"This weekend is the eighth anniversary of the Tigers' official rebirth as a baseball franchise.

Early in the afternoon of Feb. 4, 2004, Pudge Rodriguez and Mike Ilitch each stepped into the Tigers Club at Comerica Park following an improbable romance that made baseball's best-known catcher property of the worst team in big league baseball.

An almost-bizarre free-agent signing sprouted only four months after the Tigers had missed by one game tying the 1962 Mets for the ignominious distinction of having lost 120 games in a season.

A year later, Magglio Ordonez joined the Tigers. Attendance surged. The team began to compete. And in 2006, the Tigers bagged the greatest three-year turnaround in baseball history, winning 95 games and cracking the World Series."