Welcome to the Tigers vs. Yankees ALDS. Friends all over the MLBlogosphere will be joining us and hopefully you are blogging as well. This is a unique opportunity simply because the Tigers and Yankees never have met in a postseason before. Obviously that could not have happened for much of baseball history, but Detroit is in its first postseason since 1987 and that was before the expansion of the format to include Division Series. So here we are, two legendary and proud franchises and let’s get this blog started in hopes of producing a lot of firsts.

First, the basics. The Yanks closed their clubhouse early for a meeting and they are about to take the field for a 1 p.m. workout here. Then someone from the club is at the podium in the interview room at 1:30, and word has it that the Tigers’ clubhouse will open sometime after 2. It was very curious to walk by their clubhouse and see all of those Detroit jerseys hanging in Yankee Stadium during October. Not a sight anyone has ever seen.

OK, let’s open with some unique perspectives on the ageless wonder that is Yankee Stadium, since we are talking about history here. This is a photo I’ve always wanted to take and post. Through this passageway once walked Babe Ruth. And even Ty Cobb, whose last season in the AL was ’28. It leads you to the clubhouses.

This is the bullpen phone Jim Leyland will be using…

And this is the bullpen phone Joe Torre will be using…

The Tigers will need to fill this with very heavy lumber to keep up with MRow2…

Never realized that these rules were posted so prominently in the visitor’s dugout…

I asked these folks if it is harder these days to paint these very detailed postseason logos, knowing how basic they used to be in the old days. They told me that the hardest one here was the 2000 World Series, because the logo stretched from the edge of the grass at the third base line to the edge of the grass in front of the visitor’s dugout…apparently that was a ******* and maybe someone can post a comment with a link to a photo of it.

OK, time to move on to the players. Just wanted to start off with a welcome, and hello again to regular readers of my MLBlogosphere blog from the past year and a half. Leave lots of comments and keep me company, and let me know what you want to see.

Mark Newman/MLB.com