Ordonez leads Tigers over White Sox 8-2, a huge step toward playoffs
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By Danny Knobler
Booth Newspapers Columnist
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
CHICAGO - It wasn't a guarantee. Not even a promise.
Just a simple statement of fact.
"Now it's my turn," Magglio Ordonez said softly Monday afternoon, a few hours before the Detroit Tigers opened their biggest series of the season.
His turn, indeed. The Tigers' turn, too. With two Ordonez home runs and an emphatic 8-2 Tiger win in the first game of a series the White Sox said they needed to sweep, the Tigers put themselves one big step closer to making the playoffs and pushed the White Sox one huge step closer to spending October at home.
Twelve games remain on the schedule, the Tigers have 90 wins, their division lead over Minnesota is 1 1/2 games and their magic number for clinching a playoff spot is down to seven. They can't clinch before they leave town Wednesday night, but they've already got the third-place White Sox wondering if it's all over.
And Ordonez, the ex-White Sox star who had to watch his team celebrate a 2006 title without him, had to be thinking that this October, they'll be reduced to watching him.
If that happens, Ordonez said Monday night, "They're going to feel jealous, for sure."
The Tigers aren't counting the White Sox out, not yet.
"They're not going to go away," manager Jim Leyland insisted, one time and then another. "We've got a long ways to go."
Fine, but they went a long ways Monday, all the way from Curtis Granderson's triple to lead off the game to the Brandon Inge three-run home run that turned the score lopsided in the ninth. All the way from Kenny Rogers, who pitched with the flu but shut out the White Sox for six innings, to Craig Monroe, who drove in the first two Tiger runs with a homer and the last one with a ground ball.
All the way past a triple play, the one the White Sox turned in the first inning. The Tigers hadn't hit into one of those in 10 years, not since an early-season 1996 game that was played in Las Vegas.
This one could have changed the momentum in a game the Tigers already led 2-0 and seemed on the way to turning into a quick blowout. Leyland sent the runners on a 3-2 pitch to Carlos Guillen, and when Guillen hit a soft line drive to Joe Crede at third base, the life went out of the Tigers.
"To be honest, it got a little quiet," Leyland said. "But I'd (send the runners) again 100 times with Carlos Guillen hitting. You want to be aggressive."
No Tiger wanted to be more aggressive than Ordonez. He had followed Chicago's weekend series in Oakland, the one the A's swept, with ex-White Sox star Frank Thomas hitting two home runs and driving in seven.
"Now it's my turn," Ordonez had said, when Thomas was mentioned to him.
Sure enough, Ordonez singled in the first. He homered in the fourth, to make it 3-0 Tigers. He homered in the sixth, to make it 4-0. He even hit another sharp fly ball in the eighth.
"Magglio has swung the bat good against us all year," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. "So did Frank. That's part of the game. But I think my right fielder right now has a better year than Magglio does."
By the numbers, Guillen is right. Ordonez isn't bad at .296 with 22 home runs and 97 RBIs, but Jermaine Dye is batting .320 with 42 homers and 117 RBIs.
Dye is a Most Valuable Player candidate. Or would have been, anyway, if the White Sox were going to make the playoffs. Ordonez won't get MVP votes, but his September numbers (.344, 4 home runs, 12 RBIs in 16 games) are MVP-caliber.
"That's really good, to see Magglio break out," Leyland said.
Good for the Tigers. Bad for the White Sox.
This year, and especially this week, it's his turn.
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Next game tonight at Chicago, 8:05 EST. Justin Verlander (16-8, 3.42) vs. Freddy Garcia (14-9, 4.82). |
