Comerica Park's Cobb Statue Honors a Legend

Sure, Verlander's arm and a couple of choice hits from Dirks had something to do with it. But no doubt a little DT Love went a long way in helping the Tigers beat the Mariners last night. With that, we continue the magic...

Funny that old pal Karl Z should happen to hop aboard the Times train earlier today. Even funnier that we're unintentionally pilfering his Facebook thread that raised an interesting question about those statues out in the Comerica Park leftfield concourse. For it was already our plan to feature one of those statues with today's update, mostly to show off our miraculous photography skills. (Note to novice photographers: When in doubt, position your subject in front of the sun. It looks really cool, provided you don't flinch an inch in either direction, in which case you might go blind.)

Tigers greats who are honored with a statue at Comerica Park include  Horton, Kaline, Gehringer, Newhouser and Greenberg. And, as pictured above, Ty Cobb, whose statue relives Cobb's sportsman-like way of driving sharpened, metal cleats into a shortstop's shins. The six together form an impressive collection of talent, and no doubt fans have already spent hours at the Elwood chatting about who should be next. Karl Z. posed that question to Facebook users, who had some interesting responses. Lolich? The Bird? Whitaker and Tram, perhaps?

Some of the younger fans might even be tempted to prematurely anoint Smyly, who's riding a five-game tear that no doubt will continue this evening. The Tigers' surge is just beginning. To help keep it rolling, forward a link to this story to a friend.

Comerica Park Scoreboard Looms Large Over Leftfield

In the wake of Octavio Dotel's momentary inability to throw a baseball straight, we figured that maybe what the Tiges need to get rolling out west is a little DT Love. In the coming days, look for anything Tigers related to fill this space, which we hope is at least a slight improvement over our recent habit of posting nothing at all.

Will it work? It's anybody's guess, but I like the odds. It's only a matter of time before the Tigers bats heat up. Hell, Cabrera hit a ball so hard last night he nearly killed a guy, and it resulted in an inning-ending double play. The bounces will start going our way soon and when they do, the DT would love to be there waiting to scoop up some of the credit, even if it's only being dished out internally.

So here we go, aiming to ignite a surge that we haven't ridden since 35-5. We begin out beyond the leftfield fence, to the already-monstrous scoreboard that was enlarged this off-season. There are a number of reasons for the upgrade, including a switch to LED technology and the desire to raise the scoreboard about 16 feet so that none of it was blocked by that corner of upper-deck seating down the leftfield line.

One other rumor says that Tigers brass, upon signing Prince Fielder in the off-season, wanted to make opposing pitchers crap their pants by showing a 5,000-square foot picture of Prince whenever he's on deck. So far it hasn't worked. A quick look at MLB stats tells us that OMBMBOPACP (On-Mound Bowel Movements By Opposing Pitchers At Comerica Park) is still at zero, but give it time.

The Love is just beginning.