Spencer Torkelson's Game Winning Home Run Against The Royals Filled My Heart With So Much Joy
A win is a win is a win. I'll take every W and never apologize for it, but there's something that hits different when the person responsible for the win is your guy. Don't get me wrong, I'll take any ten year, 300 million, 7 WAR free agent any day of the week, but seeing a guy who you spent a few years waiting for win a game for your team is so rewarding. There are prospects in baseball who have been rated higher than Spencer Torkelson (3 to be exact), but I don't know anyone who has had more pressure on them. The Tigers lost 114 games in 2019, hoping they would fall into this guy. And after a rough start, he's bounced back this week with his first hit, his first home run, and now, his first game-winning RBI, and it was a BLAST off of Brad Keller that traveled 432 feet with a 112 MPH exit velocity.
Maybe in my excitement, I'm simply seeing something that isn't there, but as someone who lives on Twitter, especially Detroit sports Twitter, it feels like this moment connected with people. Most human beings have lives, jobs, and families and don't spend time doing things like streaming minor league games on Friday nights. They're too busy working and contributing to society, so they just have to take people like me and their words when they say, "Hey, this Torkelson guy will be really good." There's hype, and then there are results. Most people care solely about the latter. And tonight, that's exactly what we saw. Our guy came through for the first huge moment of his career. Detroit fans were smiling tonight, and that makes me a happy guy.
I'm a fan. The Tigers are my team, and I'll love them forever. When they win, I feel happy thoughts. When they lose, all I want to do is anything other than baseball talk. I've seen a lot of losing, and I'll tell you what, I'm not a fan. This is wishful thinking, but I would prefer to spend the rest of my life not having to explain to people why my favorite team is losing on purpose. And while I can make no guarantees about what kind of team the Tigers will have this team (they are only 4-4, for godsakes), at least they're trying again, and at least the pieces that we spent so much time hyping up during the ugly parts of this rebuild are starting to come around. I get that Tork's game-winning blast tonight would be meaningless to most teams. It would just be another notch on the belt of a long season. But for a fan base that has been yearning for something to cheer about over the last several years, it means a lot more. Here's to many more Tork bombs!