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From the Sidelines: Finally rooting for a winner

Sports reporter

I don't really believe in jinxes, but sometimes I wonder.

Like every time an announcer says so-and-so is one of the best free-throw shooters around as he steps to the line, and the player misses.

Or whenever you have a guy on your fantasy football team who hasn't scored a touchdown for five weeks and you drop him, what happens? He scores the next week.

That's also why I don't like to rub it in when my team wins, because if it's not the championship game, I always feel like it will turn around and lose right after my gloating.

But I'm not passing up this chance: My Detroit Tigers have the best record in baseball and I'm letting everyone know.

As I type this, the Motown Mashers as they were once called, are 30-14, in first place in the AL Central, and as mentioned, own the best record in baseball.

OK, so the season is only 25 percent complete. But we're talking about a team that just three years ago almost tied the major league record of 119 losses, escaping the dubious honor with 118.

This is a team that since winning the World Series in 1984 (I was only three and not yet a fan), have made the playoffs only once, and haven't had a winning record since 1993.

"Saved By the Bell" was my favorite TV show then.

Since I was 12 I've suffered through losing season after losing season, never being able to taste victory. At 0-0 every April I wondered what it would be like if the Tigers made the playoffs.

I'm still wondering.

And maybe I'm jinxing them and they'll start their downward slide now instead of the end of April. But it's been fun rooting for a winner the first 43 games of the season.

Although the New York Yankees haven't won the World Series since 2000, they've made the playoffs every year since I was 13, and that might as well be my whole life.

I'm sick of them and their winning ways. I love rooting for the underdog, but I'll continue to root for the Tigers and their winning ways.

So as I sit in Kansas and read about the Tigers season (their losing ways haven't earned them many television spots) I'll keep my mouth shut the rest of the way. I don't want to jinx them.

That is of course unless they reached the World Series. Then I'll have to open it while I'm rooting for them at Comerica Park.

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