I'm rooting for them for the rest of the playoffs.
Tigers Cash Out Yankees
Bonderman Is Brilliant As Tigers Eliminate Majors' Top Spenders: Tigers 8, Yankees 3
By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page E01
DETROIT, Oct. 7 -- The inning, the game, the season all were slipping away from the New York Yankees on a brilliant fall Saturday afternoon when Manager Joe Torre gathered his infield on the mound. Shortstop Derek Jeter, the team's guts, yelled something, then thumped his right hand into his glove, clearly imploring those gathered to get up and go.
Second baseman Robinson Cano clapped as well. Gary Sheffield, playing first, tapped Cano on the hip. And Alex Rodriguez, the third baseman, stood limply, then walked away. Perhaps Rodriguez -- dropped to eighth in the batting order, the final humiliation in a summer full of them -- could sense what awaited him. He would make an error that cost the Yankees a run. He would fail to get a hit or drive in a run. And the Yankees -- so heavily favored in this American League Division Series only three days earlier -- lost to the Detroit Tigers, an 8-3 pummeling in Game 4 that ended their season.
Detroit players carry Manager Jim Leyland on their shoulders after an 8-3 win on Saturday clinched the Tigers' first ALCS appearance in 19 years. (Mike Cassese - Reuters)
The focus, of course, should be on Tigers right-hander Jeremy Bonderman, the 23-year-old who had a perfect game through five innings, who allowed the Yankees two runs in 8 1/3 dominant innings. It should be on the Tigers as a whole, because they held the fearsome Yankees scoreless for 20 frames between Games 2 and 4, all Detroit victories.
The Tigers ripped out 13 hits, got homers from Magglio Ordoñez and Craig Monroe, and generally played the kind of baseball that made them the best story in the game for much of the summer. Detroit, though, will get its due because its season lives on, and the Tigers will face the Oakland Athletics beginning Tuesday in the AL Championship Series.
Saturday, then, the story was the Yankees and their third baseman, baseball's best talent who, somehow, can't be part of a winner. New York will enter this offseason without a World Series title for the sixth straight season, a streak that is considered unacceptable in the Bronx.
"Certainly," Yankees legend Reggie Jackson said before the game, "there'll be pressure if we don't win. There'll be pressure on everyone."
There will be, however, more pressure on Rodriguez than on anyone else. He is, with a $252 million contract, the highest-paid player in the history of the game, a status that affords him unfathomable luxury yet haunts him anyway. The contract provides expectations that can allow him to put up numbers as he did this year -- a .290 average, 35 homers and 121 RBI -- and still have New Yorkers after his head.
But Rodriguez only cemented his come-up-small-when-it-matters status this week. He hit .071 in the series, with one hit in 14 at-bats. He failed to drive in a run, something he hasn't done in his last 12 postseason games. And with the season on the line, he was placed eighth in the order. Last year's AL MVP, hitting eighth.
So even before the Tigers jumped on Yankees starter Jaret Wright for three runs in the second -- all on the homers from Ordoñez and Monroe -- Rodriguez was the center of the afternoon. In the third, with two outs, Ordoñez hit a grounder to Rodriguez's right. The third baseman went to his backhand, but all he could do was knock it down, scoop it up, then throw to first. Too late and too wide. Ordoñez was safe. Two singles later, the Tigers had a 4-0 lead. Wright was done.
To Detroit's fans, Rodriguez's struggles didn't mean a thing, what with Bonderman on the mound. His last outing came six days earlier, when the Tigers needed only to beat the lowly Kansas City Royals to wrap up the AL Central title. Bonderman was handed a 6-0 lead, yet couldn't hold it. He failed to complete five innings, and Kansas City came back to win. The Tigers, who took over sole possession of first place on May 21, lost it on the last day, in large part because of Bonderman.
"You get yourself in trouble instead of attacking the hitters and making them get themselves out," he said Friday. "I don't know. I [stunk]. I don't know what to tell you."
Sometimes, when pitchers reveal their strategy in the days leading up to a start, it means little, just throwaway words. But Bonderman's message carried weight: He wanted to, simply, throw strikes. Make the Yankees -- who have a reputation for being baseball's pickiest, most patient team -- swing early and often.
And so he did. In retiring the first 15 men he faced, Bonderman didn't reach a three-ball count, needing three or fewer pitches to retire 13 of those men. And when he struck out Jorge Posada to end the fifth, the thunder from the crowd of 43,126 indicated they knew precisely what was happening. Forget that blown lead, the heartbreak of a week ago. Bonderman was pitching a perfect game to eliminate the Yankees.
The crowd was further buoyed when the Tigers scored three off Cory Lidle and Brian Bruney in the fifth, extending the lead to 7-0. And when Cano, the first hitter in the sixth, stepped out of the batter's box as Bonderman was ready to pitch, the fans booed heartily, understanding what was at stake.
Cano, unfazed, swung at Bonderman's 0-1 offering and bounced the ball softly up the middle, a clean single. The fans acknowledged Bonderman's accomplishment, and he went back to work. Three ground balls later, he was out of the inning.
That the Yankees scratched for a run in the seventh hardly mattered. When he came out with one out in the ninth, Bonderman waved his hat at the crowd, and they thundered back their appreciation. He had redeemed himself.
In the opposing dugout, Rodriguez's season ended quietly, and one had to wonder: Would a home stadium ever scream for him like that again?
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