Posted at 12:08 p.m., Sunday, September 30, 2007
Baseball: Tigers rout ChiSox as Maggs win batting title
Associated Press
CHICAGO - Magglio Ordonez won his first AL batting title, getting three more hits todayday and leading the Detroit Tigers over the Chicago White Sox 13-3 in a season finale between two disappointing teams.
The 2006 AL champion Tigers finished 88-74, while the 2005 World Series champion White Sox went 72-90.
Ordonez raised his average three points to .363 and easily beat out Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki.
Ordonez became the first Tigers player to win the batting crown since Norm Cash batted .361 in 1961. Ordonez also finished with 139 RBIs.
After getting a single in the eighth, he was replaced by pinch-runner Ryan Raburn and got a nice ovation, tipping his helmet to the fans.
Ordonez hit an RBI double in the first and added a run-scoring single off Jose Contreras in the fifth.
Ordonez broke in with the White Sox in 1997 and played with them the next seven seasons. He signed as a free agent with the Tigers in 2005 after knee problems the previous year. His highest previous average was .320 with the White Sox in 2002 when he had 38 homers and 135 RBIs.
The White Sox never were in contention and finished 24 games behind AL Central champion Cleveland. Before the final game, Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen offered a candid analysis.
"We failed all the way from the top to the bottom. We failed from (owner) Jerry Reinsdorf all the way to the bat boy," Guillen said. "Everyone failed this year. Hopefully next year we turn around and do a better job."
The Tigers scored seven runs in the seventh, capped by Mike Rabelo's first major league homer, a two-run shot off the Mike MacDougal — a fitting end for a wobbly White Sox bullpen whose struggles epitomized the miserable season. Relievers Mike Myers and MacDougal combined to face nine batters and got one out.
Carlos Guillen's two-run homer to right in the third was his 21st of the season and gave him 100 RBIs. It also put the Tigers ahead 3-0. He added a two-run double in the seventh.
Chicago got three singles off Nate Robertson (9-13), the third one by Jermaine Dye, in the fourth to make it 3-1. Ordonez's RBI single put the Tigers up 4-1, but Chicago rookie Josh Fields hit his 23rd home run, cutting it to 4-3 in the fifth.
Detroit erupted in the seventh with Sean Casey delivering a run-scoring single and Marcus Thames a two-run double.
Contreras (10-17) had won his four previous decisions. He gave up nine hits and five runs in 6 1-3 innings and finished tied for the second most losses in the majors.
