It was pretty clear that Jose Valverde was on the fast track to the Tigers' bullpen once he was signed to a minor league deal earlier this month. When Octavio Dotel got officially shelved on the DL yesterday with a bum elbow, Valverde's ticket back to the bigs came even sooner. 

Back as the team's closer, Valverde got a chance to redeem himself from a horrid playoffs on Day 1. Enter Papa Grande [GIF and pic via @WorldofIsaac]: 

Valverde threw all fastballs, 18 of them, to earn a 1-2-3 save. Alex Gordon and Billy Butler flew out to or around the warning track, but that's not important. Valverde's splitter was reportedly looking good in Single-A, so once he starts mixing that in, he'll hopefully rack up some strikeouts in those two-strike counts. His fastball was consistently 93-94 and Valverde, with his two-colored goatee, appeared to be having fun out there again, and that's encouraging. 

Gene Lamont probably got a bad rep over the years and I tried to defend him a few times over the last couple seasons. Well, Tom Brookens has been third base coach for the Tigers all of 18.5 games and he has already screwed up royally at least twice.

Unfortunately, both times has involved ill-advisedly sending Victor Martinez. V-Mart is 34 and is coming off missing a season due to knee surgery. He's no spring chicken, so let's try not to push the envelope with him, okay?

On Wednesday night, Mr. Brookens did that and to boot, it was against Jeff Francoeur's arm, which would require a license in some states. It resulted in the easiest 9-2 assist I've seen in a long time: 

Brookens isn't the only person to screw up here, though. As the video shows, Fielder should've grabbed the bat that was resting dangerously on the baseline and then should've given more than a half-ass signal for V-Mart to get down. V-Mart wasn't getting down and definitely wasn't going to slide straight into the catcher. V-Mart ultimately took the best route, which was veering right and straight to the dugout, safe and sound. 

Jason Hanson, former Lions kicker and future Hall of Famer, has quite an arm. After spending 21 years in the NFL, maybe Hanson has a future closing for the Tigers throwing respectable batting practice:

Watch former #Lions kicker Jason Hanson throw out today's ceremonial first pitch.yfrog.com/31bf3hbeozurga…

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 24, 2013

MVP Miguel Cabrera and runner up Mike Trout had a semblance of a conversation this past weekend, and someone caught it on tape: 

Basically, the runner up was talking and the MVP was thinking, when is this dude I don't understand going to stop talking so I can go over to talk to Pujols? Run along now runner up.

(Anybody else notice Pujols hanging on to Cabrera's arm for just a little too long and Cabrera staring at Pujols' erection?)

Let's not relive old bad memories, but Prince Fielder hit a home run this past weekend and someone slowed it down for us to touch ourselves to. Seriously, this is like softcore porn:  

Arousing.

Jose Valverde is coming through again in the pinch!

According to LHP Ryan Longstreth on Twitter, Valverde bought his new minor league bros a lot of Dominos: 

@papagrande46 comin up big and gettin us all dominos tonight #clutch

— Ryan Longstreth (@rlongstreth13) April 15, 2013

Guido Knudson, tweeting from the pizza-less 2nd floor, was concerned he missed out. Longstreth tweeted back that there was probably some left in the lobby because, of course, Papa Grande's pizza joint brought a lot. 

In case you're wondering about non-pizza news, Valverde threw a scoreless inning in his first action since signing a minor league deal with the Tigers.

Josh Donaldson nearly hurting himself thinking he needed to get out of the way of a Rick Porcello pitch in the 9th inning, only to realize it was a breaking ball and he didn't, was the most embarrassing thing to be captured on tape of anyone wearing A's gear on Sunday. (Yes, way more embarrassing than the young A's fan who threw a foul ball back after his Dad gave it to him as a present from a stranger.)

Donaldson is a grown man playing a professional baseball game and this should never happen to the former in the latter: 

They don't call them knee-buckling breaking balls for nothin', but you don't often see them resulting in the hitter falling to his knees, hand saving him from falling completely over, and possibly hurting himself.

Mario Impemba said during the telecast he doesn't think he's ever seen something like it before. A quick google search gives me a similar result to Alexei Ramirez, but there's no hint of injury after. Donaldson got so jelly legged, he couldn't hold himself up, falling to the dirt in shame. He was then slow to get up and clearly wincing before daring to dig back in.

It will be even more embarrassing for Donaldson when his teammates rib him by playing it in the clubhouse and Donaldson realizes Porcello's breaking ball wasn't *that* nasty. I mean, it was definitely good, but probably not test-the-strength-of-the-hitter's-ACLs good. Sharp nonetheless. 

I'm really happy for Porcello, too. No matter what he does in his career now, he shall always be remembered for making not one but now TWO grown men look foolish. 

Awww, right? This David-Wells-looking Dad gets a foul ball from a nice gentleman a couple rows back, gives it to his kid and, while Dad's thanking the foul ball donor, the kid throws it away. I wouldn't want a ball from a game in which my team is down so many runs, either! 

Here's spliced video courtesty of Fox Sports Detroit: 

Tigers announcers Mario Impemba and Rod Allen paid a lot of attention to this situation the rest of the game -- that's what happens when you're calling a 10-1 game on the road; you pay a lot of attention to sad fans of the other team.

But don't worry. After presumably being yelled at by Dad and both children looking like they were not having any fun, someone from the A's brought them some baseballs to take home. No word on whether or not they threw those back, too. 

The fake life-sized Justin Verlander just wasn't cutting it, so Fox Sports Detroit decided to bring in the real-life Justin Verlander to bobble his real-life head alongside the mini version they're giving away at an upcoming game - Wednesday, April 24 - to the first 10,000 fans. Mesmermizing stuff.

On Saturday vs. Oakland, Torii Hunter hit his first home run as a regular season Tiger, a 468-foot bomb. Prince Fielder and Jhonny Peralta followed with homers of their own to lead the Tigers to a 7-3 win and fans to free curly fries. As I mentioned on Twitter during the game, three "big flies" equal free curly fries, and drinks courtesy of Rod Allen.

I've captured video of all three home runs below. Please note the exceptional bat flips from Hunter and Fielder: