This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Detroit News columnist Lynn Henning, who has been covering the Detroit Tigers since before I was alive. In part one, we talked about this weekend's Tigers-Orioles series, the Tigers' chances against the White Sox and Indians in the AL Central race, and the possibilities of the Tigers trading for a second baseman this summer, plus the idea of trading Prince Fielder this weekend.
In part two we discuss more trade possibilities involving Alex Avila, life on Twitter, and the Justin Verlander-Kate Upton romance. Catch up on part one, if you missed it.
PART ONE
Don’t you think that ideally, if they find a taker, the Tigers trade Fielder this year because they don’t want three $20 million guys on the roster, and if you had to pick two you obviously take Verlander and Cabrera. How aggressively do you think they’ll pursue that trade?
I don’t know and it probably depends on what happens the next 90 days. Do they make the playoffs, and if so are they going to be able to hang around, or will they be betrayed by the defense and the lack of athleticism? If that’s the situation, then that’s an awful lot of payroll to carry. Remember, they only wanted Fielder for one year anyway because of Victor Martinez coming back. Ideally they’d have signed Prince to a one-year deal, and in fact they tried to, but of course Scott Boras wanted no part in it.
The guy I look at if you want to fill holes is Alex Avila. He would bring a great return in a trade and the Tigers have great organizational depth at the catcher position.
They do, but the only reason I think the Tigers would trade him is if they had concerns about his knees holding up. And if the Tigers have those concerns, you can bet that an inquiring team would also wonder about his health. I’m not sure that’s the way they’d do that, but Rob Brantly might end up getting you as much as Avila would in the trade market. One of those catchers is gonna go this offseason. There’s no way they go into Spring Training with Alex Avila, Rob Brantly and James McCann all on the threshold of playing in the big leagues. Those are frontline starting catchers and it’s too many for an organization to carry when all three are ready to play in the bigs. So that’s a trade I keep waiting to happen, whether it’s this month or this winter. One of those catchers is gonna go, no question.
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Switching gears a little - you finally joined Twitter this winter. I was surprised that you were one of the last or the last Detroit baseball writers to join because you seemed well-disposed to it. Why did you wait so long and why did you jump in when you did?
Good question. Really what it came down to is I didn’t have that capability on my company-issued phone. And really, my mistake was to think that I would be tweeting from my phone and not my laptop. I don’t use the phone to tweet but once in a great while, so I missed an opportunity for a couple years to be in this area of social media. It would have been a lot of fun, and would have been an enhancement for me.
It seems like you get more grief on Twitter than some other writers. On Twitter you get to interact with a lot of fans and readers, but you also have a lot of people heckling you. How do you respond to that stuff?
There’s always a crowd of bleacher creatures that will, as you say, heckle - especially if you have an opinion. The only way to guard against that is to offer no opinions, and then they won’t shoot. But a group of them, of a particular nature and orientation, it doesn’t matter what you do, they’re going to attack. They don’t have much to say on their own front, they’d prefer to sit back and snipe. But what I do with that group is I pay no attention, I really don’t. They’re crowd hecklers and you’ll deal with them when you address a large crowd, I don’t care who you are. So you do your best to ignore them and tune them out.
But that’s why I get the hecklers - I think opinions should be shared and when i have such close access to the team I think I should offer some analysis. To just sit back and report things everyone else knows have happened, to me is not fulfilling my job description. I was always a natural columnist, so for me that’s more natural and preferable. I don’t mind offering an opinion and I don’t mind people arguing with it, but I don’t like the viciousness and the really vitriolic, almost psychotic stuff you have to deal with from some of these people. But again, I can’t be too influenced by them. You just have to dump it aside.
A lot of writers, yourself included,have been in this business for a long time and made the adjustments to stay around in a very different landscape. It’s maybe more obvious to see what has changed over time than what has not changed. What, to you, is still the same about what you do?
The games are still the same, despite alterations. Competition is competition. When you look at baseball, we’re still discussing the same things today as we did 30 or 40 years ago with respect to hitters and bat speed and arms and all that. It’s more nuanced and sophisticated, and of course SABRmetrics and FanGraphs have come into it and really helped. The science of the game is at such a high level and I like that part of it a lot. But the inherent foundations are refreshingly the same. I also like that our access is still very complete. Access has changed in other sports because of the saturation of media, and the fact that the teams want to control it. But in baseball, it’s still almost 100 percent access and that’s why I enjoy covering it more than any other sport.
Is there a particular player, or a particular team, a season, that sticks to you as one you enjoyed more than the others?
I think even more than the ‘84 team, I enjoyed the 2006 team because no one really expected baseball to come back with such zest that year. I saw what it did to the community. I also really liked the team, you had Kenny Rogers and some really good folks, Magglio and Carlos Guillen. I really liked that team, probably because it was the restoration of baseball in Detroit, the right people were in charge. It was Jim Leyland’s first year. He was a welcomed addition to the landscape because people needed someone of his particular savvy and experience, and really, of his skill.
You also saw the validation of the new front office, and thought they’d be able to put out a consistent product, and they pretty much have. That was the one I enjoyed covering more than all. I was 16 back in 1968, when everything just turned into nirvana in Detroit. I was a teenager and following them like a hawk. That will always be my favorite team, because of what it did for the town and the state, but the 2006 team, among those I’ve covered, I put that number one.
Tiger fans were a lot rowdier back in the 70s and 80s than they are now, particularly the ‘84 team. Did that rabid interest level just die off when the team tanked in the 90s, or has that just shifted out of the culture?
Even though Tiger Stadium had more seats than Comerica, 1984 didn’t draw as well as the 2006 team, or ‘07, ‘08, ‘09. The bleachers back then definitely housed, let’s say, a rustic brand of Tigers fan, and you don’t see that as much at Comerica Park. It’s a more sophisticated place to watch baseball than Tiger Stadium, which prided itself on what you might call, being unkempt. Comerica is different. You’re mingling with some of the nicer spots around there, and it becomes more of a night out. And that’s had an influence on the clientele. It’s probably raised it. Even though it hasn’t become elitist, it’s not like what that crowd was like at Tiger Stadium.
Last question, the pool of Detroit baseball writers hasn’t been around the team since the Justin Verlander-Kate Upton story broke. I imagine Justin is going to be difficult to approach on such a subject. How do you think the local media will handle that subject with him?
I suspect we’ll find out tomorrow (Friday), because this thing has broken. He can say ‘it’s my business and no one else’s, and I expect that’s what he’ll say. The difficulty is he’s a celebrity and she’s a celebrity, and like it or not, that’s in this world is news. So yeah, she’s a cover girl, he’s an American League MVP and Cy Young Award winner, starting pitcher in the All-Star game. The idea that two very sexy profilers from that particular generation are romantically linked, you can’t simply say ‘that’s for those two to work out and we won’t pay any attention,’ because no, it isn’t.
On a personal level, if there is any merit to this, I feel very badly for Justin Verlander’s longtime girlfriend Emily. She’s been with him since high school, and if you didn’t know if they were married, you would think they were married. I feel terribly about what she might be experiencing right now. This thing is not just gossip; it’s real life. Real world stuff. And we’re going to have to address it appropriately.
Thanks so much for taking the time to chat, Lynn.
You bet. Take care.
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