Of course there was a bird in the infield. Of course there was. For a month the Orioles have been pursuing the Yankees, the Birds chasing the Bombers, so it seemed only right the table should turn here, top of the 12th inning, the man from the grounds crew trying to catch the frisky visitor with a bucket.
Two thousand miles away, the Birds — capital B — already had done their job, somehow won a game in which they collected two hits and struck out 15 times; just another day at the office for Buck Showalter’s merry band. They were going to force the Yankees to play a 162nd game no matter how things turned out in The Bronx.
“All month,” Mark Teixeira would say. “All month, every day, we’ve been pushing them and they’ve been pushing us.”
IBANEZ’ HEROICS LEAVE YANKEES IN SPOT TO TAKE EAST TONIGHT
“We fight together,” Raul Ibanez would add.
It was Ibanez who had kept everyone on the field this long, four hours and change already, when he smashed a 1-and-2 Andrew Bailey pitch over the right-field wall an hour earlier, bottom of the ninth, tying the game at 3-3. You have to believe the joyful din crafted by the remnants of 41,564 could be heard, loud and clear, in the visitors’ clubhouse at Tropicana Field.
And, later, back at the team hotel.
The man with the bucket cleared the bird from the bases and a moment later Derek Lowe did the same with the Red Sox, inducing a 6-4-3 double play. Soon enough, Ibanez was clearing everyone else from the yard, sneaking a grounder through the hole, scoring Francisco Cervelli, clinching a 4-3 win and no worse than a tie for the AL East crown.
“He stays ready,” Joe Girardi would say of Ibanez. “He works.”
In many ways Ibanez is a perfect mascot for who the Yankees are and what they have been all across this most fascinating of seasons. There are times when he has looked so old, you had to double check to make sure he didn’t break in with Wee Willie Keeler, the same way the Yankees, at times, can look a few days past their expiration date.
Still, once the Orioles engaged them, the Yankees have been brilliant: three straight wins, 13 out of 17, 16 out of 22, 18 out of 26. The Orioles still haven’t passed them, and won’t unless they can beat the Rays in St. Petersburg tonight and Daisuke Matsuzaka somehow rediscovers his 2008 right arm, and then they beat the Yankees at Camden Yards tomorrow.
Ibanez? Frayed by too many at-bats at a time in his career when he straddles the line of diminishing returns, it wasn’t all that long ago that he and Andruw Jones seemed like mirror images of each other, which is to say just to the left of finished.
But then there were the two homers against Oakland Sept. 22, the second of which capped a four-run rally in the 13th inning. And then there was this, with the city of Baltimore and most of the Yankee-despising baseball world ready to pounce, eager to celebrate one more tie atop the AL East. A homer in the ninth. A walk-off single in the 12th.
Ibanez suddenly looking a decade younger than 40.
Funny what a pennant race can do for you. It’s like Baseball Botox.
“An amazing feeling,” he said.
An amazing autumn already, the Yankees and the Orioles reminding us that it isn’t just October where wonderful baseball stories are told, that sometimes September can be just as enjoyable, just as anxious, just as stuffed with drama and heroics and unbeatable, unforgettable narrative. The Orioles don’t go away. But, then, neither do the Yankees.
The Orioles are the home office for pixie dust; the Yankees the worldwide headquarters for expectation and achievement on a baseball diamond. The two of them separated, again, by only a game entering Game No. 162. The Orioles hoping for a play-in game before the play-in game, one game at Camden tomorrow. The Yankees looking to tie a bow on it. One more day, with everything on the table, with everything in play.
The bird could be shooed away with a bucket. The Birds — capital B — won’t be exterminated so easily.
But, then, neither will the Yankees.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com