Where were you when...

Finished off some errands with a stop at Starbucks for a vanilla rooibos tea latte.

//blogger fail

and I saw something on the crawl about Fielder. My first thought (unfortunately) was that something horrible had happened to Cecil Fielder, because I didn’t think there was a chance we were signing Prince.
Then the crawl brought up some stats, and I thought “hmm these seem pretty recent…oh they’re from 2006…” and then it hit me. I went crazy and called up my friend and told her. She (like me) didn’t think we were going after Fielder at all. We spent a good 30 minutes talking about it.

and I heard my roommate yell “no f&%#$!@ way!” through our paper-thin walls. I figured it was nothing until he came and asked me if I’d heard the news. I said, “No, what are you talking about? Did Dwight Howard get traded?” He then proceeded to tell me to check ESPN. Our internet is horribly slow (damn you Charter) so we both sat there for 45 seconds while I quizzed him on what the news was; a Grinch-like grin slowly growing across my face as I finally got an inkling at what it could be. Once I saw the news we jumped up and down and high fived/yelled four letter words and shrieks of joy and disbelief for a good 2-3 minutes. After my heart rate returned to a reasonable resting rate we flipped on MLB Network and watched Eric Byrnes try to convince the guys on set that this move wouldn’t make that big of an impact for us this year. I proceeded to shout some nasty things at him, as well. I called my Dad a few minutes later and spent the rest of the afternoon roaming the internet, reading reactions and opinions as the news slowly crept across the country.

So imagine how confused I was when my girlfriend comes in the room and tries to tell me we are about to sign Prince. Once I actually processed what she was saying I was in absolute shock. I’m pretty sure that news got me out of bed for the first time that day… no better medicine than hearing your team is about to sign Prince Fielder. I went from sound asleep to giddy as a schoolgirl in about 30 seconds.

I hopped out of bed to turn on MLBN, grab my laptop and jump on here on MLBTR to follow the developments. Was exchanging texts with a few friends who were super excited as well. I literally had to keep saying “We just signed Prince Fielder, no way” out loud in an attempt to actually believe it.

I had seen the Buster Olney comment on Twitter, where “one GM” had speculated that the Tigers might be in the mix for Fielder if he were to sign for one year. He emphasized “SPECULATION”. John Heyman tweeted back that Prince was going to get seven years, if not eight. Buster again emphasized “SPECULATION”.

Kurt chimes in with something like “I like dueling posts between Jon Heyman and Buster Olney”. Heyman tweets “So do I”. Kurt says “I think your version is closer”. Heyman says “So do I”.

I dismissed it all as wild, unrealistic speculation and went to work. I’m working and I get a tweet that the Tigers have signed Fielder. Immediately, I think my friend has got it wrong. That was only speculation. Then the tweets start coming down like hail, and I think “holy shit, this is real!”

I couldn’t post anything, but I checked and saw that BYB had the news up, so I went back to work. A few hours later, I got home and my fingers were still speechless. I didn’t know how to make sense of this. I’m thinking immediately about Cabrera and Fielder in the lineup, which is the best thing ever, and I’m thinking about Cabrera and Fielder on the diamond, which is the craziest thing ever.

I saw that Miggy was down with the plan, although all we had was a few comments through a spanish language radio guy and a few comments through Leyland.

Late that night, as I’m about to knock off, Jim Bowden of ESPNxm breaks the news that the Tigers will hold a presser on Thursday at Comerica. The fact that it’s a live presser is noteworthy. These things are most often done on a conference call. This is big.

I’m waiting up to see if they announce a time. Jason Beck starts posting details about the contract, but no time. One source says that there’s no time because the Tigers haven’t announced the deal yet, much less that they’re holding a presser.

I have to crash. I drop an e mail to Kurt, and leave the news about a press conference in a Fanpost. Everyone on twitter is asking me for the time and I don’t know. People are hanging on every word of official news. This is huge!

All the while, I’m thinking about Fielder. And about Miggy. I’m buried with work, but I have this stuff running in my head and it won’t stop. I know what I think about it, especially after hearing Cabrera’s comments through Leyland and the sources in Venezuela.

Leyland says even more about it in his presser, so I start working on the story, but I have a trial brief to write that’s due by Friday also. Shit. Thess case is interfering with my baseball blogging.

The week is over and my fingers have gotten over their speechlessness. The story on Cabrera is up, and the discussion is raging. 1,500 votes in the poll about how many games Miggy will play at 3B, and to say that Fielder is trending on twitter is the understatement of the century.

I come across a story that the Tigers signed an Aussie pitcher, not named Brad Thomas. I track it down, and see that the poor guy was the best pitcher in the Australian league this year, got his big chance with the Tigers on a minor league deal, but he signed the day after they signed Prince Fielder. In fact, that was the next day- Australian time- which is practically the same day.

And that’s where we are. I’m now sitting right here, where I always am when something happens. Always, except last Tuesday, when the Tigers signed Prince Fielder. Damn cases!

It took me a good 10 minutes to get to MLBTR and BYB to post a fanshot of the news, and I didn’t get anything done for the next four hours despite having a research presentation due the following day.

I have two jobs, one is an internship and the other is at the college I attend. I had worked my internship in the morning and was hard pressed not to check MLBTR all morning. My job at school, though, is much more laid back so I had been smashing the refresh button on that website all afternoon.

I was chatting with a friend by way of Facebook about who the Tigers should sign, since Prince was due to become a National. We had come to agree that Derrek Lee would be a nice choice and I sort of floated away from Facebook (probably to check MLBTR again) and when I came back I had a message from said friend reading, ‘Tigers and Prince Fielder close to agreeing on 9-year deal.’

I immediately began freaking out as more messages and updates began pouring in. Said friend – who is a teacher – called me to have a miniature freak out. He informed me that he was so excited that he left his students in his classroom doing work. Had I had students to leave behind, I totally would have done the same.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting nothing accomplished and just trying to read things about the signing and bask in the Tigers’ glory for making such a huge, impressive, incredible move. Every time I think about it I still freak out a little. I love the fact that everyone in the whole state knows about this move and is excited about it. Hell, I was out for drinks two nights ago and overheard multiple conversations within the establishment about ‘Fielder’ and ‘Tigers’ – in the kind of bar that wouldn’t normally house talk like that.

I for one can’t wait for the season to start and, however much it sucks to lose VMart, am really happy to have Prince on board – especially after such a dismal off-season up to that point.

I was at work and I got a text from my babysitter. My first reaction was joy. I was a big critic of Dombrowski in the past, and this move has some potential to be a financial disaster. I told my boss, who is a big fan, and him being the cynic that he is, started bitching immediately. We’ll see how it all works out but I love Mike Illitch for striking while the iron is hot and for being willing to spend the money.

Typically, I’m giving my dad Tigers updates over text (bc of you guys), but on this day, I happened to be at my buddy’s limestone quarry watching them blow chit up, making big rocks into little ones with dynamite. Literally right after the explosion, i get the text from my dad…“tigers sign fielder”. My immediate text reply…“you better not be f!@#$ with me!”

The ironic part, I had sent my dad the Carlos Guillen news last week (again, via BYB) and my next text was…“time to go after Fielder”. I love being right.

Someone casually mentioned the signing at the end of the meeting. I may have used an inappropriate word for work when I found out.

I wrote the following on @Big_AL_TWFE, 1/24/12 at 3:06PM :

Stop joking! Stop it! WHAT? You’re serious? I feel woozy… RT @JonHeymanCBS: price deal is $214M, 9 yrs. #tigers

5 days later, I’m still flabbergasted by the turn of events.

I went to do some errands that afternoon (I needed to pick up stuff for a head cold, and had to drop by the library). One of my friends had texted me and I didn’t notice (too busy with the frozen yogurt I got as a pick me up). When I got back to the office, he met me in the hallway and asked “Where the hell were you and why didn’t you respond to my text?” I thought he was pissed because he wanted to grab lunch or something… until he said “Tigers just signed Prince”. At which point I dropped the yogurt, accused him of lying and flat out sprinted into my office to check BYB and MLBTR.

After I confirmed it, I may or may not have run around hugging all of the people in the office. Nobody understood why. Sometimes I hate being in a department that’s split 80-20 women to men.

I had to rewind the DVR to see what preceded that partial sentence.

I goto school in NY, but everyone knows where my Baseball allegiances lie. I was in my office and got about 4 text messages immediately following the news and a solid stream of texts/ calls for the remainder of the day. I was literally shaking with excitement.

Had to do some “Nick Burns, your company’s computer guy” level hand holding for a department that claimed that the software was broken. Blah, blah, blah. It’s ALWAYS the software, not the $8/hour employees they short staff the department with.

Anyway, got done with my normal work at about 6:30 PM and was about to start up manually running a process to check the Ops team numbers before the bank closes for the day. I pulled up Chrome to start work on the SQL server. I know some of it will take about 10 minutes to run once I start it, so when I see the BYB bookmark, I pause to think for a second and decided I could do a quick check while the work is churning. Another tab for my work and I’m busy for about 30 minutes of setup and more (snore… you get the point). I saw the top post about Prince, but was in the “no way” camp and thought it was a “heavy tweet rumors, so lets play what if” post.

I completely forgot about opening the BYB tab when I was about to close things down and go home. I clicked again to see what Kurt was “up to”; was BYB becoming a fan fiction site because the off-season was sooooo slow? Would be worth a laugh as everybody tried to one-up the jokes. Would Rogo be ALMOST as excited as when Detroit extended Bobby Higginson? Could this mean that Don Kelly could FINALLY get some respect and that #3 DH slot?

I was surprised, but anything but disappointed! I read the page, blinked awkwardly a few times, stared at my desk, read a few lines again, stared at the ceiling, then started to believe it. I yelled at my monitor some and grabbed my keys for the long commute home. I had such a “no, really” reaction to it at the office that I forgot to even tell my wife about it until almost midnight.

Can’t wait for our trip down to spring training! Gonna need to get our tickets early this time…

I left my office early because the kids in the Pediatrics waiting room were screaming and my phone wouldn’t stop ringing and I had something to do that required a couple hours of interrupted time, and it was stuff I could do at home. I was at a stoplight listening to MLB radio on Sirius XM when they announced the news. Now, it’s been in the 60’s here so my windows were down, as were the ones in the cars next to me. I screamed “WTF” (only the words, not the acronym) and got a very dirty look from a little old lady next to me.

Needless to say. once I got home the work idea flew out the window and this was the first place I headed. Oh and the guys who are working on my house are Indians fans (but very nice and we talk baseball a lot) and when I told THEM the news, one of them just said “Well sh*t so much for the division”

It was mid to late afternoon, I checked in at bless you boys to see if there were any updates about who we were gonna sign. After no updates I went back up stairs to finish my daily paper work and to check out my crew.

Finished my paper work was walking out to my car and turned on 96.1 sports radio while I was driving down the road they were talking about Prince. I got very pissed because I don’t like listening to locals talk about a signing I knew would never happen.

Then a bomb shell was dropped on me when they said if Mr. I wants to drop 214 million on Prince he could and if your just tuning in the Tigers are about to sign Prince to a 214 million dollar contract for 9 years. I just started pumping my fist screaming yes hitting the horn over and over screaming yes, yes yyyyyeeeeeessssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was at work and had been on my phone most of the day but got wrapped up in something. All of a sudden a buddy called me out of the blue and says “Do you know who we just signed?” He seemed pretty ecstatic but I never thought in a million years it would be Prince. After hanging up I was so pumped I took my lunch and just walked around jacked up and super pumped for the upcoming season. After that i was on twitter and online almost all night reading every tweet and every story I could and pretty kept doing that through the week.

After a grueling day of LSU job interviews and a job talk that went over like a bowling bowl with lead weights. Flipped through channels and saw something about Tigers, assumed it was LSU Tigers. Took shower, checked email, skimmed BYB…and realized that my looming unemployment just got a little rosier!

sat down with the laptop, eventually opened ESPN’s page and saw something about Detroit’s prince…flipped over to BYB and almost yelled and woke the baby back up. Sent out some texts after that, etc etc.

well done. BYB commenter rookie of the year leader already! *

*not an actual award

I saw the “Fielder To Sign With Tigers” headline, and had to read it again very slowly to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks. I immediately checked a couple other sports sites – could have been MLB.com and Tigers.com, but I was so excited I don’t remember. Neither site had any news about Prince, so I assumed some reporter was passing along the usual b.s. speculation.

So I went out to lunch, came back to the office, and checked those same sites I was looking at before lunch. By that time all of them were reporting the news. Right away I texted my wife because the night before we were discussing who Prince would choose between the Rangers and Nationals. I texted “PRINCE SIGNS WITH THE TIGERS” and she texted back “O M G!!”

The best part was driving home that night. I never take the freeway because it’s jammed solid, but that night I did so I could listen to MLB Network Radio talk about the deal. Funny thing was I didn’t turn it on when I went to lunch because I was so convinced the news was bogus.

I had just left a lunch meeting & went home (was easier than returning to the office). I threw on the TV to have some background noise while I made meeting notes. The tv is always on either CNBC or MLB Network – and that day it happened to be on MLB.

I guess the word had just gotten out, they were breaking into their regular segment to discuss the deal, and it was just starting to appear on Twitter. Needless to say, those meeting notes got delayed several hours!

Not to be a negative Nancy, but I think a ‘where were you’ thread on news of a FA signing is waaaaay over the top. We’re not the Pittsburgh Pirates….this shouldn’t be THAT big of a deal (even though I know it is a big deal…I’m saying we’re blowing this up to JFK-being-shot/Berlin Wall coming down status, and it’s definitely not that).

Anyway, carry on with…whatever this is.

/rant

I had just left ByB and was reading a post on WIIM. 18 seconds later, a comment came in that said "I do not what to hijack this thread, but the Tigers just signed Fielder for 9/214". My first reaction was it was BS as there was no way I missed this on ByB. I later found out that an uncharged cell phone let WIIM scoop ByB on this breaking news.