DETROIT – By the time the last night’s Yankees-Tigers game started, Friday had only 54 minutes remaining thanks to a rain delay of four-plus hours. When it ended, the scoreboard clock read: 3:30 a.m. Saturday.
Looking for somebody to blame for the ludicrous delay that was followed by a longer game? Try MLB.
According to a Tigers source, MLB has instructed umpiring crews to do everything possible to get games in so that day/night doubleheaders can be avoided down the stretch.
That’s why the umps decided to wait so long.
In between the tardy start and the early-morning finish, the teams played a game that was sluggish and exciting and needed 4 hours, 24 minutes to complete.
Only because the Tigers won 9-6 in 11 innings in front of a Comerica Park crowd announced at 44,163, did they feel it was worth the wait.
Delayed at the start for 4:01 due to heavy rains, the first pitch wasn’t thrown until 11:06 p.m. for a scheduled 7:05 start.
The loss, coupled with the Red Sox taking two from the White Sox, dropped the Yankees 6 ½ games back of the AL East leaders. The Yankees also lost ground to the Mariners in the wild-card race. Seattle beat Texas and leads the Yankees by three lengths.
Sean Henn, the seventh Yankees’ pitcher, absorbed the loss. He gave up a two-out single to Sean Casey in the 11th, and Magglio Ordonez, who started the game leading the AL in hitting with a .353 average, blooped his fourth hit, a single to right.
Casey made third on the hit, and Carlos Guillen followed with a game-winning, three-run homer to left on a 1-2 pitch.
After using Edwar Ramirez, Joba Chamberlain, Kyle Farnsworth and Luis Vizcaino, Yankee manager Joe Torre turned to Mariano Rivera in the 10th. Rivera gave up a leadoff double to Ordonez, who went to third on Guillen’s grounder to the right side.
With the infield in, Pudge Rodriguez and Ryan Raburn were walked intentionally to set up a force at the plate.
The infield remained in and the outfielders moved toward the plate as Brandon Inge stepped into the box. Rivera and the rest of the Yankees held their breath as Inge’s liner was snagged out of the air by first baseman Andy Phillips.
Then, with the infield back, Rivera went to work on 20-year-old Cameron Maybin and immediately got ahead, 0-2, missed wide and left the bases loaded by fanning Maybin with a 94 mph fastball.
Starters Roger Clemens and Andrew Miller, who won the Roger Clemens Award as the nation’s top college pitcher in 2006, didn’t figure in the decision. In his first start since coming off the DL due to a hamstring problem, the left-handed Miller gave up six runs and seven hits in 4 innings.
Clemens, who made his major-league debut more than a year before Miller was born on May 21, 1985, went five innings, gave up six runs and six hits.
Knowing that he had just one inning from Chamberlain, Torre shot the bullet in the seventh when the Tigers had Placido Polanco, Marcus Thames and Ordonez ready to hit.
Chamberlain breezed through the second, third and fourth hitters with a filthy slider and a couple of fastballs that were clocked at 101 mph.
Alex Rodriguez clubbed a two-run homer, his 43rd blast of the season, in the third off Miller. Ordonez homered off Clemens in the first with Curtis Granderson on base and two outs.
Granderson had a double and two triples in his first three at-bats and singled with two outs in the ninth off Vizcaino.
Batting with Melky Cabrera on second and two outs in the ninth, Jorge Posada didn’t like plate umpire Bob Davidson’s call on a pitch that was down and away for the second strike. And when Davidson punched out Posada on the next pitch in the same spot, Posada had a quick word for Davidson and was ejected.
Robinson Cano’s leadoff single in the eighth against lefty Bobby Seay was followed by Phillips’ sacrifice bunt. Bobby Abreu, who didn’t start against the left-handed Miller but entered the game in right field in the seventh inning, watched third baseman Inge snag his liner out of the air for the second out. Seay left Cano at second by whiffing Johnny Damon on a 2-2 pitch.
Three Yankee runs in the sixth tied the score, 6-6, and chased Miller after 100 pitches. With Derek Jeter on second and Rodriguez on first and one out, Posada drilled a sinking liner to right that eluded a diving Ryan Ruban and went for a two-run triple. Hideki Matsui followed with a single to center that scored Posada to tie it.