BLAST IT! As Tigers closer Jose Valverde cowers on the mound, Raul Ibanez watches yet another game-turning home run fly into the Yankee Stadium night in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the ALCS. Ibanez’s blast forced extra-innings, but the Yankees still lost, 6-4 (Neil Miller)
Think about the 74 minutes between Everest and hell for the Yankees. Between when Raul Ibanez’s drive went up at 11:34 p.m. last night and Derek Jeter went down at 12:48 a.m. today.
There was the “can’t-believe-it” moment when Ibanez homers impossibly yet again in the ninth and it felt as if the Yankees’ season had been saved. And the “can’t-believe-it” moment when Jeter was unable to rise in the 12th and it felt as if the Yankees’ season is lost.
Three innings. Seventy-four minutes. That is all that separated heart-racing drama from heart-breaking trauma for the Yankees. This was not an elimination game. This was not the four losses in October 2004 when the Red Sox made three-games-to-none and The Curse go away. Yet, Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS felt like the worst loss of this era for the Yankees.
Because they failed to translate the magic and majesty of Ibanez delivering another historic blow into a victory, and stuck around long enough — to the 12th inning — to lose a game 6-4 to the Tigers and lose their captain until spring training.
“It is crushing, no doubt about it,” reliever Derek Lowe said in a clubhouse transformed from champagne to extreme pain in just over 24 hours. “We went from the highest of highs and then we lost this game and the heart and soul of our team. Hopefully, we can rally around it. But this is going to be hard to overcome.”
Jeter incurred a fractured left ankle fielding a Jhonny Peralta grounder to his left. The Tigers already had taken a 5-4 lead. The mood inside Yankee Stadium already was frustrated, angry. Now it became solemn. Jeter is renowned for many things, but is as respected and famous as anything for playing through injuries and refusing to ever discuss them or alibi away any performance based on them.
So that is why it was such a shock when he was unable to lift his body off the infield dirt and then could not put weight on his left ankle as he was carried off the field. His season was over, and perhaps so was the Yankees’ season.
After all, Jeter was one of the few Yankees hitting well this postseason, as the foursome of Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher are just destroying the offense. Now, he is gone. In addition, the Yankees played a third bullpen-deteriorating, extra-inning game in four days and have Hiroki Kuroda in a late-afternoon Game 2 today working on short rest for the first time in his career. Plus, a fully rested Justin Verlander awaits in Game 3, back in Detroit, against Phil Hughes.
All of this was going to be a problem if the Yankees won Game 1. Now they have to face all of it down 0-1 and down No. 2.
“I have never seen a high-to-low like this in my life,” Lowe said. “We dramatically are back in the game and then Derek goes down and it is just crushing.”
The Yankees had trailed 4-0 going to the ninth. They had failed to score in three bases-loaded situations. But Tigers manager Jim Leyland brought in shot closer Jose Valverde and Ichiro Suzuki hit a two-run homer. A pulse. Mark Teixeira walked with two outs and here came Ibanez.
Everyone was pretty much thinking the same stuff: He was the perfect guy for the moment, but — really — he couldn’t do it again. Maybe in a movie of the week. Not in real life. Except Ibanez has pretty much become a supernatural player in the last month.
Ibanez is as humble as an athlete can be, an anti-Reggie Jackson. Yet, he has become Mr. October all the same. He launched an 0-1 Valverde splitter to deep right. Two outs, one on, down two runs. Valverde went into a squat of misery at 11:34. Yankees jumped to the top step of the dugout. Fans leaped and held their breath at the same time, mentally willing the high drive deep enough that it would reach the right-field porch.
Of course it did. The idea that the Yankees would lose this game at that moment seemed as unlikely Raul Ibanez as Mr. October.
Ibanez was doing the saver/savior thing in place of one familiar hero named Mariano Rivera. But now Jeter is gone.
Even Ibanez probably doesn’t have enough magic to cover for that.