This story was excerpted from Jason Beck¡¯s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- Home run celebrations were all the rage last season, and the Tigers¡¯ hockey-themed celebration in tribute to the Red Wings was near the top on originality. So what could Detroit do for an encore?
That was Spencer Torkelson¡¯s task heading into the season. He came up with last year¡¯s celebration, a tribute close to his heart as a former youth hockey player. He also had more of those home run celebrations than anyone, having led the Tigers with 31 homers last year.
¡°He¡¯s the home run king,¡± Parker Meadows said.
¡°That¡¯s a lot of responsibility,¡± Riley Greene added.
Torkelson didn¡¯t want to run back the same dugout scene. He also didn¡¯t want to copy any other team¡¯s trick.
¡°Just had to mix it up,¡± Torkelson explained last weekend. ¡°We loved the Red Wings' celly last year. It's not dead; it could still come back. But our owner [chairman and CEO Christopher Ilitch] owns Little Caesars Pizza, so we're going to give them some love, too.¡±
The Little Caesars logo features a character in a toga eating a slice of pizza in one hand, while the other hand holds a spear that has the rest of the pizza on the end of it.
They weren¡¯t going to recreate the toga, but they could do something with the spear and the pizza. So Torkelson asked Ben Fidelman, director of communications and broadcasting, what he could find. It was Fidelman, through Ilitch Sports + Entertainment, who had helped equip last year¡¯s celebration by providing a hockey stick and helmet from the Ilitch-owned Red Wings, eventually adding a mini-goal and net to fire a puck into at the end of the dugout.
¡°I was like, 'Hey, is there any chance we can get the Pizza Pizza guy's stick with the pizzas on it?' And [Fidelman] didn't disappoint,¡± Torkelson explained Monday during a studio appearance on MLB Network¡¯s MLB Central program.
They got a prop spear -- rubber-tipped, thankfully, so no risk of accidental injury -- and three foam pizzas.
¡°I heard somebody murmur that was in a commercial shoot,¡± Torkelson added on MLB Network.
The Tigers didn¡¯t get to unveil it on Opening Day, while Ilitch was in attendance. But they homered twice Saturday in their second game of the season, providing a chance to get out the props.
Still, there was some question what to do with the spear and pizza. They paraded it through the dugout, which was fine. But when they tried pounding it on the floor of the dugout, the pizzas tended to flop a bit.
¡°Maybe we should take a bite out of it,¡± Meadows suggested over the weekend.
¡°I think it's just going to be a little tap on the ground,¡± Greene said.
Still, don¡¯t be surprised if the hockey celebration returns, especially if the Red Wings earn their first Stanley Cup playoff berth since 2016. They¡¯re in the thick of the race for one of the final Eastern Conference playoff spots, and they helped their cause Monday with a win at Tampa Bay. The Tigers are also slated to celebrate a cross-promotion with the Red Wings on Saturday, giving away Tigers hockey jerseys to the first 15,000 fans through the gates at Comerica Park for the 1:10 p.m. ET game against the A¡¯s.