We're in our second rain delay, and Ken Rosenthal grabbed Brandon Inge for a quick interview ...

KR: Let's talk about your season a little bit. You went down to triple-A rather than accept a release from the Tigers. You wanted to be with this team. Tell me why you did that.

BI: Well, I've been here for a long time, made a lot of friends, a lot of family along the way, and I just didn't want to give up on this ball club. It was no one's fault but my own, the way I was hittin', so I figured I may as well go down, put a little hard work in to try to fix my swing a little bit to get back. I just didn't want to give up on the guys, you know? I didn't want to go out that way...

Fortunately, Inge's kids are young enough that they didn't really understand he'd been demoted; they just figured that he'd been traded to just another baseball team, the Toledo Mud Hens.

And of course, there was a happy ending. Inge crushed the ball in 29 games with Toledo, and while he saw just limited duties after returning to the Tigers in August, he did post a nifty .278/.355/.444 line in 64 plate appearances. And of course now he's playing in the American League Championship Series.

Happy ending, indeed.