updated 7:58 p.m. ET Oct. 9, 2006

DETROIT - As a reborn baseball town erupted in splashes of orange and blue around them, the Detroit Tigers danced in the infield, kicking up dirt like kids on a sandlot.

They grabbed Jim Leyland, hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him off the field as 43,000 delirious fans screamed as one. The manager’s ride was a short one, but the party was just getting started.

The Tigers are still on the prowl. The mighty New York Yankees struck out.

Three years after losing 119 games, they moved back among baseball’s biggest cats with an 8-3 victory Saturday in Game 4 over the Yankees, whose $200 million payroll couldn’t help them against Detroit’s pitching.

“This is the best of the best, to beat the best team in baseball,” said Craig Monroe, who hit a two-run homer. “This is baseball for us, right here in Detroit.”

Once a punchline, the Tigers punched out the big, bad Yankees.

“You kind of get tired of giving the other team credit,” third baseman Alex Rodriguez said after another terrible October. “At some point you’ve got to look in the mirror and say, ’I sucked.”’

Jeremy Bonderman was perfect for five innings and sublime until the ninth as the Tigers moved into the AL championship series against Oakland by eliminating A-Rod, Derek Jeter and the other high-priced, high-profile Yankees.

Given little chance before the series started or when they were down 0-1, Detroit won three straight to stun the AL East champions, who could be facing a colder New York baseball winter than normal.

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It all happened faster than Leyland, the Tigers’ no-nonsense skipper, or anyone could have ever imagined. The feisty 61-year-old ended a six-year retirement and took over a team that had averaged 100 losses since 2001 and one he figured would fight with Kansas City to stay out of last place in the AL Central.

Instead, Leyland has taken the Tigers near the top.

“I didn’t think we’d be here this year,” he said. “All we wanted to do was look at our pieces and parts we had and see if we needed to change any. I thought it would be a year or so before we got into a situation like this. This came a little bit quicker than I expected.”

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And, he used a pinstriped plan to make it happen.

During spring training in Florida, Leyland made his players study the Yankees. He wanted them to emulate their Bronx-born bravado, right down to the way they run onto the field.

“I said, ’That’s the level we want to get to, and we’ve got to get that quiet swagger and confidence that the Yankees got,”’ he said. “I used them as an example. It’s kind of ironic that we got to play them, and fortunately beat them.”

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The Tigers’ chances seemed slim just a few days ago when they were swept at home on the final weekend of the regular season by the last-place Royals, who denied them a division title. Detroit had to settle for a wild-card berth and a first-round matchup with the Yankees.

It seemed lopsided. It sure was. The Yankees didn’t have a chance.

These man-eating Tigers simply devoured New York, outplaying the Yanks in every phase to advance to their first AL championship series since 1987. On Tuesday, the Tigers will play at Oakland in Game 1 of the AL championship series, the first postseason meeting between the clubs since 1972.

“Nobody gave us a shot in this series,” Bonderman said. “That motivated us.”

The Yankees never found any spark, and for the second straight year the star-studded squad is going home after a first-round exit.

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