Finally a sport where no matter how abysmal your team is, no matter how great your hopes are dashed, you can be assured your team will win at least once.

Time to renew those hopes, Tigers fans

By KRISTA JAHNKE • FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER • February 13, 2009

Today, pitchers and catchers report to spring training facilities across the U.S. (OK, really just in the South and West). It’s the official beginning of baseball season.
Advertisement

Spring training is a time for baseball fans to renew their hope. And that restored hope is perhaps greater in no other place than in Lakeland, Florida, where the Tigers, the darlings of preseason predictions a year ago, will assemble with far less national attention and lower expectations.

At least, lower expectations from outside.

From inside, the Tigers are using words like “excited” and “motivated.” Manager Jim Leyland sounded like a five-year-old bubbling with anticipation before his first day of school when he met with the media Thursday.

There is no question that the disappointment from last season will hang in the air for a while, even if everyone says they have moved on. I don’t doubt that they have tried, but until the team re-establishes itself as a true contender, until it makes good on Leyland’s declaration Thursday that the Tigers are “a very good team,” I think, rightfully so, people will withhold any lofty expectations.

And that’s fine. It could even be a good thing.

Being the favorite, the hunted, is rarely a position of power in sports. The pressure is far greater, the chance for failure bigger. That creates something athletes never admit they feel but that is only human nature — fear. And it is hard to perform your best when your main motivating emotion is fear of failing.

http://www.freep.com/article/20090213/SPORTS18/90213042/1050/SPORTS02/Time+to+renew+those+hopes++Tigers+fans

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.