Here it is, folks: the article that started the quest for an interview with Tigers’ GM Dave Dombrowski.  I can’t tell you the grade I got for it, but I can tell you this much: my professor told me she liked it despite not even being a baseball fan 😉

In a world where many adults leave their dreams behind in their childhood, one dream endures for children and adults alike: the World Series.  For every baseball fan, every baseball player and manager, the World Series is the Holy Grail.  It’s the goal that every baseball team works toward every year.  Victory in the World Series is a sight to behold, even for the losing team and fans.  I have seen it transform people of all ages into happy little children again, and revitalize whole cities. Considering the fact that there are thirty teams in the major leagues, it’s a hard goal to reach, but it’s not impossible.  A wide range of teams have won it, varying from bottom-of-the-barrel, scrappy David teams to deep-pocket, powerhouse Goliaths.  It takes a variety of things to win the World Series, but some of the most important are performance, momentum, and chemistry.

Ability and performance are the building blocks of any team, not just World Series champions.  Every player in the major leagues has trained for years and years, since college, high school, and even childhood to play their respective positions, and all of them who make it into the majors have achieved the professional level of play in baseball.  There are nine positions on the field: pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, shortstop, third base, and the three outfield spots; and all of them have to be filled.  More often than not, teams will have reserves, too; players who can take the place of the starters if injuries should happen.  Each man at each position must be able to catch the ball in the air, and sometimes the ball could be coming at him as fast as ninety miles an hour.  He must be able to throw the ball well enough and fast enough to have the chance to beat a player from the opposing team to any particular base.  Except for the pitcher (with the exemption of one of the two leagues), every player has to be able to swing the bat well, to be able to hit professional pitches that can be thrown anywhere from eighty to a hundred miles an hour, and with craftiness that fools seasoned veterans so badly that they’re swinging at air well before or after the ball has passed, or screwing themselves into the ground.  There are several types of pitchers: starters, relievers, and closers; and teams will have a good number of each kind.  Hopefully, if the starter is pitching well, he’ll be able to pitch seven or eight of the nine innings in a game, after which the closer comes in to get the last outs.  But if the starter isn’t doing well, the reliever is brought in to shut down the opposing team until the last one or two innings, when the closer comes in to do his job.  Pitching is one of the most—if not the most important components to a team.  No matter how well you hit or score runs, you can’t win ballgames without good pitching to stop the opposing team from scoring.  There’s a saying in baseball: “Good pitching always beats good hitting”.   In an interview, Detroit Tigers General Manager Dave Dombrowski said, “…If you have good pitching, you’re in a position where you always have the chance to win” (Dombrowski).

Each player must become part of the team.  Every set of skills has to mesh smoothly on the field.  If the third baseman scoops up a hit and heaves it toward first base, the first baseman has got to be ready and waiting to receive it.  When turning a double-play—two outs on the diamond close to together in rapid succession—the catcher, third baseman, second baseman, shortstop and first baseman have to be in sync, muscle memory reminding each of them where his teammate should be.  No matter how good he is, each player must be willing to make the small hit if the team needs it, instead of going for the big home run.  These days, it’s a lot more complicated than it used to be.  Some players are more interested in boosting their own personal statistics than helping out the team, because better and flashier stats could translate into bigger and more lucrative contracts at the end of the year.  According to longtime major league manager Tony La Russa, sometimes managers and coaches actually have to persuade their players to “…play hard enough and selflessly enough to win ballgames” (xx).  I think this is sad, because a team should be—well, a team.  The dictionary defines a team as “a number of persons associated together in work or activity”.  A group of people allied together, working together.  In order to even get to the Series, not only must a team be talented, but they must be willing to be a team.  Former Los Angeles Dodgers’ manager Tommy Lasorda said, “There are three kinds of people in life: people who make it happen, people who watch it happen, and people who wonder what happened” (37, 46).  Which do you think would win a World Series?

Momentum plays a large part in catapulting a team into the postseason.  It’s the intangible luckiness that a team gets when they go on a really hot streak and win and win and win.  The extra fraction of a second that allows a fielder to snag a fly ball out of the air for an out inches from the ground.  The four or five hits in a game garnered by the one of the guys who typically struggles.  The crazy circus flips and tosses a shortstop makes to the second baseman to start a double-play.  “Every successful team has fortune on its side. In each organization where I’ve managed, good fortune has been a constant teammate” (La Russa, xxi).  It’s hard for opposing teams who come up against that incorrigible, undeniable luckiness.  It’s like trying to stop a train going at ninety miles an hour.  Everything is going for the lucky team, and by definition, going against the other.  In the World Series, the team that has the momentum has the advantage.  And no two opposing teams can have it.  When one has it, it takes it out of the other.

However, momentum doesn’t have to start at the very beginning of the season to get a team to the playoffs.  A team can have a very much up-and-down season, but if they get it together and catch that momentum toward the end of the season, sometimes it can be enough to carry them through.  In 2001, the underdog Arizona Diamondbacks were having a sometimes rough, but very much triumphant season.  In June, which is pretty much near the middle of a regular season, they had as many as nine players on the disabled list (Haller, par. 5).  Nine players is a lot to be injured at the same time.  And yet…the Diamondbacks still continued to win, shoring up the holes where needed, bringing in minor leaguers who stepped up and performed at the major league level (Haller, par.8).  The Diamondbacks would go on to beat the powerhouse New York Yankees, and bring a grieving nation some respite from the events of September 11.

And then there’s chemistry.  A team not only has to mesh professionally and skill-wise on the field, but they have to mesh emotionally, too.  Emotion tends to affect performance.  No team that experiences disquiet and infighting in the clubhouse can hope to even sniff the World Series.  Tony La Russa said, “I’ve also been fortunate to work for three franchises whose every level has shown the will and the skill to win. In an era when players’ attitudes and relationships to their clubs are so fragile, these three teams have had an edge because their players have sensed this coordinated commitment to win throughout the organization” (xxi).  When the Florida Marlins won the World Series in 1997, first baseman Jeff Conine said of his teammates, “We just all got along so well together.  It’s like, you’re playing with your brothers.  You’re out there with your twenty-five brothers in the same clubhouse and playing on the same field” (BB Moments: ’97 WS, Gm. 7: Marlins Take Title in 11).  Chemistry is like momentum; if you’ve got it, and got it rolling, it’s hard to stop it.  Although the 2011 Detroit Tigers didn’t make it to the Series, their chemistry and friendship was worthy of a Series championship team.  Miguel Cabrera, then the Tigers’ first baseman and current third baseman, is known for his feats with the bat; but in early 2011 his problems with alcohol came to light when he was arrested in February for DUI, and the media promptly put them on display.  Cabrera made a strong and valiant comeback from it, however, and his teammates supported him in a way that was nothing short of amazing.  Usually a major playoff victory is celebrated by squirting teammates with champagne in the clubhouse and on the field.  When the Tigers won the American League Division Series, the second stop on the way to the World Series, they celebrated by cheerfully uncorking bottles of alcohol-free FRE BRUT sparkling wine to spray at each other, for Cabrera’s benefit (“Tigers,” par. 12).

Every fan, every team wants to experience the incredible joy of winning the World Series.  Long after adults give up their dreams of being superheroes, princesses, and secret agents, this is one dream that endures from childhood to old age.  It takes a lot of things going right all at once to win the Series, and three of the most important of which are performance, momentum, and chemistry.  I myself haven’t yet seen my home team, the Detroit Tigers win the World Series, but in 2006 I saw them win the American League Championship Series (ALCS), earning themselves a trip to the Series for the first time since 1984.  I saw grown men skipping and bouncing around like boys again from sheer joy and exhilaration, weeping, hugging their colleagues and friends and even strangers with blissful goodwill.  I remember screaming myself hoarse in the family living room, hugging my siblings and my parents, and then sitting down from shock with tears streaming down my face.  As a part of “Tigers’ country” so to speak, I felt like we had conquered the world (or at least a large part of it), but at the same time were at peace with it.  The joy and fulfillment from that game (even though the Tigers did not win the Series that year) stayed with me to this day, and I believe it will stay with me for the rest of my life.  The feeling of winning the World Series cannot be much different.  Dave Dombrowski says that with the World Series, “…there are no more tomorrows” (Dombrowski).  That’s the difference between winning the ALCS and the World Series.  With the ALCS, you have to worry about winning the Series next.  But at the end of the Series…if you’re the team holding the Commissioner’s Trophy, it means that all your hard work, ability, and teamwork has paid off.  “There are no more tomorrows” (Dombrowski).  You’ve won.  You’ve shown the world that you have the heart of champions, and the drive to make your dream come true.  Perhaps the hope and the dream of winning the Series endures because deep down, people want to believe that with hard work, skill, willing cooperation with others, and a little luck, dreams can come true.  Year after year, fans hope, teams build and work and battle all season long, and the dream of the Series lives on.

Works Cited:

BB Moments: ’97 WS, Gm. 7: Marlins Take Title in 11.  MLB.com, 8 Aug. 2008.  Video.  15 April 2012.

Dombrowski, David.  Telephone interview.  17 April 2012.

Haller, Doug.  “2001 Diamondbacks overcame a lot of adversity in June.”  Azcentral.com. Azcentral.com, 11 June 2011.  Web.  15 April 2012.

La Russa, Tony.  Foreword to Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager, by Buzz Bissinger.  New York:  Houghton Mifflin, 2005.  Print.

Lasorda, Tommy, and Bill Plaschke.  I Live For This! : Baseball’s Last True Believer.  Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.  Print.

“Tigers Start Early Then Hold Off Yankees In Decisive Game 5 of ALDS.”  ESPN.com.  ESPN Internet Ventures, n.d.  Web.  18 April 2012.