Three years ago, Jim Leyland took a whiff of the 2006 Tigers and declared “We smell like Old Spice.”
        The people who make Old Spice read the papers and immediately phoned Leyland to complain. They didn’t want to be compared to a baseball team that hadn’t enjoyed a winning season in 13 years.
        But Leyland wasn’t slamming the product. As he explained to the irate after-shave exec, he himself had used Old Spice for years.
        He liked the smell. It was nice. That was the problem.
        It smelled familiar. It smelled comfortable. It smelled complacent.
        And that can be the kiss of death for a baseball team.
        Leyland prefers players who smell like sweaty socks. Players with dirt on the pants. Players who will run through a wall, or an outfield fence, to win.
        Seldom has baseball meant more to fans in Detroit, in Oakland County, and throughout the state, than it did this year. 
        Leyland knew that.
        He could sense it. He could feel it. He could understand it.
        Leyland makes $4 million a year. And he has the comfort of a guaranteed contract that will carry him through 2011.
        But the Tigers’ manager knows from first-hand experience, earlier in his life and his baseball career, what it means to punch a clock, to live from paycheck to paycheck, to have to worry each week about  balancing the checkbook.
        Behind that grumpy exterior and that cloud of cigarette smoke, beats the heart of a real softy.
        Leyland can feel people’s pain, particularly in these tough times.
        That was one reason he so wanted to deliver a postseason appearance to Tiger fans.
        “My dad was a factory worker,” Leyland said. “He worked at a glass factory that made windshields for General Motors products. I worked at that factory myself. There’s not much more we can do but give a good effort, bust our tails for them and show our appreciation. It’s tough.
        “My heart aches for these people up here. They’re trying to feed their families, and we’re getting a check every two weeks. We’re certainly glad that we are, but we’re certainly aware of the people that aren’t right now. You do whatever you can to help. I mean, I’ve got family members out of work over the recession, so I know what it’s like. You just hope that they understand that you have a great appreciation for what they’re going through.”
        It’s a two-way street. Leyland and his players said they felt an obligation to play hard because of the people who showed up at Comerica Park in remarkable numbers this summer. And those people turned out, in spite of the economy, because of the way the Tigers were playing
        Off the record --  way off the record as Leyland likes to say --  I wonder what he smells now.

        Miguel Cabrera was in the starting lineup Tuesday, batting clean-up as usual, for the Tigers’ biggest game since the 2006 World Series. Did you really expect otherwise?
        Admitting he made “a big mistake,” Miguel Cabrera said Tuesday that he apologized to his teammates for his drunken Friday night fight with his wife during the Tigers’ charter flight from Detroit to Minneapolis Monday evening.
        One player told me he fell asleep on the plane and didn’t know if Cabrera had apologized or not.  And doesn’t care.
        The Tigers’ slugger, who has been the center of so much controversy for the past 48 hours, said he told the team, “I’m sorry for what I did.”
        At least Cabrera has finally spoken up.
        Asked Tuesday if such a thing would ever happen again, Cabrera shook his head. “No, no,” he said softly.
        Tuesday afternoon, before the Tigers’ biggest batting practice of the year, Cabrera, his scratches all but gone, was sitting on the arm of an overstuffed clubhouse chair already occupied by Placido Polanco, with his own arm playfully draped around Polanco’s neck. Both players were laughing.
        “It’s a personal matter. Nobody cares about a personal matter,” Carlos Guillen declared.
        Maybe in the clubhouse. But it may take a long time for the memory of this incident to totally fade away in the minds of Tiger fans.
        Jim Leyland testily declined to make any comment on the matter. He dismissed it as “gossip” and only wanted to talk about Tuesday’s do-or-die game. Tigers’ public relations man Rick Thompson was on damage control, trying to run interference for Cabrera with the media.
        Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
        Cabrera said Tuesday he has nothing on his mind now except baseball. “I don’t want to give more stress to the team, more stress to the organization,” he said.
        Asked if he learned anything from Friday’s all-night drinking spree and subsequent ruckus, Cabrera said, “Everybody learns when they make a mistake. I made a big mistake. I’m sorry for that.”
        Cabrera insisted he was “focused” Saturday night when he went 0-4 in a possible title-clinching game against the Chicago White Sox, even though he recorded  a .26 blood-alcohol content in breath test early that morning and had to be picked up by Tigers’ president Dave Dombrowski at the police stations less than 12 hours before the start of the game.
        “No, no, no, I was good,” Cabrera said.
        But anyone who has ever had too much to drink remembers how they felt the next day.


       
       

        Jim Leyland won’t say anything. He can’t. Miguel Cabrera is too important to the Tigers’ offense and to the future of the franchise to risk alienating him right now.
        But how disappointed must the Tigers’ manager be that his star slugger would get so drunk the night before the team’s biggest game of the season that the police had to be called?
        How disappointed must Cabrera’s teammates, who are fighting for their postseason lives, be?
        Don’t even try to tell me there was no correlation between the .26 Cabrera blew on his breath test early Saturday morning and his 0-for-7 performance in the next two games -- two games in which the Tigers needed Miguel’s big bat more than ever.
        No wonder he couldn’t hit. Can you imagine what Cabrera’s head must have felt like after he reportedly stayed out all night drinking, got into an altercation with his wife, and ended up at the police station waiting for his employer to come pick him up?
        This little scandal could haunt Cabrera for a long time.
        Cabrera has belted 33 homers and knocked in 101 runs this season while batting .323. Those are Hank Greenberg-type numbers.
        The Tigers need him in the lineup. But more than that they need him alert and focused and hitting.
        The Tigers invested a fortune in Cabrera -- $152.3 million to be exact -- to lock him into a Detroit uniform through 2015.
        They cannot afford another shameful incident like this.
        Cabrera is certainly not the first big league ballplayer to drink too much. And he won’t be the last.
        Remember Norm Cash? Remember Bobby Layne? How about Mickey Mantle?
        Boys will be boys.
        But when a player’s over-indulgence and bad behavior away from the ballpark impact his  performance on the field, when it hurts his team, it is no longer a laughing matter.

        Two years ago, I ignited a firestorm of controversy when I put American League batting champion Magglio Ordonez at the top of my ballot for Most Valuable Player.
        Tom Gage of the Detroit News and I were the only baseball writers in the country to vote for Ordonez ahead of the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez. We both placed A-Rod second.
        I received a ton of criticism and phone calls, much it from New York. But there was no doubt in my mind --  then, or now -- that mine as the correct vote.  It wasn’t my fault that  was the other members of the electorate didn’t see Ordonez play often enough to appreciate how much Magglio meant to the Tigers in 2007.
        This year, I have again been chosen to help pick the AL MVP. (Last year, I voted        for the Cy Young Award.)
        I am under strict orders from the Baseball Writers Association of America not to reveal my vote. But I’ll give you a hint: My top choice played at Comerica Park this week. And, no, I didn’t vote for Ordonez again.