After Jon Heyman ranked his top 10 general managers for SI.com, he also posted some notes on various major league teams, and the one concerning the Detroit Tigers might raise some eyebrows. We already know all about Brandon Inge learning to deal with his new role on the team. I've certainly written enough about that here. But Heyman provides another anecdote which I haven't seen or heard any place else:
I've been scouring virtually every source I look at for material and haven't seen another mention of this anywhere. One reason for that might be that reporters typically don't like to make themselves the story, so nobody's filed anything on such an incident. But there's been so much coverage of Inge (at least until Miguel Cabrera arrived in camp today) that it's difficult to believe a "blowup" would sneak by without a peep.
I'm not saying this didn't happen. How would I know? But if it did, it's curious that we haven't read about such a confrontation before Heyman put it at the end of his article. We also don't know if Heyman saw the alleged altercation himself or information was passed along to him, as is often the case for notes columns. The dateline for the column is Fort Myers, about two and a half hours away from Lakeland. So maybe Heyman stopped by Tigers camp and heard some rumblings about this.
What we also don't have are details. Where did this take place? It likely wasn't at the Leyland-Inge press conference, because any enterprising local TV sports guy would surely have shown a highlight of the "blowup" on the news.
And if this drama actually occurred, who initiated it? Did Inge confront the Detroit News reporter (and we all know who that is) at first sight, or was he bowled over with some "How come you never call? Don't you wanna talk to me?" line of questioning? Who pushed first? (And I don't mean that literally.)