singled home the winning run with one out in the 12th inning and the
Minnesota Twins rallied past Detroit 6-5 in the AL Central tiebreaker
Tuesday night, completing a colossal collapse for the Tigers.
The Tigers became the first team in
major league history to blow a three-game lead with four games left.
The Twins overcame a seven-game gap in the final month, went 17-4 to
pull even on the final weekend and won their fifth division title in
eight years.
Baseball's only real pennant race
this season needed an extra game, and extra innings to finish off a
thriller that got better with every pitch.
Both team had their chances to end it
earlier, and each club scored in the 10th. Casilla was thrown out at
the plate to end that inning by left fielder Ryan Raburn after tagging
up at third.
Detroit thought it had taken the lead
in the 12th. But with the bases loaded, plate umpire Randy Marsh ruled
that Brandon Inge was not hit by a pitch by Bobby Keppel. The replay
appeared to show the pitch grazing Inge's billowing uniform.
As Carlos Gomez streaked home from
second with the winning run — well ahead of a late throw from right
field — Homer Hankies spiraled around the Metrodome. The Twins
celebrated and also started to scramble — they had 21 hours to get
ready for Game 1 of the AL playoffs at Yankee Stadium against New York
ace CC Sabathia.
"This is the most unbelievable game I've ever played or seen," Twins shortstop Orlando Cabrera said.
It was the first AL tiebreaker to go
to extra innings, and made up for Minnesota's disappointment last
October when it lost 1-0 in Chicago to the White Sox in an AL Central
tiebreaker.
Had the Twins lost, it would've been
the final baseball game at the Metrodome. Instead, the Twins get the
Yankees — New York was 7-0 against Minnesota this season.
"We're not going to have to face
questions like 'Can you beat them?' like we've had to answer during the
course of the year," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "Once the
playoffs start though, it's a new series and we know the importance of
each game. You can pretty much throw everything else out the window."
A day after Brett Favre and the
Minnesota Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers at the Dome — Monday
Night Football is what delayed this tiebreaker for a day — the Twins
pulled off a Tuesday Night Thriller.
Tigers reliever Fernando Rodney
(2-5) worked his longest appearance of the season, getting the last two
outs of the ninth. He gave up a single to Gomez to start the 12th, and
the speedy center fielder — who came in for defense late in the game —
moved up on a groundout. He came racing around for the winning run when
Casilla's single made it through the right side of the infield.
The Twins rushed out of the dugout
in celebration even before Gomez reached the plate. Their comeback from
a seven-game gap with 20 to play was complete.
Joe Mauer, who heard thunderous
"M-V-P!" chants from the largest regular-season baseball crowd in
Metrodome history throughout the game, led his team on a sprint around
the warning track as they slapped hands with fans in the first rows.
The Twins got nipped by the White
Sox in Game 163 last year, but this struggle for the division on the
last possible day was even more dramatic with all kinds of chances for
either team to take it.
There will be no rest for the
winners, though: The Yankees predictably picked Wednesday to start
their series, with Game 2 scheduled for Friday. Both managers played
down the potential disadvantage before the game, but whichever team
emerged from this was going to be drained. Ron Gardenhire and Jim
Leyland made so many moves for defense and relief that the lineups and
pitching staffs were depleted by the end.
Keppel, Minnesota's eighth pitcher,
loaded the bases with one out in the 12th. His first pitch to Inge
appeared to brush his jersey, but it was simply called a ball by Marsh.
Inge seemed ready to take his base and Leyland came out to discuss the
call with Marsh.
Second baseman Nick Punto then
scooped Inge's grounder and fired home in time to get the runner on the
force, and Keppel struck out Gerald Laird to squelch that rally.
Twins closer Joe Nathan found
trouble in the ninth when consecutive singles put runners at the
corners, but he got a strikeout and a line-drive double play to end
that threat. The four-time All-Star gave two huge pumps of his right
arm as he spun to thank his defense and run to the dugout, preserving
the tie.
Inge's two-out double in the 10th
gave the Tigers a 5-4 lead, but Michael Cuddyer sliced a triple past
Raburn in left and scored on Matt Tolbert's bouncing single through the
middle in the bottom of the inning.
On the potential winning sacrifice
fly, though, Casilla strayed a bit too far from third and was thrown
out by Raburn trying to score to end the inning. The split-second
Casilla needed to retouch the base might have cost him the run.
He more than made up for that mistake later.
According to sports researcher STATS
LLC, only three teams since 1901 have blown a three-game lead in the
standings with four games left. The Houston Astros lost three straight
games to Los Angeles in 1980, but they recovered to defeat the Dodgers
in a tiebreaker game for the NL West. The Milwaukee Brewers lost three
in a row to Baltimore in 1982 to force a tie, but they beat the Orioles
in the final regular season game to win the AL East.
After splitting four in Detroit last
week — a loss in the series finale Thursday would've wrapped up the
division for the Tigers — the Twins came home for the final scheduled
series in the bubble needing a sweep of the Kansas City Royals and did
just that.
So with 54,088 fans in attendance,
the place was erupting with noise and excitement. The chants for Mauer,
who wrapped up his third batting title, were deafening. Leyland even
told his players before the game to think of the loudest experience of
their life and multiply it by four to anticipate the decibel level for
this game. Dome ball came in handy again, on a day when the city was
drenched by cold rain.
Rookie starter Rick Porcello pitched
well beyond his 20 years for the Tigers, and Miguel Cabrera made up for
a miserable weekend — on and off the field — with a two-run homer
against Scott Baker in the third inning that made it 3-0. The crowd
chanted "al-co-ho-lic" right before Cabrera went deep, a rude reference
to the first baseman's fight with his wife after he came home late and
drunk.
The Twins crept back, though, and
Orlando Cabrera's two-run homer in the seventh gave them a brief lead
that Magglio Ordonez ended with his leadoff homer in the eighth.
Notes
This was the ninth tiebreaker
game in baseball history, and the third straight year with a 163rd
game. Only two of them went to extra innings. … Seven members of the
Metrodome's cleaning and maintenance crews were honored on the mound
before the game for the work of those groups in converting the field
back and forth from baseball to football in light of Monday's
Packers-Vikings game.