What a gift a man, whose talent is unfailingly historic, gave all of Detroit’s baseball realm Saturday at Comerica Park.
What a gift a man, whose talent is unfailingly historic, gave all of Detroit’s baseball realm Saturday at Comerica Park. With one blur of a swing, Miguel Cabrera tagged a 94.7-mph fastball from Antonio Senzatela for the 3,000th hit in his majestic big-league baseball career. It came at 1:24 p.m. on a sunny spring afternoon during a game against the Rockies. There was a rising roar from a near-sellout mass at Comerica Park that you figured for one high-decibel moment might have been heard all the way to the Mackinac Bridge. Amid the delirium unleashed by Cabrera, raising a right arm and index finger to the sky as he sprang toward first base, there was this thought. Or, perhaps, it was more of a conviction: This was justice. For a man. And for a 121-year-old baseball town that has something close to mystical passion and appreciation for a grand old game. Most deserving of Saturday’s baseball bliss was Cabrera. Seven players, and seven only, from five generations of MLB annals have managed to reach 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. Think about that, fully. Tens of thousands have played. Seven men have done what Cabrera now has managed. Not even the two players who wore Tigers uniforms before Cabrera and who reached 3,000 hits — Ty Cobb and Al Kaline — came within a mile of having Cabrera’s stunning power to match such remarkable hitting prowess. This, too, was a day worthy of Detroit, of its fanatical fervor for baseball. It was for all the people whose lives have been buoyed by a game woven into this community’s soul. It was for all the folks this week who bundled up against the chill to buy a ticket and hold vigil over Cabrera’s at-bats during his march to 3,000. You thought, too, returning to the author of Saturday’s 3,000-hit fest, how he has persisted during his 15 seasons in Detroit, often when a heel was aching, or an ankle or a knee was buckling from stress, or when his abdomen or groin was on fire from some internal malady brought on by baseball’s physical fury. He still swung that magnificent bat. A gorgeous, streamlined, laser — free of blemish and destined so often to send a baseball speeding through the infield or up an outfield alley or beyond a distant fence.
