Saturday, August 20, 2011

Tigers Bring Back Brandon Inge

At the conclusion of Detroit’s 4-1 victory over the Cleveland Indians on Friday night the club announced that they have purchased the contract of third baseman Brandon Inge and have sent outfielder Andy Dirks back down.


As expected, Tigers manager Jim Leyland indicated that Brandon Inge will come in and play primarily against lefties and be a late inning defensive replacement while Wilson Betemit will get the call against right-handed pitchers despite being a switch hitter. No word yet on tomorrow’s lineup but given what Leyland said you can make the assumption that Inge will start at third since the Indians will turn to left-hander David Huff.

I don't agree with this one bit. Inge has been struggling all season and now that he's feasted on some minor league pitching and he's ready to go. The Tigers need to let go of 2006,  move forward.and stop trying to keep the band together.

They just traded for Delmon Young and elected to keep Magglio Ordonez on the roster. And now they trade for Betemit, platoon him with Don Kelly and Ryan Raburn, bring back Inge and send down a functional Andy Dirks. Just to keep Ordonez and Inge on the roster. At some point this team has to get younger, it might as well be now.

Former Miami Hurricane Highsmith Plans To Sue The NCAA

Alonzo Highsmith was one of the greatest Miami Hurricanes and one of the cornerstones of what made the University of Miami football team what it was in recent memory. His son A.J. is now on the team and that team might get hit with the hardest NCAA penalty since the SMU scandal that resulted in the death penalty.

The elder Highsmith is now threatning a lawsuit if the Hurricanes get hit with NCAA penalties coming from the Nevin Shapiro booster scandal. Highsmith's beef in this matter is that the current players shouldn't be penalized for sins of the past or the current 12 players that received extra benefits. I know a lot of former Hurricane greats are taking this hard but this might be borderline ridiculous.

“This lawsuit will be on behalf of all the kids who have done nothing wrong and would be being deprived of what they came to college for,” Highsmith said. “Look at the Reggie Bush situation. Look at what he did to the USC program. All those kids that went to USC for all the right reasons had to suffer the consequences.



“This has been going on for years and years. If someone at General Motors does something wrong, they don’t shut down the company. Nobody ever challenges the NCAA on this. Why? Why?”


“If you have a family and one child does something wrong then he can’t go to Disney World. But you don’t make all of the rest of the kids stay home too.”

“There are at least 70 kids on that team that have absolutely nothing to do with Nevin Shapiro, and you are going to tarnish their image over the actions of a few?



“You want to punish those kids that did something wrong, fine, I understand. But it’s a total travesty to punish the other kids who made good decisions. I’m going to sue if they try to ruin these kids’ college experience. I’m going to sue somebody.”

Well Alonzo, I understand what your getting at here, but if the NCAA let schools get away with illegal booster activity, this kind of stuff would be running rampant. School presidents and athletic directors would have a reason to turn a blind eye to players receiving gifts, money, cars, etc.

Of course Highsmith does have a dog in this fight with A.J. being a member on the team, so it's natural for him to want to see Miami get off light or receive no penalty at all. Sorry Alonzo, but the Canes are going down and they're going down hard.