He prepared his team for the playoffs, one sign at a time: “Don’t let the Tigers get hot.”
DETROIT–It started as a joke.
Tigers superfan Josh Tebeau, who went to about 50 games this year, always goes to Comerica Park armed with two things: lots of layers and an armful of signs meant to pump up the crowd. Tebeau, a 41-year-old lifelong fan who has started attending more games in recent seasons, likes to keep things positive — even if playing the Tigers in early July didn’t always inspire many funny posts.
Detroit fell to nine games under .500 on the season on July 4. On July 8, after a victory over the Cleveland Guardians snapped a modest four-game winning streak, catcher Jake Rogers said in an on-field interview, “Don’t let the Tigers get hot.” A few weeks later, after Detroit was sold at Trade Deadline, Tebeau asked some friends for board ideas.
“Make one for the play-off push,” someone joked. Tebeau, ever the optimist, held a sign: “What if we win?” in June. A turnaround still seemed possible at the time. However, on August 10, the Tigers’ chances of a playoff spot were 0.2 percent.
On August 27, Tebeau and a few thousand others faced a nearly three-hour rain delay. Bored, Tebeau – who had made a “Storming Past .500” sign – thought about Rogers’ interview. The Tigers played better. So he scribbled, “Don’t let the tigers get hot” on a piece of cardboard. A few hours later, Detroit beat the Angels 6-2 and climbed above .500 for the first time since June 4. Tebeau and his signs were shown on the broadcast, with Tebeau wagging his finger as if to alert the rest of the league. .
A week later, the Tigers were still win. Tebeau’s original “Don’t Let the Tigers Get Hot” sign wasn’t up to his usual craft. So he went to the St. Clair CVS, where almost all of Tebeau’s signs are printed, and spent $6 on a better one. He brought it with him to every game he attended. Meanwhile, the Tigers, who were 10 games out of a playoff spot in mid-August, tried to do the impossible.
Detroit went 31-11 after August 10. After one of the team’s wins in late September, Tebeau saw former Tigers pitcher Dan Petry, part of the team’s last World Series title in 1984, and Petry laughed at the sign. “Too late,” he said to Tebeau, who took a marker and wrote that sentence down.
Tebeau’s sign, which generated enough buzz to be featured in multiple Tigers teams’ social media posts, continued to evolve. The team kept winning. ‘Don’t let the Tigers to get stay warm,” Tebeau stood his ground as security — at the request of several Tigers players — came to get Tebeau in the team photo as Detroit clinched a playoff spot.
“It was the coolest thing that ever happened to me in my life,” said Tebeau, who also had Tarik Skubal toss him a pumpkin seed in May as a premonition that the Tigers would play baseball in October. He left his sign on the field during the team celebration, but still has the seed.
He had to go to CVS anyway to make a new one: “Don’t Let the Tigers Get Hot in the Playoffs.”
When Detroit upset the Houston Astros in the Wild Card Series, manager AJ Hinch started the clubhouse party with the line, “I’m not sure who, but someone got the Tigers hot,” a line that landed the group in a bottle . – booming frenzy.
Naturally, that sentence ended up on one of Tebeau’s signs. The Romeo Middle School teacher spent $600 to attend Game 1 in Cleveland and will be at Wednesday’s Game 3 in Detroit, the city’s first home game in 10 years. Tebeau will arrive, as he always does, hours early. He goes around the team’s bullpen to fire up the pitchers and painstakingly selects multiple Tigers jerseys to drop off and get the crowd moving at different points. He has learned that there is a barrier to this gesture, as he once estimated that he wore fifteen different T-shirts and couldn’t really move his arms to undress.
“I looked like the Michelin Man,” said Tebeau, who wore a Torkelson jersey, Kerry Carpenter jersey and AJ Hinch Stanford jersey stacked for Game 1 and had dozens of signs. “It’s not so much about the shirts or the signs, it’s about spreading good vibes.”
Tebeau with the infamous pumpkin seed (courtesy of Josh Tebeau)
Tebeau’s viral mark and his participation in the team’s clinch have made him a pseudo-celebrity among his students. Children will ask him for the pumpkin seed or to sing the “Tork” chant, and those wary of his hobby have come calling.
The Tigers enter Wednesday’s game with a 1-1 tie in the best-of-five set against Cleveland. They are underdogs again. Tebeau, who asked the team to “Play Ball!” before the first pitch, he will fire up the crowd and then take his usual spot at the Tigers dugout to display his jerseys and signs. He’ll shout loud, positive things and hope the Tigers have something more to add to this hot streak. And on Thursday, Tebeau will do it from Romeo Middle School, where parent-teacher conferences will keep him from attending a potential clincher.
“It’s not about me,” Tebeau said. ‘I will be there in spirit. People ask, ‘Why am I like this?’ Being energetic spreads more energy. I hope someone feels inspired that if you are good to other people, good things can happen. They asked what would it mean if we won the World Series? It would show even more people what AJ Hinch has done, which is buy something bigger than themselves. This run has been selfless.”
(Top photo: Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
