I know I said I’d never talk about the Tigers again, ever, but after yet another hideous loss yesterday dropped them to 2-10, an uplifting new way of thinking presented itself: The 2008 Detroit Tigers are the baseball equivalent of the equine protagonist of the 1979 movie The Black Stallion.

If you somehow can’t recall the ins and outs of that tear-jerking film — which, no lie, I have seen probably ten times and which stupidly inspired me to pretend that I was a galloping horse during sprints around the gym during junior-high P.E. — allow me to recap. A luxury ocean liner sinks and our thirteen-year-old hero washes up on a desert island, where eventually he befriends a fellow shipwreck survivor who just happens to be the wild Arabian stallion of the title. After they are found and transported back to civilization, the boy convinces his patient mother to let him keep the defiant beast, and a former jockey played by Mickey Rooney teaches the kid how to control his giant new pet (and also acts like he’s about 250 years old, which of course Rooney was in 1979). The climax arrives as the boy and his horse finagle their way into a totally-made-up, big-stakes race between the nation’s top two riders. Just before the start of the race, Black goes apeshit on one of the other horses and hurts his leg; when the gates open, he careens down the track like the town drunk and appears to be out of the race. But not so. The kid gets his horse under control, they make up a difference of some 50 lengths, and everyone is incredibly happy — at least until the 1983 sequel, which sadly wasn’t any good.

Limping out of the gate, behaving erratically, and eating hay: Introducing your 2008 Detroit Tigers.

If you don’t believe me, just watch this — but make sure to imagine that the horse’s head is actually Magglio Ordonez’s.

= ???

WHY I’M ANGRY TODAY
I can’t get “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper out of my head. It’s getting painful.