They weren't booing in Comerica Park on Sunday night. They were saying "Bruuuuuuce."

Honest mistake, though. It took nearly the entire season for the ballpark at 2100 Woodward Ave. to be home to a winning team - Mr. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

But don't kill the messenger, Bruce said it himself. The Boss called for a "rock 'n' roll exorcism" of Comerica Park and came damn close to coming through.

Make no mistake: Bruce, Steve, Clarence, Max and the rest kicked Motown in the butt for three solid hours of blue-collar, sweat-drenched, middle-aged rock. But don't kid yourself - not even the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the nation can save this team.

But if the Boss is willing to try, so can I. As Detroit tries to avoid dubious history as the worst team in MLB history - and by some accounts, it already has - this season has more links to Sunday night's set list than you might think.

First song hit just as dusk's last hurrah was slinking around the Detroit skyline. Bruce and the boys (and Patti Scialfa, the luckiest acoustic guitar/tambourine player since Linda McCartney) jumped into "Souls of the Departed" from one of Springsteen's solo records from the early 1990s.

"This is a prayer for the souls of the departed