For Tigers of '03, a Lost Cause No More

DETROIT, Oct. 15 -- This is what Brandon Inge was able to tell himself Saturday night, standing in the middle of the infield at Comerica Park, surrounded by the din of a crowd that just witnessed its team win the pennant.

"If I can put a uniform on, and step on a baseball field," Inge said, "I'm in heaven."

Inge can say this and make it sound convincing, because he has been to baseball hell and back. Strewn about the field Saturday night, celebrating the Detroit Tigers' improbable sweep of the Oakland Athletics to win the American League Championship Series, were eight other players just like Inge, the members of these Tigers who also were members of those Tigers, the group that infamously lost 119 games in 2003.

"What we went through," left fielder Craig Monroe said, "is hard to comprehend."

Had they not finished the season with five victories in their last six games, the '03 Tigers would have joined the woeful New York Mets of 1962, the expansion group managed by the colorful Casey Stengel, as the only modern major league teams to drop 120 games.

These Tigers are adored and admired. Those Tigers were ridiculed and ranted about, and they came dangerously close to becoming irrelevant in a sports city that could always turn to the Red Wings or the Wolverines or the Pistons for at least a shot at success. But don't try to convince those nine players -- not to mention those, such as 21-game loser Mike Maroth, who isn't on the 2006 postseason roster but still resides in the clubhouse -- that any of those 119 losses was irrelevant.

"Without that failure," Monroe said, "I don't know if we could really embrace and enjoy the moments that we're having right now."

Winning a pennant means a great deal to everyone involved: to veterans such as pitchers Todd Jones and Kenny Rogers, because they know such chances come along infrequently; to youngsters such as Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya, because they can step onto the national stage and remain unflustered by the environment; to baseball lifers such as Manager Jim Leyland, who knows the thrills of winning a World Series and the downright despair of burning out on baseball.

But for the members of the 2003 Tigers, it has to mean more.

"When you're the laughingstock of Major League Baseball, and you're the butt of David Letterman's every joke, and Jay Leno's," said Jones, who watched the debacle from afar, "it probably feels pretty damn good right now."

The Tigers didn't go into spring training that year with any expectations of competing for a division title. As General Manager Dave Dombrowski said, "We knew we were going to be bad." The team was going through an overhaul, reducing a payroll that had reached nearly $62 million in 2000 -- a season that yielded a record of 79-83 -- to under $50 million, ridding itself of veterans that hadn't brought more wins in favor of kids.

"It wasn't like there was a revelation," Dombrowski said, "where all of a sudden you woke up and said, 'Gee, we thought we were going to win 110, and we lost that many.' "