Happy, Cuddly Tigers

The following are the words of Ray Wert, associate editor with our homeboys Jalopnik. He likes Detroit, cars, and the Tigers... maybe even some combination of Eminem, Kid Rock, and Aretha Franklin. He was fortunate enough to be at the Tigers/Yankees game yesterday (though he didn't get to kiss Jim Leyland), and he shares these words and this photo gallery.

"The sun was up yesterday in downtown Detroit, shining its warm light in a Michigan October — a month normally devoid of both heat and inspiring sports play. This year's a bit different around these parts and although usually I'm found at the brother/sister site writing about cars, I couldn't help myself today — I needed to write about the Tigers. You see, I'm one of the lucky 43,000 some odd sports fans who had the privilege to see the cold October staved off for one more day by yesterday's summer's sunlight.

Although non-Michiganders may not understand why Metro Detroiters worship sports above all else, those of us who live here know it's because they act as the region's surrogate doing battle for us against the big cities, the big names and George Steinbrenner. In a world of job cuts, flagging auto sales, cold weather and yes, Matt Millen — we're small fish — a city once 3.5 million residents, now hovering just around a million. So we end up clinging to our sports teams and raising them to the status of Gods. And those men we worship came out onto the field last night, as they'd done the night before and the day before that — and acted like the status we'd raised them up to — they acted like Gods to us.

But really, who the hell cares about the players — they're merely doing their jobs (not to diminish that amazing feat) — the big story is the fans who raise them to their Zeusian levels (and yes, we just made that word up. No, not "levels" — the other one.). So here's some of the flora and fauna I found last night (and a couple pics from the night before) to show off some of the deification we helped make, some of the beers we helped to drink and some of the silliness we saw. Enjoy."

Jalopnik Detroit Tigers Gallery [Flickr]