BatDad grew up in Detroit, somewhere around 8 Mile Road, and it was a lot like the movie but without the rapping contests. Like any good Detroit boy, BatDad loved the Tigers, growing up cheering Hank Greenberg (who, he will point out, hit 58 homers without any steroids), Hal Newhouser, George Kell, and Vic Wertz. The Tigers won it all when he was a wee pup, then didn't get to the series again until 1968, against the St. Louis Cardinals. He was living in Kentucky at the time but lived and died with the team all the same—watching them overcome a 1-3 deficit in the World Series to come back and win it all for the first time since he was 6.

Goober and Batgirl grew up in Minneapolis, and BatDad raised us to be baseball fans, and while our first love was the Twins we always rooted for the Tigers, too. Then, in 1984—just as Batgirl was coming into her own as a baseball fan—avuncular manager Sparky Anderson led the boys from Detroit to the division championships, and the BatFamily watched the whole thing. It was Batgirl's first chance to root for a team in the postseason, and that group of players--Jack Morris, Kirk Gibson, Chet Lemon, Alan Trammel, Lance Parrish, and Lou Whitaker were all her first baseball boyfriends. That postseason hooked Batgirl on baseball and the Tigers have been her second favorite team ever since. It was so painful to watch the franchise suffer these past few years, and a joy to watch them find themselves again, playing the game in a way that echoes those boys of '84.

So, even though Batgirl dearly hopes they get this whole winning thing out of their system come 2007, for now--with all due respect to the Cards and their awesome fans and this whole awesome midwestern series-- she and BatDad join together to say—Go Tigers.