Throughout the Tigers clubhouse on Tuesday, their answers varied. Some of his teammates laughed. Others shook their heads in awe. Miguel Cabrera is on the precipice of another 'Miggy Moment,' maybe the greatest of his career, one hit shy of 3,000. His legendary career is full of them, these snapshots of greatness and glee, of might and mirth, that define one of the best hitters of all time. Few have ever made something so hard look so easy.
"I would call him a savant," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said on Tuesday before watching Cabrera collect four more hits in the next two games.
"We’re here with a living legend," said A.J. Hinch. "We’re trying to encourage our players to pinch themselves and realize the history in the game as Miggy is putting his names right up there with the icons in the sport. For a lot of these players, Miggy might be the first Hall of Famer they’ve ever played with."
Like rookie Spencer Torkelson, who met Cabrera two years ago at the age of 20 when he took his first round of batting practice at Comerica Park. Cabrera took some swings that day, too, and the former first overall pick couldn't take his eyes off the future Hall of Famer at work.
"First time watching him hit BP," Torkelson said of his Miggy Moment. "Just so disciplined and committed to his approach of staying inside the baseball. You could just really see why he’s going to have 3,000 hits and 500 home runs."
Torkelson, it turns out, has a few Miggy Moments, including two that rank among the best moments of his life. First, Cabrera helped Hinch and the Tigers tell Torkelson he had made the team this spring. About a month later, Cabrera was waiting at home plate in Kansas City to congratulate the rookie on a two-run bomb that lifted the Tigers a 2-1 win.
"Him being in that room when I got the call to the big leagues was definitely a top-five moment of my life so far," said Torkelson, "and then that home run in KC with him greeting me at home plate was another one where it was just so cool. He was happier than I was, it felt like."
No one in the world was happier than Jeimer Candelario when he joined the Tigers at the age of 23 in August of 2017, following a trade from the Cubs, and found his locker between two legends in the team's clubhouse.
"When I got the call-up, it was in Pittsburgh and I was right next to Miggy and V-Mart. Two stars who made a lot of difference as a hitter for the young guys. Just seeing that, man, it was crazy."
But that's not Candelario's Miggy Moment. No, that came a couple years later toward the end of a long team flight. Candelario smiles as soon as the story comes to mind.
"I remember, we were on the plane and he had a stash of cash (in his bag) and he said to everyone, 'Look what I made when I hit the ball the other way!' When he said that to me, it made a lot of sense because if you see his stats and his hits and his home runs, he’s got more hits and home runs that way than this way," Candelario said. "That's a true story, and I stick with that story: why not follow the Hall of Famer?"
You want to talk about going the other way? In his first season with the Reds, Tigers catcher Tucker Barnhart will never forget watching the right-handed hitting Cabrera take two-time All-Star Johnny Cueto so deep to right field in Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark that "it looked like a left-handed pulled home run."
"That would be the one," said Barnhart, who's still relieved his view was from the dugout that day and not behind the plate. "It's my rookie year, 2015, it’s raining, it’s cold, I’m a wide-eyed kid that’s still trying to figure out what the big leagues is -- still am. It was honestly like nothing I’d ever seen. Obviously the ball flies in that ballpark, but where he hit it, if I remember right, it was like six or seven rows from going out of the stadium. It’s something you just don’t see."
Barnhart and the Reds didn't see Cabrera often, but he remembers the game plan when they did.
"He was 100 percent the guy in the lineup that you were like, 'We’re going to let everybody beat us but Miggy – and he probably ended up beating us, anyway," Barnhart laughed.
Like Torkelson this year, Akil Baddoo joined the Tigers last year having never played a game in the bigs, suddenly in the same lineup as a two-time MVP and 11-time All-Star. Baddoo grew up playing as Cabrera in MLB: The Show because "all you had to do was swing and he would hit it out." Then he was sitting next to him in the dugout after Cabrera came within feet of his 500th homer in an entranced Comerica Park last summer.
"I would probably say my biggest Miggy Moment is when he was chasing 500," Baddoo said. "I was looking around -- that’s when I was rehabbing my concussion -- and I was watching the crowd and everyone’s quiet. It was a packed house, everyone has their flashbulbs on, and I could hear FaceTimes like eight rows back. I’m like, this is crazy.
"Miggy flew out and he came in and I was like, 'Yo, Miggy, like, what’s up, are you nervous? You see all these people?' He said, 'Papi, I’m extremely nervous! I’m scared, it’s so quiet! I try to tell them, 'Don’t be so quiet.' I was like, 'Are you serious?' Like, this man has been hitting homers since he was 18 and he’s going on 500 and he still gets those nerves and those chills. That’s probably one of the funniest moments I’ve ever had with Miggy."
When a 23-year-old Michael Fulmer joined the Tigers in April of 2016, the team was loaded with stars: Verlander, V-Mart, J.D., Kinsler, Upton, the list goes on. But none, in Fulmer's eyes, as bright as Miggy. Fulmer saw Cabrera's name on the lineup card when he walked into the clubhouse before his first big-league start, but the reality of it didn't set in until ...
"I got a come-backer to me the first at-bat. Run over to first as I usually do, look up and see Miguel Cabrera there," said Fulmer, shaking his head six years later. "It was just something that, I grew up watching him and loved the way he played and I never had the idea or thought of being able to call him a teammate, especially for this long. Until looking up and actually seeing him at first base and saying, hey, I play on the same team as that guy, that was really something special."
Naturally, Cabrera would homer a few innings later to help Fulmer earn the win. That was part of his last All-Star season with the Tigers, a year when he blasted 38 home runs and hit .316. For a long while, as Barnhart can attest, "There was no pitching to that guy," said Fulmer.
"I still don’t understand how guys pitch to him now. He’s always a tough out, just the name and the intimidation factor when you know what he's done," Fulmer said.
Indeed, Cabrera got his first hit of this week's series off four-time All-Star Gerrit Cole. He got his next two off two-time All-Star Luis Severino. He got his fourth off Chad Green, one of the best arms in the Yankees' bullpen. The history-maker could come as soon as Thursday afternoon, a Miggy Moment that will last forever.
"I think he’s going to right field," Candelario grinned. "That’s the way he makes his cash."