Baseball, Mlb Playoffs | featured news

The big curveball was back, and Barry Zito mixed in some well-placed fastballs, too. It was just like the good old days. Zito was at his best Friday night, pitching San Francisco back into the NL championship series with a 5-0 win over the St. Louis Cardinals that narrowed its deficit to 3-2.

The 2012 Yankees will be remembered for hitting a record number of regular season home runs before experiencing the kind of sudden outage rivaling any blackout in the history of New York.

One more win and another bunch of wild-card Cardinals get their chance to repeat. Adam Wainwright threw seven innings of four-hit ball and St. Louis roughed up Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants in an 8-3 rout Thursday night that gave the Cardinals a 3-1 lead in the NL championship series.

The sight of Marco Scutaro on the ground in pain after getting flattened by Matt Holliday's hard takeout was just the spark the San Francisco Giants needed. Scutaro even got into the act with his own big blow that helped the Giants end their home slide.

The Detroit Tigers got a big boost from Anibal Sanchez's arm. They got a helping hand from an umpire, too. The reward: a commanding 2-0 lead in the AL championship series, and a trip home with their ace ready to start. Sanchez shut down a Yankees lineup minus injured Derek Jeter, Detroit scored twice after an admitted missed call by an ump and won without any extra-inning drama, beating New York 3-0 Sunday.

On a cool, dark autumn night, the stars shined bright and brilliant in the Bronx. But the biggest ones in pinstripes watched the dramatic conclusion from the afar — shortstop Derek Jeter injured and third baseman Alex Rodriguez benched — while Detroit’s finest, Miguel Cabrera, scored the winning run in extra innings.

In the end, it made sense that Yadier Molina and David Freese would work those key walks, and that Daniel Descalso and Pete Kozma would come through with those tying and go-ahead, two-run hits....

With Alex Rodriguez benched, the Yankees advanced to the AL championship series against the Detroit Tigers, starting Saturday night in the Bronx. "It is still a long way to go," Sabathia said. "I still got hopefully three or four more starts. So the job is not done yet."

These Birds don't rattle easily. A day after a demoralizing defeat, the Baltimore Orioles won a test of wills and Game 4 of the AL division series, bouncing back to outlast the New York Yankees 2-1 in 13 innings Thursday night on J.J. Hardy's RBI double.

The first wild-card playoff game in baseball history turned out to be just plain wild Friday, thanks to a complicated rule that has long been part of baseball, even if many people - even hard-core fans - don't know exactly what it is. The disputed call led to a protest by the Braves - which was quickly denied - and an ugly display as fans littered the field with debris, causing a 19-minute delay.