The Sweetest Victory

Because I've been traveling I've missed a few posts on the progress of the Detroit Tigers, who have been my favorite baseball team since I was a tot. My second-favorite team is whomever is playing the New York Yankees. It was thus that the Tigers victory in the ALDS over the Yankees on Saturday was doubly sweet, or maybe sweet squared.

On Friday night the much maligned (and deservedly so) Kenny Rogers took the hill against the mighty Yanks, who had a long history of knocking him around. The last time Rogers pitched in a post-season game was with the Mets, when he walked in the series-ending run against the Atlanta Braves in 1999. He has long been considered a pitcher who wilts under pressure, and his scuffle with a cameraman last year didn't earn him any love. So what does he do but go out and pitch the game of his life (he once threw a perfect game with Texas, but this game even topped that one). He shut the Yankees out for over seven innings, constantly baffling them with curveballs. The Tigers, meanwhile, got to an aching and aged Randy Johnson, and took a 6-0 victory in a game that stunned everyone.

The next day, the Tigers had to win to keep the series from going back to New York for a deciding game five. Taking the mound for Detroit was Jeremy Bonderman, who had last been seen blowing a six-run lead to the lowly Royals in a game that the Tigers needed to clinch the division. So what does he do? Pitch the game of his life, limiting the Yankees to one run through eight plus innings. The Tigers battered Yankee starter Jaret Wright, and so from the early innings on it was a matter of counting down the outs. The final: Tigers 8, Yankees 3, series over.

If that wasn't enough, I was thrilled to watch the way the players celebrated with the fans, high-fiving the front-row crowd, spraying them with bubbly. Rogers even poured champagne on a policeman (but made sure to get his permission first). For an old Michigan guy such as myself, it was tear-jerking.

Living in the New York metropolitan era, I got the spin from the Yankee point of view, which gave little respect for the Tigers and instead concentrated on whether Torre or A-Rod must go. I lapped it up in a delicious buffet of schadenfreude. Listening to Yankee fans suffer through a loss is almost as good as watching the Tigers win.

As of today, the Tigers have not suffered a let down, taking the first two from the Oakland As. The As are not a team worthy of hate, so there isn't the same kind of intense pressure while watching the games. Of course, I still want the Tigers to keep winning, but even if this is as far as they go, the taming of the Yankees will sustain me through the long, cold winter.