Grit and Homers Carry Tigers Past Rangers

DETROIT — Injured, exhausted and facing elimination, the Detroit Tigers went into what could have been their final game of the season needing a strong performance from their ace, Justin Verlander, a revival of their offense and maybe a little luck to stay alive.

They received the right proportions of all three Thursday.

In a game that further demonstrated the resilience and toughness of the Tigers, Detroit beat the Texas Rangers, 7-5, in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series behind a memorable performance by Verlander and two home runs from the aching right fielder Delmon Young.

The Tigers are limping, tired and in pain, but they lived to play another day.

“Like I said, we’re tough,” Tigers Manager Jim Leyland said. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. This is a really great series.”

The Rangers, who won in dramatic fashion in Game 4 on Wednesday, lead the best-of-seven series by three games to two as the series shifts back to Texas for Game 6 on Saturday. The series was given a jolt of energy and intrigue as Detroit again refused to succumb to an assortment of maladies or to the Rangers’ impressive array of talent.

Young was not even supposed to participate in the series. After he strained his left oblique muscle in the final game of the division series against the Yankees, he was left off the A.L.C.S. roster. But right fielder Magglio Ordonez fractured his ankle in Game 1, and Young was brought back out of necessity.

“When you see these guys playing through that, it means a lot,” said Miguel Cabrera, the Tigers slugger whose spot of good fortune in the sixth inning, resulting in a run-scoring hit, changed the course of the game. “It’s special what they are doing.”

That it is still a series at all is a result in large part of the effort of Verlander, who pitched seven and one-third impressive innings.

In an outing that displayed his competitiveness and determination, Verlander threw a season-high 133 pitches, allowing four runs, eight hits and three walks, and he saved the game with one critical pitch in the sixth inning.

“I don’t have any words to describe what he’s done all season,” said designated hitter Victor Martinez, one of the injured stars who had a big game. “He’s amazing. He has to be the best pitcher in the game right now.”

Verlander’s final pitch resulted in a towering two-run homer by Texas right fielder Nelson Cruz, the star of Game 4, who became the first player to hit five home runs in a league championship series.

But the Tigers set a club record with four home runs in one postseason game, including one by the struggling Alex Avila, another by Ryan Raburn and the two by Young.

Fortune did play a key role in the game, however. Cabrera’s grounder in the sixth bounced off third base, turning a possible double-play ball into a run-scoring double that opened the gate for a tiebreaking, four-run inning. The outburst also included an R.B.I. triple by Martinez and Young’s two-run homer off starter C. J. Wilson.

In addition to Young, the Tigers are relying on two other players, Martinez and Avila, who would not have been in the lineup had it been a game in June.

Avila, who came into the game batting .061 in the postseason, has an assortment of injuries typical for a catcher. Martinez, whose triple drove in Cabrera, is also playing with a strained oblique muscle, which often makes swinging painful.

“It goes in and out,” Young said of his oblique injury. “It depends on what I actually did during the day to aggravate it or make it better.”

Finally, Detroit was short-handed in the bullpen, unable to use its two best relievers, Joaquin Benoit and closer Jose Valverde, who had been employed to the limits of their endurance in the previous games of the series. Leyland was hoping to use only Verlander and reliever Phil Coke, and that was exactly what happened.

With the score tied, 2-2, in the sixth, Verlander escaped a bases-loaded, one-out situation by getting Ian Kinsler to hit into a double play. Then the Tigers got a bit of luck.

Leading off the bottom of the inning, Raburn reached on a single and Cabrera hit a sharp ground ball down the third-base line toward the waiting glove of Adrian Beltre.

But the ball hit the front edge of the base and bounced over the head of the shocked Beltre, who jumped spread-eagle as the ball eluded him and rolled down the line. Raburn scored from first, and Cabrera settled into second with an improbable double.

Before Cabrera scored on Martinez’s triple, he jogged to third base on a foul ball, where Beltre informed him of the obvious.

“He said, ‘You were lucky,’ ” Cabrera recounted. “I said, ‘Yeah, I was lucky.’ ”

Perhaps, but lucky and tough is a winning formula that is taking the Tigers back to Texas.