Earlier this evening, the Detroit Tigers eliminated the Oakland Athletics in a four-game sweep and will head to the World Series for the first time since 1984. For the people of Michigan this is about a lot more than a baseball team. It’s a great cultural moment of hope and excitement in a time of despair and fear.
I moved to this state this summer and immediately discovered two things: everybody hated and feared my beloved White Sox, and the auto industry’s plunge into collapse had the entire state on edge. Job losses over the last few years, almost all of them connected to the US auto industry though some associated with other older manufacturing industries, have put Michiganders into a state of anger and frustration.
The current political campaign between Democratic incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm and her Republican challenger, former Amway head Dick DeVos, has put the dismal job picture front and center. DeVos, largely self-financed, managed to gain a lead in the race by July, and most political prognosticators predicted Granholm would be the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in a pro-Democratic year. But then something funny happened. On my birthday, August 8, Dick DeVos decided to show up in the broadcast booth of a Tigers game – not an unusual act for a politician. TV analyst Rod Allen asked DeVos perhaps the easiest question of all: “Who’s your favorite Tiger?” Instead of drawing from a plethora of current and past Tiger greats – Magglio Ordonez, Pudge Rodriguez, Justin Verlander, Kenny Rogers, Alan Trammell, Kirk Gibson, Mickey Lolich, Al Kaline, Lou Whitaker, Willie Horton, etc. – DeVos stared blankly into the camera and said, “I like all of them.” Wrong answer. The millions of Michiganders who watched this exciting team saw a politician at his worst: unable to connect with ordinary voters in the most mundane of fashions. He looked like he had no idea that the Tigers even played baseball. And his campaign went into decline from that moment on.
I won’t claim that the Tigers interview actually set his campaign backwards. Many other things contributed to Granholm’s regaining of momentum – according to a poll today she is up 49-41. But I do think the interview was emblematic of what the Tigers mean for the people of Michigan. The Tigers are a rare source of pride and joy in a state suffering from depression. Their phoenix-like rise from the team that lost 119 games just three years ago to AL champion is the stuff of legend. Brandon Inge, who played on that miserable 2003 team, represents the possibility of Michigan itself. In its lowest moment, the people of the state still maintain hope. Granholm, while utterly failing to turn the state’s economy around in her tenure, successfully conveys that same sense of hope.
I suppose, then, this says something about sports and modern American culture too. That a baseball team could matter so much deserves some reflection. Considering that so many Americans spend so much money, time and emotional energy into professional sports, there is little doubt that ordinary Americans really care about things like the Detroit Tigers. More often than not, we habitually separate the cultural world of sports from the world of politics – except when the explicitly political intervenes like Jackie Robinson or the 1968 Olympics or when athletes become politicians. But sports fandom helps us create our own geographic and cultural identities that also find voice in politics. A winning sports team in a depressed city – the Tigers of today or the Steelers of deindustrializing 1970s Pittsburgh – helped ease some of the emotional pain of economic hardship. Sports are a distraction to be sure, but they give some cultural voice to those who feel alienated by economic dislocation.
Successful athletic teams have contributed to electoral outcomes in the past. In 1969, New York City Mayor John Lindsay overcame a disastrous tenure that witnessed riots, crime, poverty and a debilitating teacher’s strike by associating himself with the Miracle Mets. John Kerry tried, unsuccessfully to do the same with the Boston Red Sox in 2004. Maybe the 2006 Tigers will help Granholm the way the Mets helped Lindsay in 1969. Or maybe it won’t matter at all in the election. Either way, the Tigers’ stunning success after a late September collapse has lifted the spirits of Michiganders more than anything else in a long time.