Marquette's Kurt Mensching edits newest Detroit Tigers annual

For Marquette resident freelance writer Kurt Mensching, the Detroit Tigers are more than a baseball team--they're a part of his life.

Mensching has long followed the Tigers--his favorite team since his boyhood days in Detroit and Manton--which became a passion that led him to eventually take the managing editor's chair of the popular Tigers website Bless You Boys. That, however, wasn't enough for Mensching, who made the leap out of the virtual world and to a bookstore near you as the editor of the new Maple Street Press Detroit Tigers Annual 2011. The book is readily available online and with most major retailers throughout the state.

The annual comes out after Maple Street Press' Tigers Corner took a two-year hiatus in 2009 and 2010.

"The Tigers are a pretty popular team, so that definitely left a hole in everyone's springtime reading," says Mensching. "So I offered to step in and take the reins of the publication in order to get it back on the news stands. Fortunately, MSP decided it was a good idea and brought me on board."

Mensching used his connections at Bless You Boys and asked his fellow Tigers writers to lend a hand in the project--most jumped at the chance. Some of the names of the writers are familiar to fans: David Laurila of Baseball Prospectus, the Detroit News' Tom Gage and even Detroit Tigers second baseman Will Rhymes.

Tigers' fans will find the annual to contain 128 pages that are printed in full color and on glossy paper. It is chock full of Tigers stats, analysis, prospect files and history, all written by those who have a love for the team as deep as any fan.

"The Tigers Annual is written by people who look closely at the Tigers 365 days a year," says Menshing. "So they look beyond the easy story lines and have the space to get really in depth in their analysis. And oh, by the way, there are no ads anywhere on those 128 pages. It's all baseball from start to finish."

For Menshing, this is all a culmination of a love affair that began when he was just a kid. Half of his childhood was spent in Detroit and half was in Manton, just north of Cadillac.

"All summer in Manton my friends and I would be playing pick-up games in the fields around our houses when we weren't playing our Little League games," reminisces Mensching. "It was all we did. Naturally, we were all Tigers fans since that was the local team. Basically all I remember doing outside of school was baseball. I collected baseball cards, watched as many games as I could--games were not on TV nearly as much as they are now--listened to every game on the radio, read everything I could in the newspapers, and played-played-played the game. It was an obsession really."

Mensching says it was the summer of 1990 when he saw his first game in person, and he remembers listening as Cecil Fielder went for the then-staggering goal of 50 home runs.

"I think that--1990--was the summer that especially cemented it for me," he says. "I survived all the lean years and the team finally got good again. So it's especially rewarding now to enjoy their wins."

Writer: Sam Eggleston
Source: Kurt Mensching, Bless You Boys