Tarik Skubal is not the name of a spicy Moroccan stew, at least not that I’m aware of. He’s a pitcher for Detroit and pretty much the only Tiger I’ve heard of — I haven’t been following them — my bad. Skubal is a leading candidate for this year’s AL Cy Young award. His record is 18-4 with an ERA of 2.39 and he struck out 228 batters in 192 innings. He will be opening for Detroit in the playoffs on Tuesday — either in Baltimore or Houston.

When the MLB trading deadline approaches in July, teams have to decide if they are buyers or sellers. If you believe you have a good chance to make the playoffs, you try to acquire good established players to help, and you grudgingly trade away prospects to get them. If you have abandoned all hope of making the playoffs, you toss your better players overboard (what the hell good were they?) and pick up some hot prospects. The Gnats, for example, are well-stocked with young phenoms, after going through several hopeless (but fun) seasons. This year, Detroit was a seller. That is, at the trading deadline they were under .500 and looking to the future. They dumped a few of their established players. And then something happened. They started winning games and kept on winning games until, yesterday, they improbably clinched a playoff spot. Wow. First time in ten years. As it happens, they clinched by beating the White Sox. And it was the 121st loss for Chicago — thus breaking the single-season loss record held since 1962 by the Mets.

Here’s Tarik. Is that a real baseball? It looks so tiny.

Tarik has three brothers named Treyvor, Tyler, and Trent. He went to the University of Seattle. Here’s his pretty wife, Jessica — she has a Masters degree in Taxation and works as a tax accountant. They were high school sweethearts and have one dependent, their son Kasen Tyler Skubal. He’s turning one in October.

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This poem is by David Citino and is called “Hair.” It’s from today’s Writer’s Almanac.

One by one the children,
large cartoon eyes shining,
push away from the table,
rise and walk away from us
into their rooms. Doors slam
hard. Loud music, the bass
throbbing deep in our teeth,
dark rooms of the heart.
Oooo Baby … Oooo Baby …
Years pass, time enough
for something grand,
something terrible to happen.
When they come out, our sons
have wild, unearthly voices.
Our daughter has budded, mastered
the art of embarrassment.
She won’t look us in the eye.
Oh, Daddy, she says, corners
of her mouth turning down,
Oh, Daddy. And everywhere
there is hair. Such hair.

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Well, the puzzle today gave me a good workout, appropriate for a Saturday. How hard? Well at 26A the clue was “Drink made with rice milk and cinnamon.” 8 letters. When the crossing answers gave me HORCHATA, I figured something had to be wrong. But it’s HORCHATA. D’oh!

28D was no picnic either. (What’s the opposite of a picnic? I think the opposite of a picnic is also a picnic — it’s just a different picnic.) The clue was “First name for the third second-in-command.” WTF? Translation: I needed to know who the third Vice President (like, of the U.S.) was, and I had to know his first name. Turned out to be Burr — AARON Burr. That’s a Saturday clue alright. On a Monday we’d have gotten “Slugger Hank.”

A member of the American Nitpickers Assn & League (ANAL) posted the following:

The Vice President of the United States is not second in command. She has no command authority; the Constitution gives her no command authority. None. Zero. As Vice President, she is: first in line of succession to the presidency; and President of the Senate with authority to cast a deciding vote in case of a tie. That’s it. There is nothing else. Any “authority” the president may personally and contingently give to her is political and not bound by any law and is not in anyway inherent in her office as Vice President.

At the end of his post he added: “I should know,” and I noticed he posted under the name “Henry Wilson.” That was a sly joke. Henry Wilson was the VP from 1873 until his death in 1875. (U.S. Grant was Prez at the time.) (Bit o’ trivia: seven VPs have died in office.)

I’m turning 24A over to our math department. Judy — this make any sense to you? — “Variable in Euler’s polyhedron formula (V − E + F = 2).” (From the crosses, it turned out to be EDGES. (Of course! How could I not see that immediately? “Polyhedron” was the giveaway.))

It was nice to see that Detroit made it into a clue, given the Tigers’ clinching a playoff spot (see above). It was at 16A: “Military leader who helped capture Detroit in 1812.” The answer: TECUMSEH.

Son Volt shared this very pretty but sad song by Townes Van Zandt with us, called “Tecumseh Valley.” It opens and closes with:

The name she gave was Caroline
The daughter of a miner
And her ways were free
And it seemed to me
The sunshine walked beside her.

At 44D, “Brand of vegetable oil” was WESSON, and at 50D, “One of the Seven Sisters” was SMITH. Smith & Wesson? Coincidence? Hmmmmm.

At 11D, “Intercessor for the frequently forgetful” was STANTHONY. Several commenters thought stanthony was just some fakakte word like horchata. But it’s just St. Anthony. (Rex was miffed there was no “abbr” indicator in the clue, since ST is an abbreviation. He thinks on Saturdays they just throw “basic decorum” like that out the window.)

Best clue ever (at 33A) for MOE: “Tucker who played drums for the Velvet Underground.” Moe (Maureen) is in the Rock and Roll HOF as a member of the VU and was one of the few female drummers of her era. She played standing up and used mallets instead of drumsticks. Critic Robert Christgau said of her: “Mo was a great drummer in a minimalist, limited, autodidactic way that I think changed musical history. She is where the punk notion of how the beat works begins.”

Moe just turned 80, was born in Queens, and lives in Georgia. She has five kids. Her politics are pretty extreme-right. On the Tea Party website she posted that she believed Obama’s plan was to destroy the U.S. from within.

Whew. Thank goodness he was stopped!

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Special thanks to Chatter-friend Chris whose magic guitar fingers entertained us with the East Branch Revival Band at the Mohican Outdoor Center’s Fall Festival today.

You just drive up the road a bit after passing this sign. The trees are barely a teensy bit starting to think about their fall colors.

Thanks for popping in. See you tomorrow!