BALTIMORE – The Detroit Tigers’ bats were silent, all night, totaling three hits off a left-hander named John Means.
It was another uninspiring offensive performance, with just a few hits, one of them for extra bases, sprinkled among a lot of bad at-bats.
Then catcher John Hicks came to the plate in the top of the eighth inning, hit a baseball 433 feet, immediately dropped his bat — Hicks knew he got all of it — and the Tigers were afforded new life, tied at 2.
An inning later, Brandon Dixon — this month’s Ronny Rodriguez — untied the game with a two-run home run to dead center field.