Such is the power of success in sports. It is a cleanser that works better than 409. It can rebuff a reputation better than public relations master Howard Rubenstein. Nothing can turn jeers to cheers faster than winning a few games for the hometown team and Rogers, anger management problems or no anger management problems, is the latest beneficiary of that well- held truth.

All of a sudden, through the fractured lens of postseason victories and TV cameras, he’s the aging mentor of a young Tigers pitching staff. He now has, as teammate Brandon Inge said, “the intensity of a 12-year-old kid going out to the Little League field.” Two weeks ago he and the Tigers were both written off as yesterday’s news after fading so fast and so far in the final weeks of the regular season that they failed to even win their division after leading it most of the year. Rogers was hog-collaring a fan and Detroit was expecting little from its Tigers.

Little was expected from Rogers  besides surliness, his prior postseason collapses being mentioned over and over again as the Tigers prepared to become sacrificial lambs to the all-powerful Yankees.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral — the Tigers stuck the Yankees in the hearse and Rogers, of all people, helped drive it to the cemetery after having lost seven straight decisions to his former employers (where he won a World Series ring in 1996 not because of his pitching but despite it).

Then it was on to Oakland and a dominating performance once again, one in which he allowed only two hits and threw 19 first-pitch strikes to the 26 batters he faced before being removed from the game to thunderous applause. Whatever Rogers was thinking as he stood waiting to head to the dugout on the same mound where he had been booed so unmercifully for his behavior a year earlier, he clearly understood one thing: in America, winning cures everything. At least until the next anger-management class.

“When you come to a new place, you want to fit in, do your job and gain the respect of your teammates, but I don’t think I’ve changed anything that I’ve ever done,” Rogers said on the eve of his huge victory in Game 3 of the ALCS. “I’m the same player, the same person, everything. I believe in myself.”

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Pain on the skating rink, flying high on the hardwood, upsets on the football field, and more. more photos

If he is what he says he is, if he’s still the same person who deserved to be booed so lustily just 15 months ago, how can those same people now be cheering his name? Start with 2-0 in the playoffs and 15 scoreless innings. Then stop right there because, as Rogers and Terrell Owens both know, you don’t have to go any further than that these days in America.

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