I don't know if Brandon Inge is a good guy. I don't know if he chews with his mouth open, or if he is constantly and purposefully spoiling the ends of movies for others. So don't read too much into this. And sympathy probably isn't something you're thinking is required for Inge -- before his career is over, he'll have made over $40 million, which is more than Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell combined. He's been paid well to do his job.
The Ballad Of Brandon Inge
Brandon Inge wants to play more for the Detroit Tigers. Why would that possibly be a bad thing? Other than the playing part, of course.
But right now Inge is in the crybaby zone, a spot reserved for players who don’t just shut up and play baseball. It started with a quote from Jim Leyland.
“He’s not the happiest camper,” manager Jim Leyland said of Inge, a lifetime Tiger. “He certainly understands, and we try to deal with these issues as we’re supposed to because it’s part of our responsibility.“Leyland didn’t say that Inge was irate. He didn’t say that Inge was calling Prince Fielder’s house at 3 a.m. and hanging up. Leyland just directed our attention to the campsite around us, where there was one guy holding a perfectly melted and expertly constructed s’more. That guy was not Brandon Inge. That’s all.
And the lead-in to that quote was this:
On Jan. 19, as the Tigers kicked off their winter caravan at Comerica Park, Brandon Inge talked happily about his intentions to earn a full-time job at third base this season."I've played baseball my whole life. I've started my whole life," he told the Free Press. "I'm a baseball player. I don't want to platoon."
Happily. He just wanted to play his way into a job and force the Tigers to think they'd be nuts to block Inge because they'd rather have Miguel Cabrera clomping around third base. Inge said so happily. But people want their campers at their happiest. If there isn't a 25-way tie for happy at the campsite, some folks get riled up. Some folks, like Denny McLain:
McLain held the Inge photo up and tossed it to the floor.“It’s the first time he’s hit something in two years,” McLain said, to more laughter.
McLain is a two-time Cy Young winner who threw over 300 innings in the 1968 and 1969 seasons before his arm mysteriously went out on him, ending his career before he was 29. He’s had a long career in jackassery, too, in addition to a long career as a racketeer, extortionist, drug trafficker, embezzler, and money launderer. Other than that, he’s cool.
At the butt of this all is Brandon Inge, life-long Tiger, who just wants to start. Now, he’s not especially good these days, and a team that just invested $200 million in a new first baseman should probably be thinking about ways not to spoil that investment. Committing to Inge as a full-time player probably isn’t one of those ways.
But remove the player from the equation. We know what kind of player Brandon Inge is. He’s an all-glove, no-hit player who isn’t going to improve as he marches on into his 30s. But he also came up with the Tigers, drafted in 1998, when Gary Cherone was singing with Van Halen and Korn ruled MTV. He was a Tigers prospect before he was a Tigers player, and he’s spent roughly a third of his life doing his best to help the Detroit Tigers win more baseball games. Some of those attempts were more successful than others, of course.
And when he was a Tigers player, he was on one of the worst teams in baseball history -- the 2003 Tigers, one of the most fascinating collections of non-talent that the game has ever seen. Inge was also around for the 2006 Tigers, who stunned the baseball world and won a pennant, in no small part with the help of Inge’s contributions.
Along the way, he’s been asked to shift positions a couple of times. He took a tour of duty in the minor leagues last year, riding a bus more than a decade after thinking he was in the majors for good. He was not the happiest camper then, either. His s’more might have been sprayed by a skunk, even. But he stayed with the Tigers, and he won with them too, enjoying a big October.
Inge probably isn’t one of the 350 best hitters in the world right now. He doesn’t know that, though. He’s just a guy who’s worked for the same company for more than 11 years, and who was just told that he isn’t going to be as important as he thought he was. He’s a multi-millionaire, sure, but I can’t help feel bad for the guy.
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