DETROIT – If the Detroit Tigers somehow make the playoffs this season, Monday is the night we’ll all remember.

Jason Benetti and Andy Dirks said it several times throughout the telecast on Bally Sports Detroit: It felt like a playoff atmosphere inside Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.

That sentence would have sounded absurd on Aug. 22 — less than a month ago! — when the Tigers had a losing record and sat 9.5 games out of the final wild card spot.

They had just traded away Jack Flaherty and a few other contributors. Reese Olson and Casey Mize were injured. Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene had just returned from long absences.

Nobody at that moment considered that the Tigers might matter by mid-September — not even the Tigers themselves.

But somehow, some way, here we are.

The Tigers went into Monday night trailing the Twins by 2.5 games. But by 8:30 p.m., it looked like this magical run might finally come to an end.

With the Twins leading the Guardians 3-0 in the middle innings, Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. hit a grand slam off of Olson that put the Tigers in a 4-0 hole.

It sure looked like the Tigers would fall 3.5 games behind the Twins, which would all but extinguish their flickering playoff hopes (especially since they don’t hold the tiebreaker).

But this younger version of the Tigers is never dead. After falling behind 5-1 in the fourth, a Colt Keith homer brought them within a run in the fifth. The Royals scored again in the bottom half, but the Tigers came through with three more in the sixth to take their first lead.

“The Tigers lead, and just as that happened, Cleveland beat Minnesota, 4-3,” Benetti roared on Bally. “The Tigers lead 7-6. Minnesota has lost tonight, and who knows what our next two weeks are going to be like.”

Suddenly, instead of 3.5 back, the Tigers pulled within 1.5 games of a playoff spot. That’s closer than they were to sixth place in the wild card standings on Aug. 22.

Detroit hasn’t been within two games of a playoff spot in the second half since its last winning season in 2016. Even throughout the past four weeks, the Tigers have mostly hovered in the range of three games behind the Twins.

But on Monday, in the matter of about an hour, the Tigers went from the brink of unofficial elimination to the best spot they’ve been in in eight years.

if they cap off this improbable run by sneaking into the postseason, this is the night we’ll remember.

MILWAUKEE — When the Milwaukee Bucks hired Doc Rivers to replace Adrian Griffin as head coach in the middle of the 2023-24 season, they believed they were making an upgrade.

Instead, the Bucks staggered through the rest of the regular season, winning 17 of their 36 games under Rivers. And in the playoffs, with superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo sidelined by injury, the Milwaukee again lost in the first round.

In advance of the 2024-25 NBA season, CBS Sports has ranked the league’s 30 coaches. Rivers is No. 22.

The report by CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn groups Rivers with Portland’s Chauncey Billups, Chicago’s Billy Donovan, and Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff. The verdict on Rivers is harsh.

“Doc Rivers had Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. He had Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. He had Joel Embiid and James Harden. He never reached the conference finals with any of them. It’s been a long time since 2008 (the NBA title in Boston). His players clearly like playing for him, and he is perhaps the best job interviewer among current coaches. Owners love him. That’s probably how he keeps getting these premium jobs. But he also keeps blowing playoff leads, over-relying on name-brand veterans, punting on offensive rebounds and running predictable offenses. Hiring Doc Rivers looks better in a press release than employing Doc Rivers tends to actually work out on the court.”

– Sam Quinn, CBS Sports

To rank each coach, CBS used these factors:

In 25 seasons, Doc has coached his share of superstars to little glory. In 20 postseasons, his teams have won two conference titles and one NBA championship. He currently holds the NBA record for most losses in Game 7s — 10 — and his teams have blown three 3-1 series leads.

In his two positions before Milwaukee — with the Los Angeles Clippers (2013-2020) and Philadelphia 76ers (2020-2023) — he couldn’t get either team beyond the second round of the playoffs.

Those most recent failures likely colored the CBS rankings, even though Rivers ranks eighth all-time in wins and has been recognized by the NBA as one of the league’s 15 greatest coaches.

But if all goes according to plan, Rivers and the Bucks should get another postseason opportunity in 2025.

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – This neighborhood along Elliot Avenue in South Minneapolis is filled with children. For some of them, bringing the basics of the 4th estate to their block is child’s play. 

Anika Freeman is the de facto editor-in-chief of the neighborhood newspaper the kids put out once a week named the Elliot Avenue Gazette.

The 7th grader says after watching the movie “Newsies” last year, they thought it would be fun to deliver newspapers, so they decided to create their own.

“I really like just learning about all these cool things that kids have done and that are happening around the world and this is just a good excuse to learn about it,” said Freeman.

The Elliot Avenue Gazette covers everything from presidential politics to family vacations gone wrong, with all the articles penned by the neighborhood kids themselves.

Hazel Fitch writes a column called “Storytime With Hazel” about one of her dad’s misadventures in college.

“He was with his friends and they decided to take this golf cart and drive it around the campus and they got caught. So that was fun to write about,” said Fitch.

So far they’ve published about 7 editions, which they deliver on Sundays to about 20 of their friends and neighbors.

“I’ve heard from so many people ‘This is the highlight of my week. We love the gazette’. My neighbor across the alley said her second grader does the crossword every week, and she loves it,” said Anika’s mother Alicia Freeman.

In addition to hyper-local news, weather.. and sports, Freeman says there’s a healthy dose of good news in every issue.

“I feel like so many bad things are happening in the world and that’s usually like the headliners and everybody wants to know about that but there are good things that happen as well,” said Anika Freeman.

And they have no plans to stop the presses anytime soon.

“For now we are still really interested in it. so I think we are going to keep doing it,” 

While most of the newspapers have been in physical form, the kids have put out a couple of electronic editions as well, so people far beyond Elliot Avenue can keep up with all the news that’s fit to print.