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.