By JOEL SHERMAN
DETROIT â Joe Torre slumped in a chair, the color drained from his face and the spirit mostly gone from his body.
This scene was familiar.
Yankee players dressed grimly, heads down and bodies sagging in an atmosphere so quiet you could hear a season drop.
This scene, too, was familiar.
If you felt you had witnessed this all before, you had. For the Yankees, it was deja re-vu of the most miserable kind. Forty-five weeks earlier, in the same visiting clubhouse at Comerica Park, Torre had slumped, players had sagged and the Yankee season had stopped.
There was not the same finality on this occasion, but considering the time of the morning and the time of year, the expression of exhaustion and despondency that pervaded the Yankee clubhouse was understandable. In their first game back at Comerica since their Game 4 Division Series ouster last year, the Yankees suffered another one of those losses that made you wonder if these Yankees were going to have another season end well short of expectations, in this case even short of October.
The Yankees lost 9-6 in 11 innings to the Tigers in a game tinged with both the postseason and the bizarre. Due to rain and tornado fears, it started four hours and one minute late and ended 90 minutes after last call in Michigan. This dramatic, traumatic affair concluded when Carlos Guillen hit a two-out, three-run homer off Sean Henn, touching home plate at 3:30 a.m.
âIt is tough to take a loss at three-something in the morning,â Jorge Posada said.
Tougher still when you take the field at 11:06 p.m. already knowing the Red Sox have swept a doubleheader and the Mariners are on the brink of winning. Boston (vs. the White Sox) and Seattle (vs. the Rangers) are playing last-place teams this weekend, so that merely elevated the Yanksâ need to avoid a slowdown in Motown.
But for the second time on this trip, the Yankeesâ lost a series-opening gut-wrencher in extra innings with Henn on the mound. But while Sean of the Dead removed the life from the Yankees at an hour more comfortable for zombies than baseball, the real culprits were Roger Clemens (six runs in five innings) and an offense that went lifeless after 1 a.m., scoring nothing in 6 2/3 innings against the bullpen quintet of Tim Byrdak, Jason Grilli, Bobby Seay, Fernando Rodney and Chad Durbin.
Those who lingered (and a surprising throng did) saw an entertaining game that finished eight hours, 25 minutes after the first pitch had been scheduled. Placido Polancoâs second base record 147-game errorless streak ended (at least until the official scorer reversed his decision yesterday) and Ivan Rodriguez walked for the first time in 121 plate appearances (since July 5), which was part of Clemensâ undoing. The main AL MVP candidates, Magglio Ordonez and Alex Rodriguez, each hit a two-run homer, but a player who should draw top-10 consideration, Detroit center fielder, Curtis Granderson dominated the game with four hits, including two triples. He has 21 three-baggers this year, the first Tiger to reach 20 since a fella named Ty Cobb in 1917.
The game lasted so long that it felt as if it had started with Cobb in the lineup. And that is what will linger most: The late start, the late ending and the possibility it is getting too late for the Yankees. They went hitless in their final nine at-bats with men on base to fall three games behind the Mariners for the wild card and 6 1-2 in back of Boston.
On another rainy day in Detroit (the forecast was one of the reasons the umpires/MLB eschewed a doubleheader and started so late Friday), the Yanks returned today hoping to shake off exhaustion and exasperation. As opposed to how matters ended at Comerica last year, they had a chance still to save a season.
But they had definitely made matters tougher Friday night into Saturday morning, losing at an hour more associated with infomercials than baseball, losing in a way that left them looking as glassy-eyed and dismayed as they had 45 weeks earlier at Comerica.