Buck Showalter managed the first American League wild-card team, the 1995 Yankees, losing an excruciating division series. On Friday he was here for the league's first one-game wild card playoff as manager of the Baltimore Orioles. There was no series this time, just one chance to continue a miracle season.
"Our approach is it's sudden life, not sudden death, and there's something good, real good, that can happen," Showalter said before batting practice at Rangers Ballpark. "If you had told us at the end of the season last year that we'd have a chance to put a roster together for one game, we'd have signed up for that in blood. I'm sure Texas feels the same way."
Maybe, but probably not. The Rangers won the last two A.L. pennants and came within a strike of their first World Series title last October. They led the West division this season from the fourth game through the 161st, but tumbled into the wild-card game the last day of the regular season. Now they are finished, victims of a long-dormant potion called Oriole Magic.
That is the name of the theme song the Orioles play at Camden Yards, and now they know they will hear it this October. Absent from the playoffs the last 15 seasons, the Orioles returned in style, edging the Rangers, 5-1, behind Joe Saunders and three relievers. They will host the Yankees in Game 1 of a division series Sunday.
"For us, it's like Buck says, we're playing with house money," Saunders said. "If we go out there and do our jobs and really get after it, we believe in ourselves and we have a chance to win."
The Rangers were left to sort out what happened. A team built to capture an elusive championship lost 8 of its last 10, including Friday night.
"I don't know the right way to describe it," said David Murphy, who flied to left to end the last World Series, and did so again to finish this season. "At some point, we ran out of gas. We stopped playing like the Rangers. I don't know why that is."
The left-hander Derek Holland was asked if collapse was a fair word to describe the Rangers' undoing. Holland chose a harsher term.
"It's like a big meltdown," he said. "We didn't do our jobs."
In Saunders, it seemed, the Rangers' hitters had the matchup they wanted. He came into the game with an 0-6 record and a 9.38 earned run average in six career starts in Arlington. Even so, Saunders was the best option for Showalter, who used his top three starters at Tampa Bay this week in an effort to win the division.
Saunders had not pitched here in more than two years, when he was with the Angels, and Rangers Manager Ron Washington said he was now a different pitcher, whose past did not apply. Saunders would concentrate on off-speed pitches, Washington said, and the Rangers would have to take advantage of pitches up in the strike zone. That did not happen.
"I just told myself, Hey, when you miss, try to miss down," Saunders said. "Hopefully they'll hit some ground balls, and try to keep the balls out of the air, because this is a pretty good hitting ballpark against a pretty good hitting team.
"I got some clutch double plays, got me out of a jam in the first. I just told myself, minimize the damage, keep us in it as long as you can, and we'll score soon enough."
Saunders walked the leadoff man in the first inning and then allowed a single, and Showalter immediately ordered a reliever to start warming up. But Saunders induced the first of two double plays, this one from Josh Hamilton. It scored a run but settled things down.
Hamilton, the former most valuable player who is facing free agency, lost a ball in the Oakland sun Wednesday and looked equally lost against Saunders. He struck out on three pitches in his next at-bat and grounded meekly to Saunders on the first pitch of the bottom of the sixth. Fans booed.
In Hamilton's final at-bat, against the left-hander Brian Matusz as the tying run in the eighth, he struck out again on three pitches. Again, fans booed.
"They pay for tickets, they've got a right to do what they want to do," Hamilton said. "You hate to have it happen in possibly your last game ever here. But at the same time, it's one of those things. I gave them my all every time I went out there. Hopefully they appreciate it more than they didn't. I think they do."
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