Detroit — No pressure, guys, but the clock is ticking.
And the fans are watching — and waiting.
The Tigers’ home opener Thursday afternoon at Comerica Park was everything you’d expect, and then some, from a rowdy crowd that packed downtown on a chilly, sun-splashed day to all the pregame festivities that included a Hall of Fame tribute to Miguel Cabrera.
This was a day to formally introduce Detroit to a roster full of new faces, but first and foremost it was a day to celebrate the Tigers’ retiring icon. Cabrera’s 20th Opening Day is also his last, he insists, and before they played ball Thursday, they first decided to play catch.
The Tigers brought out a trio of Detroit sports legends — the Lions’ Calvin Johnson, the Red Wings’ Nicklas Lidstrom and the Pistons’ Ben Wallace — to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. Yet before they took their collective wind-up, the three Hall of Famers all motioned to the Tigers’ dugout where a smiling Cabrera playfully pointed to himself as if to say, “Who, me?” And then Miggy came trotting out to join them, receiving another ovation from a sellout crowd of 44,650 as he did.
It’s the sort of honor Cabrera will receive again and again this season as the two-time former MVP, who last spring became just the seventh player in MLB history to reach 3,000 hits and 500 home runs in his career, makes a farewell tour around the league.
“I appreciate the moment because not too many guys in baseball get a chance to say goodbye,” Cabrera said Thursday, a few hours before his long goodbye to Detroit officially began. “I get a chance to say it’s my last year. I’m going to enjoy the ‘last ride,’ like people say. And I thank God, because he gave me the opportunity to enjoy these moments. It’s amazing.”
It’s also instructive, though, in a way. It’s a reminder to the next generation of what’s possible here. Maybe not all those hits and home runs — Miggy’s mountain of milestones may never be matched — but certainly all those shared memories that were reverberating around the ballpark Thursday.
‘They’re the future’
And before this opener — AJ Hinch’s team would go on to lose it, 6-3, to the visiting Boston Red Sox — that subject was broached with Spencer Torkelson, who along with Riley Greene has moved into Cabrera’s old stomping grounds at one end of the Tigers’ clubhouse and also in the middle of the Tigers’ batting order.
Asked if the two were ready to take ownership of this team — and this aging rebuild that’s now under new management with the hiring of team president Scott Harris last fall — Torkelson smiled.
“I wouldn’t go that far yet,” he said. “You know, we’ve still got a lot of veterans in the clubhouse with a lot of experience and a lot of success in this league. Especially Miggy. He’s the leader in this clubhouse. We’re kind of just learning the ropes, learning from him.
“But we show up at the yard every single day ready to go, ready to get better. And I think that’ll be contagious for as long as we’re here.”
And now that they’re here together, that’ll be the mandate going forward. It has to be, really, if this franchise is going to get back to where it was a decade ago. Just ask the only guy around who would know.
“They’re the future of the Detroit Tigers,” said Cabrera, who arrived here in 2008. “These guys are really good, they got great talent. Right now, what they’re doing does not surprise me because I know what they can do on the field.”
We all got a glimpse of it earlier this week, as the two highly-touted draft picks from a few years ago — Greene went fifth overall in 2019, Torkelson was the top pick in 2020 — blasted the Tigers out of an opening-weekend funk in Houston. Tuesday night, they combined for six hits, including a tape-measure home run, as Detroit won two out of three in the series with the reigning World Series champs.
Greene added two more hits in Wednesday’s 8-2 loss to the Astros. But Thursday, he was held hitless, while Torkelson went 1-for-4 with a single and later scored on Cabrera’s career hit No. 3,091 to give the Tigers a 3-1 lead in the third inning.
“I don’t want to put pressure on Torkelson or Riley, but we want to see more,” Cabrera said prior to the home opener. “We want to see more, because they got great talent and the future they have is really bright.”
Different vibes
So is the new clubhouse at Comerica Park, by the way. The players got their first look at it Thursday morning when they arrived at the ballpark, only several hours after they’d returned to Detroit from the season-opening road trip to Tampa and Houston.
Major renovations to the Tigers’ cozy den were just completed — upgrades throughout the complex including the weight room, performance center, dining area and the clubhouse itself — and they received rave reviews from the players. Even the new paint scheme and lighting were appreciated.
“I feel like the energy is higher just walking in here,” Greene said.
Of course, a year ago, Greene was stuck watching the Tigers’ season opener — a walk-off win over the White Sox — from Lakeland, Florida, where he’d suffered a broken foot in a spring training game a week earlier.
So instead of heading north with his roommate Torkelson and the rest of the 26-man roster to join that Opening Day party in Detroit, the rookie center fielder was alone in his room at the Residence Inn in Lakeland. Greene watched the game on his laptop, and since the game obviously wasn’t being broadcast locally, he had to purchase an MLB TV account to see it.
This year, it was a different story, and as he and Torkelson headed out to the field for some early batting practice Thursday morning, the excitement was genuine.
“We’ve definitely gotten a lot closer the past couple of years: We’re like best friends now,” Greene said, “So it’s awesome to be able to share this moment with him. … We’re just trying to create some momentum and get things going.”
Where they’re headed, only time will tell. But both of them are feeling as if they’ve finally got some traction. Torkelson endured a painful rookie season in 2022 that saw him get demoted to Triple-A Toledo at midseason and hit just .203 while displaying little of the power that was his calling card as a prospect. Greene also had his struggles after his delayed rookie arrival in June, most notably a serious slump at the plate in mid-August.
But Torkelson was hitting the ball hard all spring in Florida, and after a shaky start in Tampa, he’s starting to see the results in the box score this week. Greene is, too, after a 6-for-12 series against the Astros. And coupled with the early contributions from some of the other new faces on the roster, most notably outfielder Matt Vierling, who was on base twice again Thursday, “there’s just a different vibe in here now,” Torkelson said.
“We kind of motivate each other,” he added. “It’s like a little competition of ‘How good can you get?’ And I think that’s contagious. This whole clubhouse can kind of feel that: ‘How good can we be? And how much better can we get today?’”
The sooner they figure that out, the better. Because Cabrera’s last act is underway.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @JohnNiyo