They take
away home runs, as Coco Crisp did in the second inning when he sprinted to his
left, leapt to the top of the wall near the 390-foot mark in center and pulled
back a certain homer from Prince Fielder.
They hit
home runs, as Seth Smith did in the fifth inning when he belted a moon shot to
dead-center off Anibal Sanchez.
They dive
to take away doubles, as leftfielder Yoenis Cespedes did in the seventh inning
-- robbing Fielder of a hit. They turn double plays, they pump their fists, and
they pitch. Brett Anderson, a gifted left-hander who missed most of the year
recovering from Tommy John surgery, showed dominant form in six games down the
stretch when he returned, strained his abdominal muscle at the end of the
season and came back Tuesday night at O.co Coliseum to handcuff the Tigers.
Anderson,
who is the veteran of the A's staff at just 24, struck out the first two
batters of the game, Austin Jackson and Omar Infante, and got Miguel Cabrera to
groundout to second base. It took about five minutes, which was more than
enough time for the green-clad, yellow-towel waving crowd to fill the
cavernous, concrete-lined, '70s era stadium with ear-splitting noise.
For the
last two days several A's players -- along with A's manager Bob Melvin --
talked about the effect this crowd has on his team. It happened again Tuesday
night as Oakland rode all that energy to a 2-0 victory over the Tigers and got
back into the American League Division Series — Detroit leads, two games to
one.
Melvin and
his players spent so much time the past two days talking about the resiliency
of this group that you figured if nothing else, they actually believed it.
Clearly, the crowd did. And does, and will even more tonight during Game 4.
The
throaty effort didn’t go unnoticed by the Tigers.
Loudest
crowd of the year? Anibal Sanchez was asked.
“Definitely,” said the Tigers’ starter, whose first-inning control
problems exacerbated the noise.
He
described it as fun, even if he could barely hear Gerald Laird when the catcher
came out to the mound in the first to help calm him down.
“We knew this was going to be tough,” Laird said.
It was
enough to make you wonder what might have been had the Tigers been forced to
begin the series in Oakland. Every strike by a Tiger elicited a roar — and
cowbells and drums and horns — from the fans, most of whom spent most of the
night on their feet. A Tigers out was reason to cheer even louder.
Just four
months ago the Tigers played at Oakland in front of a crowds smaller than
10,000. That might as well have been a different season. Nearly 38,000 jammed
the O.co Coliseum, turning the joint into one of the most uniquely hostile
parks in baseball.
The
Athletics eat it up — as they did when they overcame a five-game deficit to the
Texas Rangers with nine games left in the season, as they did when they spotted
those same Rangers a 5-1 lead in the final game of the season before dropping a
12-run bomb to flatten them and complete an improbable run to the West Division
title.
That run
stalled in Detroit last weekend. But this young and relentless team hit its
stride again Tuesday on a clear night with a light breeze, riding the wave of a
constant roar. They stole home runs. They hit home runs. They threw strikes.
And they
won, shaking off a dispiriting loss two days earlier, the kind of gut-check
they have exhibited the last couple of months.
Now it’s
the Tigers’ turn to respond.
The din
isn’t going away anytime soon.
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