"It was a stunner eight years ago when baseball's best catcher — Pudge Rodriguez — signed with baseball's worst team — the Tigers.

A year later another Hollywood hitter, Magglio Ordonez, came aboard when the Tigers were still stuck in the muck a franchise had dumped on itself for two decades.

And then there was Miguel Cabrera. He arrived four years ago via a bolt from the blue skies of Nashville's winter meetings, in a trade so outlandish the Tigers never imagined it could happen until a casual remark by Al Avila at The Opryland Hotel set in motion a nuclear blast of a deal that helped transform baseball in Detroit."