Friday, July 8, 2016

Guide to the Tigersphere


Turns out the Tigers have a rich and varied blogging community. It was really hard to limit to three. A few have fallen by the wayside. One of the longest running blogs, Tiger Tales, is on hiatus as the author has a bunch of personal stuff going on (something I can relate to). The dude writing Tigers Snark (which is a really funny read) quit the team last year. The Daily Fungo has hung up its cleats but still exists as an archive. Walkoff Woodward hasn't posted since May. The names of the departed live on in the blogrolls on all of the sites.

Bless You Boys

The SB Nation site. It took a while to find the origin of the name since it's nowhere on the site. Turns out it was the catchphrase of Detroit sportscaster Al Ackerman that he adapted after the 35-5 start of the 1984 team. Sparky Anderson wrote a book at the end of the season and used the phrase as the title. Whether it refers to the sportscaster or the book I cannot say.

They have a post for all their memes - I personally like "The CloserCoaster, formerly operated by Fernando Rodney and Jose Valverde."


Detroit Tigers Weblog

This site has existed since 2001, making it the oldest blog in Tigers fandom, possibly in all of baseball. Has a commenting community, as it's pretty much just game threads now. They do have a section that links to all the payroll info you want about the team. Here for longevity.

Post to drink tears: Game 86: Tigers at Blue Jays

Roar of the Tigers

A blog with cartoons! The author, Samara Pearlstein, is also an illustrator so the posts, while infrequent, mix commentary with cool pics. The pic above and this one below are samples:


Posts are infrequent but fun. Interesting comment on the nicknames page:
Axis of Evil: Bless You Boys, the giant SportsNation blog that used to just be Ian Casselberry, and has since eaten half the major Tigers bloggers. Pretty sure they’re aiming for total Tigersphere domination and so must be feared/shunned. Sometimes just ‘The Axis’.

Bonus site:

Eye of the Tigers

Here specifically for the poetry corner.