Canucks at Oilers, G79 '10-'11

That's Alan Trammel on the left and Lou Whitaker on the right. They are together forever as baseball players, both impressive rookies and both played in the middle of the diamond in Motown for decades.

That old Tiger team--the won that won everything in 1984--was just plain awful when these two kids arrived. However, the procurement department drafted well over a period of years and made some good deals in an effort to climb out of baseball's second division.

I remember the Tigers before the kids arrived because they kept hiring former Expos (when your team is picking up Expos rejects and its 1975 then your team is in big freaking trouble).

The impact rookies kept coming:

• 1976: Mark Fidrych, Jason Thompson
• 1977: Jack Morris, Lance Parrish, Alan Trammel, Lou Whitaker, Steve Kemp
• 1979: Kirk Gibson, Tom Brookens, Lynn Jones, Dan Petry

That's a tremendous number of quality players over a very short period of time. I count 5 Hall of Fame candidates in there and some useful regulars too, a terrific haul for any era. We don't yet know the calibre of the Oilers kids 07-10 but there are a lot of quality players who have played their rookie seasons since 2007:

• 2007: Sam Gagner, Tom Gilbert, Andrew Cogliano
• 2008: Theo Peckham, Liam Reddox
• 2009: Taylor Chorney, Jeff Deslauriers
• 2010: Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Magnus Pääjärvi, Devan Dubnyk, Linus Omark, Jeff Petry, Ryan O'Marra

Kids like Hartikainen will be rookies in 2011-12. What does the Tiger list have in common with the Oilers list? Well, there's a Petry on both lists, and the rest we'll have to wait and see.
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This is the final week of the regular season, so a reminder that the reasonable expectations series starts Monday. That should take us to early May and then it's the draft, tracers and maybe I'll finally get around to that rookie series.

What would you like to see on the blog?