DETROIT — Justin Verlander is the star hedge fund manager who has a stunning Fifth Avenue apartment and beautiful house right on the water in Amagansett, but could really use a country cottage, too.
The Yankees are the block of land he needs to acquire.
“Obviously that’s a dream of mine, to help pitch my team to a World Series championship,” the Tigers’ ace and American League Championship Game 3 starter said yesterday in a conference call. “And that’s a big reason why I admire those guys. You talk about Roger [Clemens] and Curt [Schilling], and obviously everybody knows what they did in the postseason.
“I want to be associated with those guys, a guy that stepped up in the postseason for my team.”
The reigning American League Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award winner, a strong candidate to repeat in the latter category, Verlander will try to push the Tigers to their first World Series title since 1984 and get his first ring.
By drawing the Yankees, he can carve out an ancillary niche: He can join guys like Schilling and Cliff Lee in The Bronx’s Pantheon of Feared and Loathed October Opposing Pitchers. With his Tigers up two games to none, the right-hander can all but end this round by pitching as well as he did in the AL Division Series against Oakland.
“It’s a fun challenge” Mark Teixeira said. “You might think we’re crazy to say that, but it is a fun challenge, because if you’re going to win a World Series, you’ve got to beat the best. And he’s the best right now.”
This will be Verlander’s fourth postseason start against the Yankees, and he hasn’t yet snapped off a masterpiece against them. He made his first career playoff start in 2006 ALDS Game 2 at old Yankee Stadium, and as he admits now, “it was kind of a surreal moment for me.” He allowed three runs in 5 1/3 innings before his manager Jim Leyland lifted him.
In last year’s ALDS, he saw his Game 1 outing cut short by rain after just one inning, and then he and his Yankees counterpart CC Sabathia engaged in a Game 3 rematch. Verlander prevailed, striking out 11 over eight innings, but the 5-4 final score displayed that neither ace dominated.
He seems more primed than ever for a sublime outing, after shutting out the A’s in the winner-take-all ALDS Game 5.
“Beyond his stuff, I think it is totally maturity level,” Leyland said. “I think he needed to learn to caress the pressure. That’s very important. He’s not as fidgety as he would have been a couple of years ago. [He’s] much more comfortable in that situation than he was.
“…I think a lot of it is how you handle this stuff mentally, to be honest with you, and I think he has grown leaps and bounds in that area.”
It’s probably time to mention that the Yankees aren’t quite in optimal shape as they take on this immense challenge. They have totaled four runs in the series, all scored in the ninth inning of Game 1. Their quartet of Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson, Alex Rodriguez and Nick Swisher has teamed to hit about as horribly as four such accomplished performers can.
Of the likely Yankees’ starting lineup, the best career regular-season numbers off Verlander belong to A-Rod (.267 batting average, .405 on-base percentage and .600 slugging percentage, with three homers in 30 at-bats) and Granderson (.200/.304/.550), and Joe Girardi has to consider starting Eric Chavez (.360/.360/.560) over Raul Ibanez (.103/.206/.138) — or Ibanez over Swisher (.180/.265/.393).
Or Girardi could listen to Verlander say yesterday, “I think when it comes to postseason baseball, you can kind of write off past history. You know, I think I am a different pitcher than I am in the regular season. And, you know, you start with a clean slate,” forget the numbers and truly go with his gut.
The Yankees did beat the Tigers twice in three Verlander starts this year, collecting seven earned runs in 20 1/3 innings.
“We know what he will do to us,” Teixeira said. “He will throw it 100 miles an hour, mix in a good curveball and a good changeup. And it sounds like a tough job, but we have risen to the occasion before and are hoping to do it again.”
It could happen. Right now, though, Teixeira and his teammates seem like the small-town folks up in the country, powerless, standing in the way of the guy who really wants that block of land.
kdavidoff@nypost.com