Everyone should just be glad this debacle is over

When historians recall the 2006 World Series, which mercifully ended Friday on another odd night of freezing winds and flocking birds, one word will come to mind.

It will not be Cardinals, who, let’s face it, won a world championship by virtue of possessing a pulse.

It will not be Weaver, the Angels and Dodgers bust who blearily stumbled his way into postseason religion.

It will not be Eckstein, the wonderful little Series MVP who will live longer as a Bill Stoneman nightmare.

The word will not be a name, but a directive, one that defined a team and detailed an embarrassment.

The word will be “Duck!”

Here comes a short throw from a Detroit Tigers pitcher to the third baseman -- duck!

Here comes a throw from a Tigers pitcher to the first baseman -- duck!

Grounder to third -- duck!

Fly ball to center -- duck!

Placido Polanco at the plate -- duck!

And when sappy Kenny Rogers had a chance to save the Tigers in Game 5 Friday night by taking his 3-0 record and 0.00 postseason ERA to the mound on full rest?

He ducked!

With Rogers sitting on his pine-tarred hands, and his teammates again falling on their wide-eyed faces, the Tigers graciously ended this weeklong debacle Friday with a 4-2 defeat and a four-games-to-one crumble to the Cardinals.

“Well, at least nobody saw it,” said Todd Jones, Tigers reliever. “I mean, the TV ratings were terrible, right?”

Those who did see it will remember it as one of the most awful Series performances of the modern era. In my 23 years around the game, I’ve never witnessed worse.

Stepping on to the field last weekend as arguably the most unlikely Series participant ever -- they were coming off five consecutive 90-loss seasons -- the young Tigers finally pinched themselves.

It was America that said “Ouch.”

“If you don’t make the plays, you won’t win, I don’t care if you are playing Little League, the junior varsity or the New York Yankees,” said Jones, whose team might have been swept by all three.

They couldn’t catch -- they committed eight errors in five games, leading to eight unearned runs, the most given up by a World Series team in 50 years.

Five of those errors were by pitchers, a situation that became so ugly Friday, when Justin Verlander picked up a Jeff Weaver bunt in the fourth inning with runners on first and second, he had only one idea.

“I thought to myself, ‘Don’t throw it away,’ ” he said.

So, of course, what happened?

“I threw it in the tank,” he said, his wild toss down the left-field line leading to a two-run inning.

They also couldn’t hit -- they batted .199 against a collection of mostly castoff and kid pitchers.

Their first two hitters, Curtis Granderson and Craig Monroe, batted a combined .122. Their hottest hitter entering the World Series with a .471 playoff average, Placido Polanco, went hitless in 17 at-bats.

“What can you do?” Polanco said in final frustration. “Kill yourself?”

And, no, they couldn’t run the bases either, with Brandon Inge running them out of a tying run in the third inning Friday by attempting to go from second to third on a grounder to the ... pitcher? He must have thought the ball was being hit to one of his own pitchers.

“We, um, had a couple of rough patches,” Sean Casey said.

Finally, and perhaps most compellingly Friday, the Tigers couldn’t coax the fire out of Rogers.

He should have pitched this game. Because of Wednesday’s rainout, he would be working on a full four days’ rest. Because of Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa’s refusal to have him searched, he could have come to the mound with a fanny pack full of pine tar.

The Cardinals couldn’t hit him. With 23 consecutive scoreless innings, the postseason record books could barely contain him. He was another Orel Hershiser.

Except Rogers proved, once and for all, that he was no bulldog.

He did not ask Manager Jim Leyland to allow him to pitch. And, obviously worried that Rogers would wilt under three hours of jeers from Cardinals fans, Leyland wasn’t going to pitch him without that assurance.

“I heard one TV personality say he thinks the hostile environment would really motivate Kenny, and I don’t buy that,” Leyland said before the game. “I think it would probably work the opposite.”

So, with the warped rationalization that the Tigers needed three wins and it didn’t matter which one Rogers was involved in -- even though nothing mattered if they didn’t win this game -- Leyland did not change his rotation, and used rookie Verlander instead.

Verlander, who threw 52 pitches in the first two innings, and threw a ball down the third-base line, and was lucky to leave after six innings trailing only 3-2.

While Rogers watched from the bench, tucked inside a jacket that hid everything and nothing.

When asked afterward if he wished he had pitched, Rogers shrugged.

“I don’t even remotely entertain that thought,” he said. “We had to win three games, and we have a great pitching staff and they’ve done it all season.”

Yeah, right, whatever.

Shortly after midnight Friday, long after the final pitch, the Cardinals still dancing around the Busch Stadium field with a couple of thousand folks still singing and saluting in the stands, the public address system suddenly switched gears.

After playing inspirational and championship-type songs, it suddenly blared, “The Gambler” by, yeah, Kenny Rogers.

The locals laughed. It was enough to make a baseball fan cry.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.