The end came in a noisy rush, just before eight o’clock. They said Yankee Stadium was about 3,000 folks shy of a sellout, but by the end you couldn’t tell that. The people who came, they hitched their voice boxes to a horse with a rubber arm named CC Sabathia, watched him induce one final weak ground ball.
And with that it was over, a 3-1 win, a 3-2 victory in this ALDS. With that, the Orioles were vanquished at last, the Yankees moving on to bigger and better goals. On to the ALCS. On to the Detroit Tigers.
So there will be more baseball at Yankee Stadium Saturday night, and Sunday. There will at least another week of summer even as the weather takes a decided turn toward autumn. All summer, into September, on into October the Orioles were worthy opponents who made the Yankees step forward and play their very best at the most important time of the calendar.
Will that help them now, as they wait for the Tigers to arrive, as they seek a modicum of revenge over the team that ended their 2011 season? Maybe, maybe not. The thing about the playoffs is, they never ask you to defend yourself once you’ve advanced. They never ask for explanation, or explication.
They just tell you where to show up, and when.
So the Yankees will show up Saturday night at the Stadium, and they will throw Andy Pettitte at the Tigers, who made it through their own five-game gauntlet against the Athletics, the other American League Cinderella. They will show up and will again be faced with a slew of pertinent questions, partly because the Yankees, partly because they are the Yankees with baggage.
And the Yankees with baggage are infinitely interesting.
This starts with Alex Rodriguez, of course, benched against the Orioles in Game 5 because a right-hander, Jason Hammel, was pitching, and those questions will not cease and desist because the Tigers only have right-handed starting pitching. Surely he will be welcomed back to the batting order but what version will we see?
Curtis Granderson, another of the Yankees feeling heat for looking enfeebled during this series, may have cleared up the dust gathering around his locker thanks to a seventh-inning home run, but Nick Swisher remains in what feels like an 0-for-life postseason funk. And it was minimized because the Yankees won the series, but there is also the matter of Robinson Cano, crazy-hot heading into the series who has had trouble buying a line drive lately.
Plenty of questions. Plenty of intrigue.
But the Yankees who celebrated this ALDS victory did so with a gusto that fairly shouted to the world how hard the struggle has been with the Orioles, how difficult the path to the division title and this division series really was. And the Yankees needed to play a different brand of ball to get that done last night.
They needed Mark Teixeira, who as recently as two weeks ago could barely walk on his battered calf, to notice Orioles first baseman Mark Reynolds playing behind him after reaching on a single in the fifth, inspiring him to steal the first base of his postseason life. They needed Ichiro Suzuki to find the wall in right, driving in Derek Jeter with a second run an inning later.
Then, as an added heart-thumping bonus, they needed CC Sabathia to explore every inch of his heart, every molecule of his will, in escaping an eighth-inning jam. The Orioles already had a run in, they’d loaded the bases and they had the top of the order coming up. Sabathia stiffened. He struck out Nate McLouth — a Yankees’ nemesis all series — and then induced J.J. Hardy to bounce softly to the left side of the infield.
Jeter, like Teixeira, has struggled with foot pain, but he moved like a 22-year-old to gobble this one up, made a perfect throw, and the last bit of Baltimore life was extinguished, for good. The Yankees had survived. And advanced. More baseball for New York. See you in the Bronx on Saturday.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com