By DANA WAKIJI
FOXSportsDetroit.com
You hear it on Detroit sports talk radio, you see it on Facebook and Twitter -- everyone keeps talking about the Yankees and what's wrong with them: but what about the Detroit Tigers?
I hate to break it to you but this is what happens to any team that is playing the Yankees. There's way more New York media than there is in any other city and there is an east coast bias.
We should be used to it by now. After all, it's the third time in the last six years the Tigers are facing the Yankees in the postseason.
I remember back in 2006, when the Tigers had just eliminated the Yankees in the ALDS. The AP writer from Cleveland, Tom Withers, was covering the series. As the Tigers carried manager Jim Leyland off the field on their shoulders, Withers was on the phone with the AP office in New York.
"The story is not the Yankees!" Withers yelled loudly in the press box. "The story is the Tigers!"
The AP is a national news organization that is supposed to be completely unbiased, writing whatever the story is. But the reality is in their New York-based minds, the story is always going to be the Yankees.
You just have to accept that's the way it is.
That doesn't mean there's no solution to this problem. But it's up to the Tigers. If they win two more games, then the New York media will be left to figure out what went wrong. Meanwhile, the national media will be forced to pay attention to the Tigers if they're one of two teams that's in the World Series.
