New York – Yankee Stadium measures those who enter in contrasts. Every player is either a legend or a popular farm animal. Great or goat. Black and white – just like the Yankees’ logo.
So when the No. 4 train pulled away with the angry fans, strangely, it all made sense. The sport’s oldest bully was slain by two of the game’s youngest stars, as Detroit beat New York 4-3 to even their AL division series.
If Thursday is to be trusted, to beat the Yankees, you need heat and the ignorance of youth. Justin Verlander, 23, and Joel Zumaya, 21, silenced a New York lineup that only two days earlier was considered among the greatest ever, drawing comparisons to Murderers’ Row.
This wasn’t about the past, this was about the future, about a Tigers team that will be embraced with open arms today at Comerica Park, where the franchise hosts its first playoff game since 1987.
“It’s going to be crazy,” Tigers closer Todd Jones said. “This was our whole season. This is a win the organization, the fans, really everybody needed.”
It’s unlikely nature made it easier to savor. Thumped in the series opener and treated shabbily during Wednesday’s rain delay, the Tigers were cast as the Generals to the Yankees’ Globetrotters since arriving in town.
The Tigers lost 31 of their final 50 games, making it easy to forget that they finished with 95 wins, with nearly as many as home runs as the Yankees and a better ERA.
“That’s why I don’t have sympathy for them,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. “Their pitchers had the league’s best (numbers).”
Verlander and Zumaya were central figures in those statistics. On Thursday, the pair turned Yankee Stadium into their personal playground. Verlander gear-grinded through 5 1/3 innings, his 99-mph fastball and wicked slider extracting him from trouble.
In the first inning, the Yankees loaded the bases without scoring, the inning framed by Verlander’s strikeouts of Gary Sheffield and Alex Rodriguez.
“To not score there was really disappointing,” said Sheffield, whose crew tagged Verlander for just three runs. “You never want that to happen.”
Those ghosts of failure would eventually haunt them even after Johnny Damon broke open a scoreless game in the fourth inning with a three-run, upper-deck home run. As Detroit pecked away and strung together productive at-bats, the lead didn’t seem safe. In the seventh, Curtis Granderson pushed the Tigers ahead 4-3, tripling on Mike Mussina’s 89-mph fastball that was ripped into the left-field gap.
“I just wasn’t in good counts all day,” Mussina said.
The Tigers’ confidence all season has rested with their closing argument. They feel if they can turn the game over to their bullpen, they’ll win. Zumaya overmatched the Yankees with his 100-mph-plus fastball, recording three strikeouts with straight Tabasco sauce.
“There’s not many teams where a starter (throwing 99 mph) gives the ball to a setup man throwing 102,” Verlander said. “I guess I am slow.”
Todd Jones, cut by the Rockies and Devil Rays in recent years, trotted into the ninth as a change of pace. He doesn’t require an ID to drink and soft-tosses at 94 mph. The Yankees, after a leadoff single by Hideki Matsui, went down in order. And suddenly the Tigers no longer seemed out of place.
“The Yankees’ lineup is so ferocious. If Bob Sheppard would have announced Reggie Jackson, it would fit right in,” Jones said. “But that’s great for us relievers. You just go right after guys with no fear.
“We aren’t going to back down.”
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-954-1301 or trenck@denverpost.com.
