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 Tiger in the Tank

                                                          Mike DiPatri      10/07/06

So this is how it feels to be a Braves fan.  Once again, we Yankees fans saw our team bulldoze its way into the postseason just to see our quest come to a sputtering end.  For the second year in a row, the Yankees didn't even make it out of the ALDS. 

This was supposed to be the year.  Everybody was picking the Yankees to win the Series.  The wounded Tigers let everybody know that was a little premature.  The Tigers limped into the playoffs after being swept by the Royals in the last series of the regular season.  The Yankees should have killed them in the ALDS, but it did not happen.  After winning game one in New York, the Yankees threw their "give a darn" right into the Hudson River.  From game two on, with the exception of Damon's home run, the Tigers pitchers shut them down.  In fact, though, a high school pitcher could have done that.   All those big time hitters in the Yankees line-up may as well have left their bats in the dug out.  They didn't use them.  Their offensive output in game four was so impotent that twenty-three year-old Jeremy Bonderman carried a perfect game through the fifth inning.  True, there were a few bad calls that went against the Yankees and the plate ump did give Bonderman a pretty big strike zone, but we?re not Red Sox fans.  We don?t deal in excuses.  There is no way to excuse the way this ALDS went.  The Yankees plumb lost.  The way they played, any minor league team could have beaten them. 

Once again, the Tigers proved that payroll does not win games.  Any time we hear the ?smart people? on TV talk about the Yankees, we hear them refer to the Yankees in terms of payroll.  Regardless of payroll, the team?s players have to play.  Every team has a roster full of big leaguers.  The Diamondbacks proved in 2001 and the Marlins again in 2003 that if a team is good enough to get to postseason play, it?s good enough to win.  This year the Tigers put an exclamation point on that fact.

Yankees fans now know how Braves fans felt after watching their team cruise into the postseason every year just to come out empty.  This is the most humbling feeling.  The team absolutely embarrassed itself and its fans.  We will continue to be fans; we do remember the 1980's but no longer will we enter the postseason with the same bravado with which we had this year.  We're pulling for you now Tigers.  Now finish it up.  After all, if you win, at least it took the champs to beat us!