By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 16, 2006

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.' "

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."