It was just a blurb on my phone over the weekend, Alex Avila is retiring after the baseball season. But it got me to thinking about all the promise, all the opportunities the Detroit Tigers had from 2006 to 2014 to win a title. Not for Mr. I, though I remember long-gone General Manager Dave Dombrowski saying that, but for everyone who plunked down good money for a ticket or switched on a Tigers game on the television or radio.

If you use the 2003 and 2019 seasons as bookends- because they were truly horrible, with the 2003 group setting a team record 119 losses, and the Tigers team two years ago being almost as bad with 114 - but for a few all too short years in-between, from 2006 for almost a decade, the Tiger a force in the American League. They never had an all-time team in this time span, like 1934, or 1968, or especially 1984. Those teams won over one hundred games in the regular season.

But think about it. For either one or both of the World Series teams, you had two sure Hall of Fame pitchers (Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander) and at least one sure Hall of Famer in the field, Miguel Cabrera. And that's not mentioning the one who is in the Hall of Fame, Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez. And then you also had Prince Fielder, and there were others, some stil playing that were good ball players.

Sure they ran into great teams in the World Series, both in 2006 and 2012. And the 2006 team was the Wild Card.

So, as a fan, you ask you're self, would a trade-deadline addition have made a difference. What if Joel Zumaya didn't play video games. Still, oh, so close. Who knows, maybe this young Tiger team will do what those couldn't. They're young and they play hard. Where have we heard that before?

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