DETROIT – Outside, there were 42,477 people refusing to budge, refusing to exit, leave their seats, leave the night behind. They knew how rare this moment was.
They knew the Yankees have been playing postseason baseball since 1921, and only twice before had lost 4-0 in a seven-game series: to the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, the Big Red Machine, one of the great hitting teams ever assembled; and to the 1963 Dodgers of Koufax and Drysdale and Podres, who allowed only four runs in four games.
The ’12 Tigers? Two weeks ago they were nobody’s idea of a juggernaut, an 88-win team shadowed by chronic underachievement. Yet on this night, they’d impersonated a blend of both those celebrated powerhouses, clobbering four home runs, winning 8-1, closing out an American League Championship Series in which they’d outscored the Yankees 19-6.
“Disappointing,” CC Sabathia called it, before upgrading to a different adjective: “Embarrassing.”
In January, maybe these Yankees will appreciate the 95 victories they collected from April through October, the splendid way they outsprinted the Orioles to the division title. Maybe by then the sour memory of this deeply dysfunctional ALCS will subside. All they need to do is ask one of the late-arrivals, Ichiro Suzuki, about what life is like for most of the major leagues.
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“It was an honor to be able to return to the playoffs and experience this again,” said Ichiro, who tasted the postseason as a rookie in 2001 with the 116-win Mariners and never got back. He played well in his second tour of October, however brief it turned out. “This is what I’ve dreamed of for years as a player and I’m grateful to have this chance.”
But these are the Yankees, who insist year after year that they expect greatness, demand it, that the corporate mission is parade-or-bust, and who do make it a perennial habit to qualify for October. But 11 times across the past 12 years they have ended their seasons like this one: slumped in quiet rooms, the din of someone else’s celebration bleeding though the walls.
“It’s a bitter feeling,” Mark Teixiera said, “because it doesn’t feel like we ever gave ourselves a chance to compete in this series.”
There’s a reason it didn’t feel that way: because for most of it, they were non-competitive. They were non-combative. They spent the regular season feasting on every pedestrian pitcher the American League had to offer, bashed 245 home runs, scored 805 times, once went 41 straight games – a quarter and change of the season – scoring three or more runs.
Then spent nine postseason games utterly lost offensively.
“You’re crushed,” Alex Rodriguez said. “You work eight months to play in these games and then you perform the way we did.”
Rodriguez finished off his lurid postseason by flying out in a pinch-hitting appearance in the sixth, the Yankees’ final breath of the year (two on, two outs, down five), then grounded out to shortstop in the ninth; somehow, he was spared the final out of the season for a third year in a row, missing by one batter.
“I’ve got to look in a mirror,” A-Rod said.
He wasn’t good by any measure (1-for-9 in the series, 3-for-25 in the playoffs), but even if he was wrongly scapegoated as the worst culprit, he wasn’t. Robinson Cano finished a staggering 3-for-40. Curtis Granderson struck out 16 times in 30 October at-bats. When Nick Swisher drove in the lone Yankees run in the sixth, it pushed his postseason average with runners in scoring position to a princely .057.
Up and down the lineup, everywhere in the room, were culprits. Even Sabathia, so often a horse, so reliable, ran out of magic yesterday, knocked out of the box in the fourth after allowing six runs – which, for these Yankees, might well have been 60.
“We had a lot of guys struggle mightily,” said Joe Girardi, who managed this series with a heavy heart and a heavy hand, burying his father on the offday, benching A-Rod – and others – once the series arrived in Detroit. “Not just a little bit. A lot.”
So they dressed in quiet, listening to the muffled roars, coming to terms with their ignominious place in franchise history, soon to scatter.
“It’s tough to leave,” Swisher said.
Imagine how hard it would be if they’d shown up in the first place.