Miguel Cabrera – The New Bobby Layne. Right Albom?

The Second Essential Scary Truth

Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers first baseman, perennial AL MVP candidate and hitter nearly without peer (only Albert Pujols is better) was cited for DUI Wednesday night in Fort Pierce, Florida. The 28 year old has been sober for nearly a year and a half after an October 2009 incident at Birmingham, Michigan’s exclusive Townsend Hotel during which he went home, got into a confrontation with is wife and was taken to the local precinct. Tigers President and GM Dave Dombrowski was forced to retrieve his star player at 6am so he could play in a playoffs deciding series against the Minnesota Twins.

The reaction from the Tigers has been typical of the modern athlete: his teammates are behind him love him etc. Dombrowski claims to be shocked by this turn of events while Tigers manager Jim Leyland promises Cabrera will have the best year of his career. And everyone in Detroit Tigers Nation are keeping their fingers and toes crossed that this incident with a scotch bottle and smoking car engine is just a bump in the road in a larger recovery. After all, if Miguel Cabrera keeps up his current production at the plate over another 4-5 years, he will find himself in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The reaction from the Detroit media, however, is ironic to the point of laughable. The Detroit Free Press’s Mitch Albom claims Cabrera ‘no excuses’ this time while Bob Wojnowski of the Detroit News wonders if Cabrera’s career might be ‘on the line.’ Yes, these are the same questions and gross generalizations we have come to expect of the sensationalist media. So Albom and Wojnowski, Henning, Foster and Sharpe being shocked, SHOCKED I SAY at the alcoholic behavior of a Detroit athlete is to be expected on that level.

However, this is DETROIT and these same columnists who speculate and rankle at the actions, behavior and choices made by the greatest Detroit Tiger slugger since Hank Greenberg always give the immortal Bobby Layne a pass. Yes, Bobby Layne was the quarterback who last led last Detroit Lions to glory, winning three of four NFL Championships for the Lions in the mid 1950’s. Layne was also a fall down drunk. My great Uncles Irv and John (among others I’m sure) were employed by the Lions to drink with Bobby the night before a game and get him to either the LIndell AC or Golden Lion, bars located right across from Tiger Stadium, before Michigan’s mandated 2am closing time so they could drink and party after hours. The Lions would come to collect their QB around 7am to sober him up for the 1pm kick off. My great Uncles received tickets to the game as payment for their civic duty.

Would a sober Bobby Layne have won more for the Lions? That is a question that is surely debated by various Lions fans to this day. However, rest assured, the current crop of Detroit gonzo wanna-be reporters would scream to put Layne back on the sauce when the Lions started to lose.

Will a totally sober Cabrera win the Triple Crown and take the Tigers back to the World Series for the first time since 2006? I hope so. However, if a drunk Cabrera can do it better and faster than the sober version, I’m all for loading up his Gatorade bottle with Johnny Walker Blue. And believe me, my fellow Tiger fans feel the same way.

Of course the Detroit sports reporters will be horrified by a drunk Miguel Cabrera swatting dingers 450 feet to the opposite field; and these morally challenged hacks (look up the word plagiarism Albom) will just as quickly demand giving him his medication when he is sober and in a mid season slump.

But hey, they still love Bobby Layne.