Baseball: Tigers hope storybook finish is their happy ending

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander embraced the challenge of returning home 2-0 down to the San Francisco Giants in the World Series and envisioned a storybook finish for the American League champions.

"It's lined up to be storybook, we just got to make it happen," said Verlander, whose sub-par start in an 8-3 loss in the World Series opener got the Tigers off on the wrong foot.

"Those guys have been storybook this far. It would be nice to reverse the roles," the hard-throwing Verlander told reporters in the back room of the clubhouse after Thursday's 2-0 loss in Game Two.

Detroit swept the Yankees in four games in the AL Championship Series and had to wait for the Giants to come back from 3-1 down to advance against the St. Louis Cardinals.

That followed another backs-to-the-wall predicament against the Cincinnati Reds in the Division Series, in which the Giants dropped the first two and had to win the last three on the road.

Those fightbacks painted the Giants as the comeback kings with six do-or-die victories in two rounds of the postseason.

Now it is the Tigers who must roar back if they intend to capture their first World Series crown in 28 years.

"They are up 2-0. They don't know what to do with that," Verlander joked about the Giants suddenly being the frontrunners. "They're playing great baseball, everything is going their way. Hopefully things turn."

Verlander, the 2011 Cy Young and MVP of the American League who had been 7-0 in his last seven starts, said he believed Detroit had suffered from their layoff.

"We played for eight months now, counting spring training, and you don't have more than one day off besides the All-Star break and all of a sudden you get five or six," he said.

"We just lost. We've got to go back home and win three there and win one here."

Detroit slugger Miguel Cabrera, who became the first player to win the Triple Crown in 45 years by leading the league in home runs (44), runs batted in (139) and batting average (.330) said the Tigers' attack had been sluggish.

"Our game is like slow a little bit," Cabrera said after San Francisco pitching held them to just two hits on Thursday. "We have to pick it up a little bit, be more aggressive. Get more confidence trying to win the first one."

Cabrera also felt the layoff had affected the Tigers.

"Before we don't want to say a negative thing that it was going to affect us," he said. "But I think it affected us a little bit, slowed us up a little bit. But I think we're ready to step up and play better.

"It's baseball. It's not time to put your head down. I think we're going to try and go out and be more aggressive at home. I hope we go to Detroit and play our game over there, in our ballpark, in front of our fans and hopefully do well and win.

"I think we're going to be ready to play and make something happen."

The next three games of the best-of-seven Fall Classic will be in Detroit, if needed, with Game Three set for Saturday.

(Reporting by Larry Fine, Editing by Nick Mulvenney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/baseball-tigers-hope-storybook-finish-happy-ending-055619117--mlb.html

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