Your Detroit Tigers The Great, the Good, and the Neither Format: Cloth Over Boards

Longtime scribe Tom Gage teams up with retired catcher Alex Avila in this rigorous yet spirited dive into Detroit Tigers history

What is this book? Simple. It's the most extensive ranking of Detroit Tigers players ever undertaken. An innovative system to identify the best of their best and the best of their good.

In Your Detroit Tigers: The Great, the Good, the Top 400 veteran scribe Tom Gage ―with commentary from former Tiger Alex Avila―gets down to the hard work of deciding the best of the best Tigers stars of all time, from the franchise joining the American League in 1901 to the present. 

It's a journey through Tigers’ history that is precise, clear-eyed, and performance-based. No heartstrings here, and no subjective cases to be made.

Gage deploys algorithms individualized by role: 14 performance metrics for hitters and eight for pitchers. The 400 Tiger tales shared within represent the most extensive ranking of the Tigers ever undertaken.

Who deserves to be first? Who should be 10th? Or 20th? How about 120th? Your Detroit Tigers is a book no Tigers fan should be without, certain to entertain, educate, create new perspectives, and result in endless debates.

Starting in 1976, Tom Gage covered more than 5,000 Detroit Tigers games in 36-plus years as a baseball beat writer. He was honored with the Baseball Writers Association’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award, now the Career Excellence Award, in 2015 at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The following year he was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame and, in 2020, into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. He’s been the recipient of multiple career achievement awards and twice was named Michigan Sportswriter of the Year. This is his fifth book. Gage and his wife, Lisa, have a grown son and two grandchildren.  

Alex Avila is a former Major League Baseball catcher who played from 2009 to 2021, most notably with the Detroit Tigers.