the bullets were flying.
Vladdie was partially in uniform. His skates were off, and so were his Wings No. 16 sweater and shoulder pads. Other than that, he was a sweaty, exhausted, deliriously happy mess when he shook my hand. I'd barely been able to congratulate him when he pulled me toward him for wet, clammy hug. And as he did that, he dumped the contents of a nearly full bottle of champagne over my head.
I remember the sting today -- the good stuff -- and it fills me with emotion.
This is what covering sports was about for me. I always considered it an honor to represent my hometown newspaper in the locker rooms around the greatest sports town on the continent. And I'm not sure there's even a close second.
Don't ask me why I left. It wasn't my finest hour, though I did have the privilege of watching a fine city and a great big state fall hopelessly in love with hockey when the Stars won the Stanley Cup in Dallas in 1999. For the last decade or so, I've spent most of my time in front of a classroom rather than behind a keyboard.
You teach, you learn. So I like to think that in my encore as a sportswriter I'll deliver something a little better. Suffice to say, I am grateful beyond words that we have this opportunity again.
For starters, I suspect I'll have to overcome some misconceptions. I've been typecast in this town as a hockey guy. I learned that just a few years into my assignment as the Red Wings beat guy for The Detroit Free Press. I was in the clubhouse at Tiger Stadium, in the middle of a conversation with Alan Trammell. The notebook was put away. We were just shooting the breeze. Suddenly, I was in a headlock, and Sparky Anderson was playfully admonishing his shortstop.
"Don't waste yer time talkin' to this guy," Anderson was saying. "He's a hockey guy. He don't know baseball."
In fact, I got my start in Detroit in 1984, helping to cover a pretty good baseball team all the way to a World Series championship in one of the greatest seasons we'll ever know. By the next Labor Day, I was on the hockey beat. And while a week-long trip to Moscow with three of the acclaimed Russian Five and the Stanley Cup stands out among the myriad memories covering the Wings, I am grateful for the many other extraordinary assignments I had throughout my time there.
In fact, in a six-month stretch that began with the Wings' Cup title in 1997, I experienced a kind of sportswriter's nirvana. A few months later, I walked Red Square with Slava Fetisov, Igor Larionov, Slave Kozlov and the Stanley Cup. On my return home, I was asked to fill in on the University of Michigan football beat (back when the Wolverines actually competed in the Big Ten). Lloyd Carr's team played 12 games -- and won them all, finishing by beating Washington State in the Rose Bowl and winning the National Championship.
I missed the game at Penn State that year. Instead, I went to Las Vegas to cover a fight and sat at ringside, close enough to see part of Evander Holyfield's ear bounce across the canvass after Mike Tyson spit it out.
That assignment in Pasadena, the finest setting on the planet for a football game, was my last before leaving Detroit. Six weeks later, I was in Nagano, Japan, covering the Olympic Winter Games and witnessed two of the most memorable hockey tournaments ever played. On the men's side, the Americans and Canadians, who were supposed to fight it out for the gold, didn't get a sniff at a medal (and the American hockey team continued to embarrass itself by trashing the dorms in the Athletes' Village). Dominik Hasek put his Czech teammates on his back for the gold. On the women's side, the Americans upset the Canadians, and in one of the most emotional moments I've ever experienced, I watched as Cammi Granato leaned forward to accept the first-ever gold medal to be placed around the neck of a female hockey player. She shoots, she scores!
Back in Detroit, I had the pleasure of covering some memorable NBA games involving those beloved Bad Boys, including a Game 7 at a sweltering Boston Garden the day Pistons Vinnie Johnson and Adrian Dantley crashed heads, sending Dantley to the emergency room of a local hospital -- where I interviewed him. I covered Scott Mitchell as he set passing records for the Lions at the Silverdome. Now I watch him on TV's "Biggest Loser" and confess that not much has changed.
And baseball. Some memorable games at Tiger Stadium, including one that was so remindful of Sunday's season-ender against those pesky Minnesota Twins. In the final series of the 1987 season, the Tigers needed a sweep over Toronto to win the AL Eastern Division. It came down to the final game, with another crafty left-hander, Frank Tanana, on the mound.
The press box at Tiger Stadium was packed with writers from both the United States and Canada, and I was among a handful of reporters representing my newspaper. A few months earlier, the Red Wings had turned this city on its ear by not only qualifying for the playoffs but winning a couple of rounds before bowing to Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers in the Cup semifinals. The octopus had made a glorious comeback.
And in a baseball game on Oct. 4 between Detroit and Toronto, an enterprising fan heaved one over the railing from the upper deck on the first-base side. It splatted in the grass near the Toronto dugout, and a crowd of 51,005 went wild. Immediately, I found myself surrounded by a bunch of baseball writers in the corner of the press box explaining one of the most bizarre and wonderful traditions in all of sport. So, yeah, that night I was the hockey guy.
One more thing: The Tigers won that game, 1-0. There was a little champagne in the clubhouse that evening, too. No goggles. And it stung.
The good stuff.
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