Briggs: Looking for a sign, Cleveland fans? You got it as Guardians spoil Tigers' party

DETROIT — Some teams do their best work with their backs against the wall.

Others stumble backward through the plaster and crack their head open on the piping.

In October, the Guardians are usually the ones with the headache.

Usually .

Almost impossibly, Cleveland had been 0-11 in postseason games while facing elimination since its last such victory … 9,848 days ago in Game 6 of the 1997 World Series.

And, on Thursday, the same old song was playing in Motown.

Until …

Suddenly, with one big swing, it wasn’t.

Comerica Park went silent.

If you’re a Cleveland fan looking for a sign, let us submit the Guardians’ script-flipping 5-4 win over the Tigers in Game 4 of the AL Division Series before another record postseason crowd here.

David Fry’s two-run run blast into the left-field stands in the seventh inning was not just the first go-ahead, pinch-hit home run in Cleveland playoff history.

It was an October lifeline, and an invitation to believe that just maybe — for a franchise in enduring pursuit of its first World Series title since 1948 — this year will be different.

Just when winter loomed in the-deck circle — just when it looked like the Tigers would keep beating the house and the Guardians were going home — Cleveland’s bats thawed not a moment too soon.

And now we’ll get the reward this thrilling series deserves.

A deciding fifth game in Cleveland on Saturday night.

The Tigers will ride their superstar ace Tarik Skubal while the Guardians will be back in their own raucous confines, where they went a league-best 50-30 this year.

“Wow,” Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said.

“We’ll be ready,” Detroit’s A.J. Hinch said. “Everything that we've been playing for up to this point is now going to be decided on Saturday.”

For Cleveland, the night offered a sweet measure of redemption, and not just in the historic sense.

For a while, it looked like another one of those special nights for the Tigers, with everything coming up Detroit.

Its pitching chaos was working. Balls were dropping. And manager A.J. Hinch was pushing all the right buttons, like in the sixth inning, when he pinch hit for Spencer Torkelson and Wenceel Perez floated a two-out, run-scoring single to center.

The Tigers were up 3-2, the stadium was rocking, and the Guardians were looking at an unfortunate ending to their own excellent adventure.

In an alternate universe, we’d be talking today about Cleveland’s sad-sack offense — where is Jose Ramirez? — and closer Emmanuel Clase’s fateful transformation from regular-season GOAT to postseason goat.

But the beauty of October? Life comes at you faster than a Clase heater.

Everything can change, just like that, for better or worse.

Just ask Ramirez, the superstar slugger who brushed aside an 0-for-10 skid with a fifth-inning homer off Tyler Holton that sent a jolt through the Cleveland dugout.

Or Clase, who put his Game 2 flop behind him with a five-out save.

Or Fry, who delivered the truly big hit a Cleveland offense that entered Monday on a 20-inning scoreless streak needed in the worst way.

The odds may not have been on Fry’s side when he pinch-hit for Kyle Manzardo to face Beau Brieske with two outs in the seventh. He had just struck out against Brieske on Wednesday and was 0 for 3 with three strikeouts against the rookie this season.

“I didn't know that stat,” he said with a smile. “I knew I struck out against him, but I didn't know it was 0 for 3. That’s really good.”

But the postseason does not play favorites.

Vogt — whose gambles had not hit the day before — liked the right-on-right matchup, and, next thing you knew, the Guardians’ improbable all star blistered a 98-mph fastball 382 feet into the stands, and he was floating around the bases.

“You dream about it as a kid and think about it all the time,” Fry said. “And then it happens and it goes by real quick. I remember looking at the dugout and high-fiving [first base coach] Sandy [Alomar], and then you just black out. … It was a lot of fun.”

For good measure, Fry then coolly laid down a safety squeeze bunt to add an insurance run in the ninth.

And, yes, just like that, for a franchise that history suggests should brace for the worst in October, everything had changed.

At least for one night.

What a game. What a series.

See you Saturday in Cleveland.