They had several opportunities against Tigers’ starting pitcher Doug Fister but could cash in on none of them. Late-game heroics or not, the Yankees’ offense is a mess right now. The whole game, pre-Ibanez, was a bit of an ugly slog. Two consecutive non-sellouts in the playoffs is not the best look.
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(The sort of thing that might happen when you don’t have any days off between your ALDS clinching game and ALCS game one.) Yahoo’s Jeff Passan found out that the Yankees were moving fans down from the upper levels to make the place look more full on television. (They still came, of course.) Worst of all, the Yankees had the look and feel of a team that was, well, a little hungover. The stadium was half full during the national anthem, and after it filled up, the fans were rather sedate and out of it all evening even the A-Rod boos felt half-hearted and obligatory. Much of that was because of a four-run deficit - the way the Yankees had been hitting all night, it looked insurmountable - but there were attendance problems from the beginning. It is worth repeating that when Ibanez hit his homer, the Yankee Stadium crowd was awfully thin. (The score is 11-9.) Of course, Ibanez is responsible for four of those eleven runs himself, all of which either tied the game or won it. The Yankees seem to have some sort of strange disease in which their bats only work when the game is almost over: as the Detroit Free-Press pointed out, they have now scored more runs this postseason in the ninth inning or later than they have in the first eight innings combined. That was the most costly heroic homer in Yankees history. It was also indicative of a larger problem. Afterwards, it was so quiet that the loudest sound was the blimp engine high above. The injury immediately turned Yankee Stadium into a frozen mortuary. Jeter had to be carried off the field, and the panic and pain on his face were terrifying. After the game, manager Joe Girardi revealed that Jeter fractured his left ankle: He’s done for the year. In that inning, Jhonny Peralta hit a hard groundball up the middle - at this point the Tigers had already taken the lead - and Derek Jeter lunged to his left, grabbed the ball and … something gave. The Tigers ended up scoring two runs in the top of the 12th to secure a 6-4 victory, but the loss, frankly, is the least of the Yankees disasters. It was amazing and out-of-control.Īnd, as it turned out, it was the worst thing that could have possibly happened. It brought the Yankees all the way back from a 4-0 ninth inning deficit.
About one-third of Yankee Stadium was empty, but the place roared regardless, and Ibanez was gonna be a part of Yankees history forever. Raul Ibanez did the impossible again tonight/this morning, blasting a jaw-dropping two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth with two outs to tie the Detroit Tigers 4-4 in the first game of the American League Championship Series.
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