Miguel Cabrera's Blood Alcohol Content

Coming to you live from the "capital of the sports world" (according to Tony Kornheiser) I am getting ready for the big Monday Night Football game between the Vikings and Packers.   It will be nice to this game sandwiched in between two huge Twins games that yours truly has either attended or will be attending.   There will be plenty of talk by others about the Vikings-Packers game (something about some Mississippian named Favre) and plenty of talk by me on the Twins tiebreaker and possibly playoff games.   This post is not about that because an amazing story just came up this morning that needs to be discussed.

On Friday night I was watching the Twins-Royals game and was cheering against the Tigers as they eventually lost to the White Sox.   On Saturday night it was pretty much the same thing as the Twins won and the Tigers lost again to the White Sox.   Both of those events were enough for the Twins to tie the Tigers and ultimately led the tiebreaker at the Metrodome tomorrow. Both of those games for the Tigers were of ultimate importance because if the Tigers would have won just one of those games they would have been celebrating an AL Central title after yesterday's victory.   During those games the Tigers star player Miguel Cabrera went 0-8 with a key double play in Saturday's game.   Nothing much to report there since all players have had 2 straight bad games.   

And then this story broke this morning.  To recap the main points:

• After the game on Friday Cabrera went out partying with members of the White Sox.   
• He came home at night and got into some type of altercation with his wife.
• His wife had to call the police at 6am and the police picked up and gave him a blood alcohol test. 
• Cabrera blew a .26 BAC.  A .26 BAC!   This Tigers blogger wrote it best when he wrote - wrote "A .26 BAC?  That's not just buzzed.  Thats not just drunk.  That's pretty smashed."
• I looked up a BAC chart to see how many drinks a 240 pound guy would have to drink to get a .26 BAC.  Not counting the alcohol that you "burn up" over the course of time you have been drinking Cabrerra would have had 17 drinks.  17 drinks!  At absolute minimum. That is amazing.

Why would the star player and MVP candidate have at least 17 drinks before one of the biggest games of the year?   A game that he helped proceed to lose with his lack of production in the middle of the lineup.  Not to mention the fact that .26 is in the red on the BAC chart with words "death possible" in bold.   Or the not so minor detail that he had a physical altercation so severe with his wife that his wife had to call the police on her own husband.    There are a lot of unknowns with this story (degree of the fight between the Cabrera's?  how did Cabrera get home? etc), but what is unknown is crazy enough.   17 drinks.   At a minimum.   Then he called the Tigers GM to pick up from jail.  What was he thinking?    In what other job could you get so drunk, got in a fight with your wife and be picked up by your boss on the same day as your most important meeting and still keep your job.   I thought athletes couldn't surprise me anymore until I heard this story.  Really what was Miguel Cabrera thinking?