With 3-2 Win, Tigers Salvage One in Toronto : But as Sparky Builds Character, Blue Jays Have Built Lead to 2 1/2

The fourth and final game of an extraordinary series spanned 13 innings and more than four hours Sunday, and when it was over, when the Detroit Tigers had prevented the Toronto Blue Jays from prematurely running the Maple Leaf up the American League East’s flag pole, Sparky Anderson laid claim to the character and chemistry championship.

In fact, in a soliloquy that would have made Hamlet envious, Sparky said that the 3-2 victory in the wake of three straight defeats represented “my greatest moment in 18 years of managing” because it confirmed what he has felt all season, that this is his most gratifying team because it has the “best people I’ve ever been around.”

“I never wavered and never moved in these four days,” he said, “and my players never wavered and never moved. They take after the old man.

“There were two clubs on the field today but no club has more character than this one because they (his players) had to come back after having their (backside) nailed to the wall.

“The Blue Jays deserve to be 2 1/2 ahead but we know we could have won two of the three and to come back from that . . . well, I’ve never seen a club with any more character. I just feel so good about these people.”

The issue of character and chemistry pervaded the series, a subject of debate between the two clubhouses, but the Blue Jays were willing to let Sparky talk Sunday because winning three of four increased their half game lead to 2 1/2 and took four more days off the calendar.

“We’re satisfied with three of four,” Toronto Manager Jimy Williams said. “It was a big series for us. I don’t know about chemistry and character. We execute. That’s our priority. We played well and pitched well in all four games and we came from behind to win two in the ninth inning.

“I mean, what do you call that if not character?”

The Blue Jays open a three-game series at home with the Milwaukee Brewers tonight, are off Thursday, then play three more with the Tigers in Detroit on the final weekend of the season.

The Tigers returned home Sunday night and open a four-game series with the Baltimore Orioles tonight.

A loss Sunday would have left them 4 1/2 behind, and that final series with the Blue Jays would have then been meaningless without help from the Brewers.

“Now we have to win 3 of 4 from the Orioles and sweep these guys,” Sparky said, shaking the character and chemistry theme long enough to take a hard look at a more pragmatic matter. “What this meant today is that we’re still breathing and we don’t have to get help from Milwaukee. It wouldn’t have been fair asking them to do our dirty work.

“I told our fans in spring training that they’d be smiling in October and I just said it again on TV.”

A series decided by scores of 4-3, 3-2, 10-9 and 3-2 will linger in the camera of the mind. The finale, played before a sellout crowd of 46,346 on an afternoon of gray clouds and intermittent rain, saw the last-gasp Blue Jays rally again in a final at-bat to erase a Tiger lead, this time in the 11th, after the Tigers rallied to gain a 1-1 tie in the ninth.

Eleven pitchers were used Saturday and eleven more Sunday when Doyle Alexander turned in another brilliant performance for the Tigers, allowing one earned run in 10 innings before Sparky made four calls to his vulnerable bullpen.

The Tigers failed to win it for Alexander, but they are undefeated in his 10 starts. They won it for Mike Henneman (10-3), the resilient rookie who worked in each of the four games. They won it with a bloop hit of the type the Blue Jays frequently employed in the first three games.

Jim Walewander, who went to third base when Tom Brookens was lifted for a pinch hitter in the fifth, opened the 13th by drawing a walk from Jose Nunez.

Lou Whitaker sacrificed and Darrell Evans was walked intentionally. Kirk Gibson hit a fly to shallow left. Lloyd Moseby raced in, realized he couldn’t get to it and stopped, knowing at once he had come too far. The ball caromed off the synthetic surface and over his head. Third-base coach Alex Grammas, who had instructed Walewander to stop, now told him to go. Shortstop Manny Lee, who scrambled out to back up Moseby, caught the ball as it came down and made an impressive throw home, but Walewander beat it.

Henneman, Mark Thurmond and Dickie Noles all worked in the bottom of the 13th, but the Blue Jays’ may have run out of magic after the 11th.

This was the scenario until then:

Alexander, 8-0 as a Tiger and coming off a 4-0 victory over Boston in which he retired the last 22 batters in order, yielded a first- inning run on a single by Nelson Liriano, a stolen base and a single by George Bell, driving in his 134th run.

Jim Clancy, 4-15 against the Tigers in his career but 15-10 in a season in which he has won his last five decisions, took that run and made it stand up through seven innings, scattering five hits before Tom Henke was brought in to pitch the eighth.

“Clancy was going on three days rest and I thought he had done his job,” Williams said of the change. “Henke hadn’t pitched in two days and then had pitched only one inning.”

The league’s save leader took the 1-0 lead into the ninth, which Kirk Gibson opened by driving a fastball about 420 feet over the fence in right for his 23rd homer. Henke said he struck out Gibson with a similar pitch Friday night but “didn’t get this one in on him as much as I would have liked.”

Evans greeted Jeff Musselman with his 33rd homer to open the 11th, giving Alexander a 2-1 lead that looked like enough when Moseby struck out to open the home half and Juan Beniquez hit a grounder to the left of Alan Trammell. The shortstop had it in his glove, then didn’t. An error. One out. One on.

“It kicked off the thumb of my glove,” Trammell said. “I’ve never had that happen before. I thought the Blue Jays had those voodoo dolls out again.”

Alexander got the intimidating Bell on a fly to center, but walked Ernie Whitt, bringing up Jesse Barfield, who drove a tying single to left. Sparky replaced Alexander with the beleaguered Willie Hernandez, who walked Willie Upshaw, loading the bases. Henneman came on to get Fred McGriff on a fly to right, preserving the tie.

The bullpen held, and Evans later talked about how the Tigers stayed in the clubhouse for an extra half hour after Saturday’s disheartening loss, talking about what was at stake today and how they had come too far to just let it slip away. Sparky would call it chemistry, but Barfield, the Toronto right fielder, had his own thinking on what took place in this series.

“We would have liked to sweep but we’re not going to sit here worrying about what they did to us today,” he said. “We’re going to think about what we did to them and go from there.”

Blue Jay-Tiger Notes

Reached at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Tony Fernandez told Toronto Star columnist John Robertson that he doesn’t feel Bill Madlock did anything illegal on the slide that resulted in Fernandez breaking his elbow. “I don’t think he was trying to hurt me,” Fernandez said. “He was just doing his job, trying to break up the double play. I didn’t expect him to come that far off the base line to get me, but if my knee hadn’t been injured (previously), I could have avoided him easily and made the double play. I went to move sideways but the leg just wouldn’t carry me fast enough.” . . . The four-game series drew 181,434, an Exhibition Stadium record. . . . Sunday’s loss snapped a seven-game Toronto winning streak. The Jays are 19-6 in September. Their magic number remained five.