Tigers Burn Bright for a Day

We’ll get to the Angels a bit later in this story. On Sunday, the day belonged to the Detroit Tigers.

The Angels won the World Series last year, a pleasant but increasingly distant memory. To the Tigers, Sunday was their Game 7, a rare pause for celebration amid a historically disastrous season.

Brandon Inge ended the Tigers’ 11-game losing streak with one swing, dropped his bat, and pumped his fist at the sky. Dmitri Young, the Tigers’ 250-pound designated hitter, rumbled to home plate and led the dog pile that would surround Inge. Local hero Alan Trammell, the manager charged with resuscitating the once-proud franchise, stood still in the dugout, beaming a smile as wide as the Detroit River.

“Today,” Trammell said, “we are on top of the world.”

Inge’s two-run, two-out, two-strike home run in the ninth inning delivered a dramatic and improbable 10-9 victory to the Tigers. As Angel closer Troy Percival shuffled off the mound, saddled with defeat, the Tigers swallowed Inge. As he approached home, Inge made a parting motion with his hands, appearing to signal his joyous teammates to move aside and clear a path to the plate.

“I was just messing with them,” Inge said. “I’m a clown, just like most of the guys on this team.”

The Tigers, challenging the 1962 New York Mets as the worst major league team ever assembled and almost certain to lose 100 games before Sept. 1, had lost 14 consecutive games to the Angels. In his nine-year career, Percival never had lost to Detroit.

“If I do my job, we win,” he said. “I don’t think any divine intervention set in.”

He found no sympathy in Sunday’s result, even though the defeat cost the Angels nothing in a lost season.

“You don’t want anybody to have to go through a season like they’ve gone through,” he said, “but not at my expense. I don’t have any sympathy for that.”

Indeed, the Angels have their own issues to worry about, after a day in which they failed to beat 18-game loser Mike Maroth.

Scot Shields threw up the first clunker in his seven starts this season. The Angels are two games out of last place in the American League West.

Their pitching staff gave up 30 runs in four games to the Tigers, who have scored more than 100 fewer runs than any other team in the league. The strong but weary Anaheim bullpen, still with the best earned-run average in the league, has given up 14 runs in its last 22 innings.

As the clubhouse blends a dwindling core of healthy and frustrated veterans and a growing happy-to-be-here supporting cast, the Angels must maintain some kind of competitive fire rather than risk losing it and falling into a mentality of smiling as they play out the string.

“It’s not that the intensity isn’t there,” team leader and injured outfielder Darin Erstad said. “Is it the same as if you’re in a pennant race? No.”

The Angels have lost 25 of 39 games since the All-Star break, 16 of 22 on the road. Amid the discouragement this week, they welcomed merry Australian Trent Durrington, the latest in a painfully long list of minor league reinforcements.

“It’s a great time playing a sport for a living,” Durrington said.

Percival joked during the trip about the veterans being outnumbered by the Salt Lakers, but it’s no laughing matter. Over the last five weeks, the Angels have released three players, put three more on the disabled list, traded another and promoted seven players from triple-A Salt Lake.

Despite the atmosphere, with the Angels going nowhere this season and the revolving door in the clubhouse, Manager Mike Scioscia vowed to ensure his team would play hard and prepare well.

“Those things will never be compromised on this club,” he said. “I don’t see any indication of that.”