43
Tigers hang on for Tribe sweep
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Detroit Tigers’ Delmon Young, right, is congratulated by Ramon Santiago after hitting a three-run home run against the Cleveland Indians in the third inning of a baseball game Sunday in Detroit. The Tigers won 8-7.
Associated Press
DETROIT
The Cleveland Indians came to Comerica Park with a chance to regain the AL Central lead.
They headed home facing their biggest deficit of the season.
Center fielder Austin Jackson threw out Kosuke Fukudome at the plate to complete a game-ending double play and the Tigers held on to sweep the Indians with a wild 8-7 victory Sunday.
The Indians could have taken over first place with a three-game sweep of their own, but left Detroit trailing by 41/2 games.
“This isn’t what we were looking for when we came here,” Travis Hafner said. “There’s still a lot of baseball to be played, but this was obviously a big game, and we didn’t win it.”
Cleveland trailed 7-0 after three innings, but came within inches of forcing extra innings.
Jose Valverde pitched the ninth for his 37th save in as many tries, but it wasn’t easy. He walked Fukudome to start the inning and then hit Jason Donald on an 0-2 pitch. Jack Hannahan sacrificed the runners over.
Pinch-hitter Matt LaPorta hit a liner to Jackson, who threw a perfect strike to catcher Alex Avila to get Fukudome by a step.
“No guts, no glory,” Acta said. “He had to go, but he made a great throw.”
Even Jackson wasn’t sure he could throw out the speedy Fukudome.
“It wasn’t hit that hard, so I was just trying to get lined up,” Jackson said. “I knew I had to get it there on the fly, but I didn’t know if I even had a chance until I saw Alex put on the tag.”
Indians manager Manny Acta wasn’t bothered by that play, but was upset by an incident earlier in the game. One pitch after Asdrubal Cabrera waited at home plate to see whether hit long fly to right would hook foul — it did — Tigers starter Rick Porcello threw a pitch behind his back.
After a discussion, the umpires warned both benches. Although there were no more incidents, Acta felt Porcello should have been ejected.