Game 40: Tigers Escape Jams, End Losing Skid

Detroit (May 31) - For once, it was the Tigers who scored first. For once, it was the Tigers who increased their lead. For once, it was the other team who failed to finish their rallies.

It all added up to a 5-3 win over the Chicago White Sox today at Tiger Stadium, ending Detroit's eight-game losing streak.

Starter Vern Ruhle, among several in the rotation who've struggled this season, pitched into the eighth inning, allowing just seven hits and three runs, walking only two.

But it was the man who relieved him who saved the day.

Tom Walker entered the eighth with runners on first and third (error, single) and nobody out. The Tigers were hanging on to a precarious 5-3 lead. Walker then set down Deron Johnson (strikeout), Bill Stein (shallow fly ball) and Tony Muser (fly ball), stranding the runners.

Then in the ninth, inconsistent John Hiller survived a second Gary Sutherland error and left the bases loaded to end the game, earning his seventh save.

"Plop, plop, fizz fizz," manager Ralph Houk said afterward, invoking the line from a popular antacid commercial. "Oh what a relief it is."

The Tigers' first win since May 19 didn't come easy. They usually don't when you've lost eight in a row.

Ruhle escaped jams in the third and fifth before Walker wiggled his way out of the White Sox eighth.

"The bullpen picked me up today," Ruhle (2-6) said. "I owe Tom (Walker) a beer."


Walker saved Ruhle's bacon in the eighth


The Tigers were leading 2-1 in the fifth when Sutherland doubled home catcher Terry Humphrey, and Leon Roberts added an RBI ground out for a 4-1 lead.

After the White Sox used three singles and a couple ground outs to get within 4-3 in the sixth,
Aurelio Rodriguez laced a Jim Kaat pitch into the left field lower deck for an insurance run in the Tigers' half of the inning.

"My thing has always been, you're not officially out of a losing streak until you win a couple in a row," Houk said. "It's nice to win, but we can't keep piling up the ones in the right hand column (losses)."

Thanks to Friday's rainout, the Tigers and White Sox will play a doubleheader Sunday afternoon.

Only then will we know if Houk's team is "officially" out of its losing streak.

Notes: Willie Horton's two RBI gives him 26, which is on pace for 104 for the season. Still, he's not satisfied. "I could have a lot more," Horton said, despite carrying a healthy .317 BA...Sutherland on his two errors, both botched grounders: "Mental. Gotta bear down more. That's unacceptable"....Ruhle won for the first time since May 8.

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Tigers record: 15-25 (actual 19-21)
Home: 8-14
Away: 7-11
Last 10: 2-8