H. Jose Bosch

How would my youth baseball career be different if I had grown up in a world with Miguel Cabrera as a role model?

That’s what I asked myself as I followed the Detroit Tigers’ coverage of Cabrera’s final weekend of playing professionally.

How much more fun would I have had? How much would I have enjoyed the game as opposed to seeing it as something I failed at?

I don’t remember much from my baseball playing days, but I do remember how often my coaches made me feel like crap.

After a decade of playing baseball youth baseball, the overriding message from coaches and parents was: Take your work seriously, and maybe you could play beyond high school.

There was one game when I was 12 or 13 when a batter hit my elbow as I reached out to catch a pitch. He also hit the ball and ran his way to first. As I was curled up into a ball in pain from someone clubbing my arm, I could hear my coaches arguing with the umpire and the other team’s coaches about whether the play was actually catcher’s interference.  

A parent of the other team had to jump the fence and run to check on me. Not my coaches. Not the other team’s coaches. Not even the parents of my teammates. Someone else’s dad ran out to check on me. (My dad wasn’t there, and my mom, who was there, wasn’t sure if she was allowed to run onto the field. She never forgave my coaches for their behavior that day.)

Cabrera broke into the big leagues in the fall of my senior year of high school. I played organized baseball for the last time in the summer the next year. He wouldn’t become a Detroit Tiger until my senior year of college.

No star player in baseball has exemplified the idea of grown men playing a kid’s game better than Cabrera. Type “Miggy being Miggy” into YouTube, and you will see 3-4 minute compilations of Cabrera doing goofy things at the ballpark.

The time he playfully had a back-and-forth with a young Cleveland fan and then later gave him his batting gloves and bat. Or the time he gave a young fan a high-five while he was standing near the on-deck circle.

Whenever Cabrera ran into the crowd for foul balls, there was an opportunity for fun, like when he tenderly held a fan’s chin with his mitt and looked longingly into his eyes. (I won’t lie; I wanted to be that fan). Another time, he leaned into the crowd and gave a Cleveland fan a big hug. 

But Cabrera wasn’t just a goofy presence in the park. He was a bonafide superstar, a once-in-a-generation talent at the plate who wound up being just the third player in MLB history to have a career batting average over .300 while collecting at least 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. In a culture where most elite superstars are celebrated for being very serious, he provided levity.

You could be great and also have fun playing a kid’s game.

We connect to teams and sports for so many different reasons. My love for baseball and the Detroit Tigers was cultivated by my father, who grew up loving baseball in Puerto Rico and then adopted the Tigers when he moved to Detroit for college. But as we get older and become our own fans, the reasons we stay connected to a team are going to change. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of routine. Other times, it’s a particular athlete.

I began to appreciate Cabrera more and more as I grew further away from the time I played organized baseball. And while I’ve never been further from playing the game, I am closer to it more than ever via enjoying the game and its stars. 

The digital media team for the Tigers and other teams is a large part of that. In the industry, there is a lot of broad-strokes talk about “humanizing” players, but I don’t think we talk enough about why it’s so important to humanize players. Sure, we know why it benefits the team/brand. But what are the benefits to the fans? Why are we interested in creating connections beyond a potential revenue stream?

The goal of highlighting player personalities shouldn’t just be about reaching a new audience from a business perspective. It should be about giving a fan another reason to love a sport or a team. It’s about potentially giving someone a role model for sport or life that will stick with them long term. It’s about helping to make a fan’s day better.

Watching the Tigers celebrate the career of Miguel Cabrera reminded me of that. It wasn’t just that he was an elite player. It’s that he brought a joy to the game that isn’t celebrated enough. He took his craft seriously but never took himself seriously. 

It would’ve been an excellent lesson for a young, baseball-playing Jose Bosch, one that would’ve made his youth sports career just a little bit brighter.