Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
September 26, 2003, Washington Post

Tigers: From Bad to Worst

The Major League Baseball playoffs start next week. So baseball fans are talking about the teams that have a chance to win this year's World Series: powerhouses such as the New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves.

As good as these teams are, none of them has had a truly historic season. The team that has made history this season is the Detroit Tigers. That's right, the 2003 Detroit Tigers, which just might be the worst major league team in the last 100 years.

Take a look at the records. Entering last night's game, the Tigers' record was 40-118. They were 49 games behind the division-leading Minnesota Twins. The Tigers have a chance to lose more games than the historically bad New York Mets team that went 40-120 in 1962.

Okay, baseball history buffs will tell you that the Cleveland Spiders once went 20-134 and finished 84 games behind the Brooklyn Superbas. But the Spiders played more than 100 years ago (1899) and went out of business the next season.

The Tigers have earned their record. They are terrible at everything. The Tigers are last in the American League in batting average and runs scored. They've scored about 400 fewer runs than the power-packed Boston Red Sox. And the Tigers' pitching has been as pitiful as their hitting. Only the pitching-poor Texas Rangers have given up more runs than the Tigers.

The Tigers do lead the American League in one thing -- errors! The Tigers have made more than 135 miscues in the field. That's more than twice as many as the Seattle Mariners.

Most kids will feel sorry for the hapless Tigers -- because lots of kids know how it feels to be on a lousy team. They know the hopeless feeling of looking across the basketball court, baseball diamond or soccer pitch and thinking that there's no way their team is ever going to beat those other kids.

So what are the Tigers, or kids on a terrible team, supposed to do when the losses pile up and the season is going down the drain?

A few things might help:

First, concentrate on each play. Even in a losing effort, it's always great to score a goal, or get a hit or swish a long shot.

Second, concentrate on competing. It's important to get in the habit of giving your best effort all the time. Because that habit will come in handy when your team really does have a chance to win.

Finally, concentrate on improving. Let's say your lacrosse team lost by 20 goals last game. This time, try to keep the margin to single digits. Or try to play a tough team even for a half or maybe just a quarter.

You never know, if you concentrate on improving instead of winning, things may turn around. It can happen even to the worst teams. Remember those 1962 New York Mets, the team that lost 120 games? A few years later the Mets won the World Series.