For Tigers of '03, a Lost Cause No More

But it doesn't mean it was easy. Asked what could be learned from such an experience, Dombrowski's top assistant, Al Avila, thought a minute, then sighed. "You don't ever want to go through that again," he said, and then paused, repeating himself. "You don't ever want to go through that again."

It was, players and executives say, a brutal march. The Tigers opened the season with nine straight losses, finally broke through with a victory over the Chicago White Sox, a win that merely prompted an eight-game losing streak. That, though, would become quite a familiar feeling. Six times during that season, Detroit lost at least eight consecutive games. It was May 5 -- more than a month into the season -- before the Tigers won back-to-back games. On Sept. 22, when they lost their 10th game in a row, a 12-6 decision at Kansas City, they fell to 38-118, a remarkable 70 games under .500.

The funny thing is, the Tigers lost 106 games in 2002, 96 the year before that. They hadn't been competitive for years, the reason Dombrowski, who built the expansion Florida Marlins into a champion in 1997, was hired in 2002. But the flirtation with those '62 Mets, a team which baseball purists recall with a romantic sense of whimsy, made these Tigers different.

"If you lose 108, you're really bad," Dombrowski said. "You lose 119, you're still really bad. It's amazing the attention it gets because of that, and I tried to keep that in perspective at times."

For the front office, which was using the season to evaluate what useful parts it had for the future, that was easier. For the players, the ones who had to answer questions about their performance on a daily basis -- the men who greeted a pack of national media late in the season, vultures ready to pick whatever meat was left off the bone as the record drew near -- it was more difficult.

"People can say, 'Wow, they had a bad season,' " said Inge, the catcher on that team, the third baseman on this one. "But you didn't play there, and you didn't go through that. You don't understand. You think you do, but you don't understand."

There is, then, a bond among those players who were on both the laughingstock and the league champion, among Inge and utilitymen Ramon Santiago and Omar Infante. It is there between Jeremy Bonderman, who started Game 4 of the ALCS, and Wilfredo Ledezma, who won the game in relief. It is there between Monroe, who hit .240 as a rookie in '03 but has clubbed three homers this postseason, and lefty Nate Robertson, entrusted to start the series openers in both rounds of the playoffs. And it is there in the bullpen, where relievers Jamie Walker and relievers Fernando Rodney are two more who survived the fires of baseball hell, only to reach the World Series.

"You don't ever forget some of the things we can learn from that season," said Inge, the celebration raging around him. "Everyone discrediting this team, as far as we didn't have a chance, that's long gone. Long gone. You can't tell us we're not a good team. We're in the World Series."