What a gift a man, whose talent is unfailingly historic, gave all of Detroit’s baseball realm Saturday at Comerica Park.
With one blur of a swing, Miguel Cabrera tagged a 94.7-mph fastball from Antonio Senzatela for the 3,000th hit in his majestic big-league baseball career.
It came at 1:24 p.m. on a sunny spring afternoon during a game against the Rockies. There was a rising roar from a near-sellout mass at Comerica Park that you figured for one high-decibel moment might have been heard all the way to the Mackinac Bridge.
Amid the delirium unleashed by Cabrera, raising a right arm and index finger to the sky as he sprang toward first base, there was this thought. Or, perhaps, it was more of a conviction:
This was justice. For a man. And for a 121-year-old baseball town that has something close to mystical passion and appreciation for a grand old game.
Most deserving of Saturday’s baseball bliss was Cabrera. Seven players, and seven only, from five generations of MLB annals have managed to reach 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.
Think about that, fully. Tens of thousands have played. Seven men have done what Cabrera now has managed. Not even the two players who wore Tigers uniforms before Cabrera and who reached 3,000 hits — Ty Cobb and Al Kaline — came within a mile of having Cabrera’s stunning power to match such remarkable hitting prowess.
This, too, was a day worthy of Detroit, of its fanatical fervor for baseball. It was for all the people whose lives have been buoyed by a game woven into this community’s soul. It was for all the folks this week who bundled up against the chill to buy a ticket and hold vigil over Cabrera’s at-bats during his march to 3,000.
You thought, too, returning to the author of Saturday’s 3,000-hit fest, how he has persisted during his 15 seasons in Detroit, often when a heel was aching, or an ankle or a knee was buckling from stress, or when his abdomen or groin was on fire from some internal malady brought on by baseball’s physical fury.
He still swung that magnificent bat. A gorgeous, streamlined, laser — free of blemish and destined so often to send a baseball speeding through the infield or up an outfield alley or beyond a distant fence.
So many thoughts, seemingly one for every one of his 3,000 hits, flashed Saturday:
… His vision. It’s known by its common baseball term: pitch-recognition. Jim Leyland has said that, in his view, after watching thousands of Cabrera at-bats as Cabrera’s prime-years manager, it’s Cabrera’s singular ability to almost instantly see “the ball out of a pitcher’s hand” that alerts him to the pitch coming. Vision so acute, and a swing nearly physics-defying in its quickness, factor fundamentally in how a man reaches 3,000 hits and clubs 500-plus home runs. He saw it Saturday: a boring inside fastball from Senzatela. Cabrera reacted with that immaculate inside-out swing and swatting the baseball on a hot-hopping path through the right-side infield hole and into right field.
… Batting practice: Visiting hitters arrive later to the ballpark. They take the field later for batting practice than the home team, which goes first. Cabrera has always enjoyed an audience. He always has loved how opposing players in Detroit have been fixated on his routine. He begins with casual swings and loves to initially spray balls from right field to left field. Then he unwinds. Long blasts follow. His audience in the visiting dugout is mesmerized. Cabrera goes for the show. More bombs follow. A manager such as Leyland wasn’t always in love with the theatrics. It could, to some seasoned eyes, leave Cabrera expended of maximum energy when he began his game at-bats. But, ah, some things a manager can live with. Cabrera has always known how to draw a smile at the same time a skipper was shaking his head.
… Two home runs, on two memorable Opening Days in Detroit, offered differing messages about Cabrera’s prowess. First homer: Cabrera’s Detroit debut in a Tigers uniform, March 31, 2008. On your typically, frosty, miserable opener at Comerica Park, the Royals starter, Gil Meche, heaves a fifth-inning, 2-0 fastball that Cabrera knocks past the left-center field fence. Nothing overly dramatic, except that it was a portent of what was to come, on a day when such a feat, given Cabrera’s reputation and billing, was actually expected. Second homer: Last year, in the snow at Comerica Park, first inning: a 1-1 pitch from Shane Bieber that Cabrera drives through the flurries into the right-field seats. Snow in his eyes could not stop a fabled hitter from delivering.
… June 22, 2014, Sunday game at Cleveland. First inning — a tiny, but telling, moment with Josh Tomlin pitching for the Indians. Midway through an eight-pitch at-bat, Cabrera just misses on a Tomlin change-up. You put out a tweet to this effect: “If Tomlin throws that change-up again, at any time this at-bat, it’s heading into Lake Erie.” Eighth pitch. Tomlin finally goes to the change. Cabrera lines it deep to right. Gone — first run in a 10-4 Tigers victory. Cabrera waited, and fouled, and took — and finally got it. Only with Cabrera and with his ability to hunt and adjust would you offer that kind of forecast.
… Think of how one man’s amazing diversity of skill has played into 3,000 hits. Reflect, for a moment, on that deft mind of his, the intellect involved in setting up an opposing pitcher. Not everyone understands Cabrera was a math whiz as he grew up. He was intending to be an engineer. Consider that talent as you ponder these 3,000 knocks. Also, his raw athleticism. He was going to be a volleyball star if he hadn’t opted for baseball. It becomes more fathomable that a man of such dimension has funneled all of these facets into a baseball career that stamps him as a hitter consummately different from the norm.
Saturday brought us, in a single momentous at-bat, a kind of Cabrera consolidation. His place in history. His mastery of a hitting skill that awes and astounds. The reverence Detroit’s baseball audience, with its fiery love for a blessed game, showed and continues to lavish on a man of such extraordinary talent and standing.
He is not finished. That nearly $300-million contract late Tigers owner Mike Ilitch handed him eight years ago, just to make sure moments such as Saturday’s belonged to the Tigers and to Detroit, runs for another 18 months.
It provides Cabrera with all he needs. Money. Stature. And, as Saturday’s Comerica Park Cabrera-fest confirmed, he owns for the ages a town’s appreciation for what he has meant to its heritage and to its signature baseball symbol — that Olde English D.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and former Detroit News sports reporter.