Introducing the Detroit Tigers Annual 2011

Every February and March, a number of annual baseball preview guides appear on bookshelves across the country.  This includes Athlon, Street and Smith's and The Sporting News, to name a few.  They contain recaps of the previous season, previews of the upcoming season and other things needed to keep you up-to-date on all the teams in Major League Baseball.  You may have read these magazines and enjoyed them, but perhaps you felt that the Tigers coverage was a little slim.  After all, space is limited and writers can only say so much about one team when they are covering all thirty teams. 

There is now a magazine/book that covers only the Tigers written by people who obsess about the Tigers as you do all year round.  The Maple Street Press Detroit Tigers Annual 2011 was edited by Kurt Mensching of Bless You Boys and will appear on bookshelves throughout Michigan on March 1.  If you pre-order now online, you should receive it by late February.      

Kurt wrote about 25 percent of the book and he did an outstanding job putting the whole thing together. I did my small part writing articles on Rudy York and Austin Jackson. There were many other familiar contributors as well.  Kurt listed them on his site and I'll repeat them here:

• John Parent and Matt Snyder of Motor City Bengals
• Mike Rogers, Matt Wallace, David Tokarz and especially the editing help of Allison Hagen, all of Bless You Boys.
• Lee Panas of Tiger Tales and Beyond Batting Average, one of Baseball America's top 10 books of 2010.
• Bill Ferris of TigsTown, formerly of Detroit Tigers Weblog
• Mike McClary of The Daily Fungo
• Ian Casselberry of SB Nation Detroit and Yahoo! Sports' Big League Stew.
• Q&As with Phil Coke and Max St. Pierre, with interviews by Baseball Prospectus' David Laurila.  
• Interviews with Jacob Turner, Scot Drucker, Robbie Weinhardt, Casper Wells and MLB.com's Jason Beck that helped contribute to stories.
• Tom Gage of the Detroit News, with interviews with several people who knew Ernie Harwell
• Will Rhymes of your very own Detroit Tigers, with a piece on Will Rhymes of your very own Detroit Tigers

The book includes recaps of 2010, previews of 2011, a look at the farm system, articles on past Tigers players and seasons and tributes to Ernie Harwell and Sparky Anderson.  You should enjoy the book and I urge you to pre-order it now.