Sitting in the manager’s office in the visitors’ clubhouse before Game 5 Saturday, I shared my Johnny Bach story with AJ Hinch.

Johnny Bach was a legendary assistant basketball coach for the Chicago Bulls during the rise of the Jordan Dynasty, and he came to the Pistons along with head coach Doug Collins in the mid-1990s.

Bach had a saying, it was an old Indian battle cry often attributed to Crazy Horse: “It’s a good day to die.” In his time, Bach would’ve had that saying posted on the clubhouse white board. And I relayed it to Hinch because it was so perfectly apt to the battle he and the Tigers were about to engage in.

It’s a good day to die because you had done all you could to put yourself in a position to die, if you must, with no regrets.

Sure, regret that the season ended nine wins short, if you want. Regret that the ultimate goal was not attained. But when a team exceeds expectations as spectacularly as the 2024 Tigers did, such regret seems petulant.

“We’re back being a winning organization,” Hinch said as his players were sharing hugs and beers and saying farewell following the 7-3 loss in Game 5. “We earned it. We’re going to have to back it up now with a good offseason, a good spring, with growing expectations and a group of players that is now battle-tested at the highest level to date.

“But I’m proud that we had a winning record. I’m proud we played winning baseball. I’m proud that we got a chance to test ourselves in a heartfelt series against a team we respect and a team we expect to see a lot of next year.”

It was a good day to die.

“AJ told us, once you play in one October, you want to play in all of them, and it’s true,” outfielder Riley Greene said. “This is most of ours’ first time and there’s nothing like it. Just the way the games are played and the energy and the excitement, you can’t beat it. It was awesome to play in October.

“And it’s something I want to do every year.”

The season died Saturday, but not the spirit and the energy that powered the wondrous journey this baseball team took us all on this year. The memories of which will live forever in Detroit sports lore.

“Honestly, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing this game,” Greene said.

I could go through my notebooks and I promise you, just about every player on the active roster uttered some version of that phrase to me over the course of the last three months. And it showed on the field and in the clubhouse.

The verve, the joy, the comradery, the youthful exuberance and endearing naivety — all of it genuine, authentic — the selflessness and buy-in, it all led to the gradual building of belief.

“We do have the definition of a team,” Hinch said. “Up and down this lineup, up and down the pitching staff. I’m so happy with how we can deploy our guys at their strengths and their best. The player buy-in has been the single biggest impact on this entire team.”

The lack of ego displayed by Tigers players this season was, in my experience covering professional sports for four decades, rare, special. And Hinch understood that.

“It’s probably a little unusual,” he said. “Everybody wants their moment. But we have high-character guys that are willing to do anything that you can to win. We have a lot of capable guys, but we have a lot of guys who are willing to take a seat if the next guy has a better advantage.

“The players are incredible on this team and the buy-in is special, and I think it’s part of the reason that we’re doing special things.”

It was beautiful to watch it all coalesce after the trade deadline.

It seemed like the front office symbolically waved a white flag when they moved four veteran players Jack Flaherty, Andrew Chafin, Carson Kelly and Mark Canha) at the deadline and released two others (Gio Urshela and Shelby Miller) shortly after.

That was never a rallying cry inside the room. It was never, Oh, we’ll show them. No. It was just a bunch young, hungry players seizing an opportunity.

The energy started to build when Greene, Kerry Carpenter and Parker Meadows all returned healthy off the injured list and began to round into form in early August. Spencer Torkelson also rejoined the mix after a couple of months in Toledo.

Rookie Trey Sweeney, acquired in the Flaherty trade, was a revelation. Calmly, quietly, stepping into the everyday shortstop role after Javier Báez was lost for the season (hip surgery) and solidifying the infield.