Tigers tossed around

DETROIT -- He was talking about just one play, a ground ball that could not have made him look more foolish in the moment than if he'd picked up an exploding cigar off Jim Leyland's desk. But it could just as well stand as testament to how the Tigers' return to the World Series after an absence of 22 years blew up in their faces.

"Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong on that play," Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge said of a play that was botched from jump street, a sixth-inning ground ball by Juan Encarnacion on which Inge was charged with two errors -- and that didn't even include an initial bobble.

Inge threw wildly to the plate for one error, then was flagged for obstruction when he was run over by Scott Rolen, the Cardinals' base runner who happily took the hit as he scored the final run in a 7-2 rout of the Tigers before 42,479 deflated Detroiters.

The game did not turn on a single play, the Cardinals already having seized the lead on the strength of a bases-empty home run by Rolen, who on this night didn't have an Endy Chavez to contend with, and a two-run home run in the second off rookie Justin Verlander by Albert Pujols, whose true identity, at least according to Tigers closer Todd Jones, does not appear on any lineup cards.

"The alien," Jones said. "He hits the two-run home run that took the crowd out of the game. The next time we scored was the ninth.

"If we want to win this Series, we're going to have to contain him. None of us fear him. None of us are scared of him, but he's a special player and we have to find a way to contain him."

The Tigers had the option of walking Pujols before his home run. There were two outs, and first base was open. "I could go into a lot of detail about that, but I'll leave it at this," Leyland said. "The manager's decision is either to pitch to him or walk him. I pitched to him and he obviously burned us.

"I'm not going into a lot of explanation about what the thinking was. But I take the bullet there and if somebody gives you criticism, you accept it, because it's ultimately my decision."

The Cardinals became the first National League team to win a Series game since Josh Beckett tamed the Yankees in the Bronx on three hits to close out the Bombers in Game 6 in 2003. It had been eight losses in a row since then, and it was starting to look like it might take a Bob Gibson to reverse that trend.

Instead, it was Anthony Reyes, who had the fewest wins (5) of any Game 1 starter in Series history, who with his flat-billed cap and fastball that barely broke 90 imitated the Hall of Famer only in his results: Reyes set down 17 consecutive batters before giving up Carlos Guillen's ground single off the glove of second baseman Ronnie Belliard in the seventh. Reyes did not leave until the ninth, after surrendering a leadoff home run to Craig Monroe.

The Tigers had won seven straight in October, their last six by three runs or more. Last night, they played as if they'd been off a week, which they had. But they've looked bad before and rebounded. (See Yanks-Tigers, Game 1, ALDS.)

"Well, you know, I think if you lose a game like this, you open yourself up to everyone speculating that the layoff hurt," Jones said, "and maybe it did. But I'm not taking anything away from Reyes. He pitched his tail off."

The Cardinals never led for a single inning when they fell in four straight to the Red Sox in the 2004 Series. Tim Wakefield held them scoreless in their first at-bat and David Ortiz hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the inning off Woody Williams in Game 1, a pattern repeated throughout the series. Jason Varitek hit a two-run triple in the first inning of Game 2. Manny Ramírez hit a home run in the first inning of Game 3. Johnny Damon led off Game 4 with another home run.

For a team that had lost six straight Series games dating to 1987, when they lost the last two of a seven-game set to the Twins, and eight straight Series games on the road dating to Game 2 in Kansas City in 1985, it appeared like more of the same when Monroe doubled in the first and came around on Guillen's single.

But the Tigers, who are not naturally inclined to be patient, and evidently even less so while waiting a week between games, were not rewarded for their restiveness against Reyes, the kid who had huffed and puffed through 86 pitches in four innings when he started against the Mets in Game 4 of the NLCS.

After making Reyes throw 22 pitches in the first, Sean Casey, the first batter in the next inning, struck out on four pitches. Inge flied to right on the first pitch. Ramon Santiago popped out two pitches later. So Reyes threw fewer pitches that inning (7) than he is allowed to throw warming up (8).

Through four innings, Reyes had thrown 48 pitches. Through seven, an inning in which none of the four batters he faced, all veterans ( Magglio Ordonez, Guillen, Pudge Rodriguez, Casey), looked at more than three pitches, Reyes had thrown only 82 pitches and was tempted to order room service, so comfortable had he become on the supposedly foreign mound of Comerica Park.

As decisive as Pujols's home run was, Verlander lamented the at-bat just before Pujols came to the plate, when Chris Duncan scorched a ground double to right to score Yadier Molina.

"If I could point to one single solitary thing, it would be the hanging changeup to Duncan," Verlander said. "You take that pitch out of there, he gets out, we're done with the third inning, it's still a 1-1 game. But you can't play the what ifs.

"We lost Game 1 in New York and responded fine. This team has been resilient all year. I don't think that's an issue."