Now that’s how you end a drought. The city was lit. The sun was a diamond. The air was cool and crisp with anticipation. It was a fall day that felt like spring, and the mob scene around Comerica Park was wild yet serious — like Opening Day, but with consequences.

And big consequences. After 10 empty Octobers, playoff baseball had finally returned to Detroit, in all its tense exuberance. Four road games had already transpired, and now, at last, a home contest, with the ALDS all tied up. By rights, a group as young as these Detroit Tigers should have been overwhelmed with the pressure of hometown expectations.

But this unlikely team joyfully defies convention, from its anybody’s-guess lineups to its chaotic pitching changes. Nothing is predictable.

Everything is delight.

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“We’re treating baseball like a game,” catcher Jake Rogers would say.

There’s no explaining how effective that is.

So it should surprise no one that the seemingly carefree Tigers are now one win away from playing for the American League pennant, or that they used six pitchers to win Wednesday’s Game 3, or that Riley Greene drove in the first run in the first inning, or that Rogers, the No. 9 hitter, doubled and scored the second run, or that the lyrically named Beau Brieske struck out three of his six straight outs and left to a thunderous ovation.

Or this: In the sixth inning, with Detroit clinging to a 2-0 lead over Cleveland, Spencer Torkelson came to the plate to try and shake a drought of his own. Having come up empty in his previous 14 appearances this postseason, Torkelson wasn’t having as much fun as some of his teammates. He no doubt heard the whispers. As the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, his career has been a pinball game of flash and fizzle. He rises to the big leagues. He gets sent back down to the minors. He earns his way back with a terrific sophomore season. Then he slumps, and gets sent down again.

Now, in an October nobody expected, here was Torkelson at the plate, where he wanted to be, but not what he wanted to be. No hits. Seven strikeouts. A .000 batting average in four games.

But …

“In October,” A.J. Hinch would say, “you’re one swing away from having a completely different emotional reaction as a player.”

And here came the pitch …

'Just grind, stay in the fight'

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Torkelson got around on an inside offering from reliever Eli Morgan and rocketed the ball to deep left field, as definitive as a judge’s gavel bang. It made it to the wall, Colt Keith made it home, Torkelson made it to second base and the RBI made it 3-0, which, given the way the Tigers have been pitching, might as well have been 300.

The largest crowd for a postseason game in Comerica Park history went nuts.

“What were you thinking during that at-bat?” Torkelson was asked after the win.

“Just grind, stay in the fight,” he said. “Just keep going. That’s really it. In the playoffs, you don’t get caught up in the numbers, you’re just trying to win baseball games. And we’re doing that, so I was pretty happy.”

Then he added, “It felt good to come through today.”

And that’s what Hinch was talking about. One at-bat. One contribution. And you feel different about yourself, just as the Tigers, once considered an also-ran of the 2024 season, now feel different about themselves. They have no doubts anymore. No hesitations.

“No one really thought we’d be here,” Matt Vierling said, repeating an analysis he has done many times. “We kind of played with house money toward the end (of the season). No one thought we’d make it to October. ... We kind of feel like we got no pressure, (so) we can just keep on going.”

As if to prove this, consider what Vierling did the inning after Torkelson’s heroics. With runners on first and second and, the tying run at the plate, he leaped for a shot off the bat of designated hitter David Fry, a ball that a cannon could not have launched any faster.

Vierling’s jump was perfectly timed. His arm nearly came out of its socket, but he snagged the ball the way a toad’s tongue snags a fly. End of threat. End of inning.

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“What were you thinking when Fry hit that one?” someone asked.

“I really didn’t have time to think,” he said.

The Tigers could paste that sentence above their locker room door.

Thinking is overrated

Because it’s not thinking that has gotten them this far. Not thinking they are playing above their heads. Not thinking that this winning percentage, the best in the major leagues the past two months, is some kind of fluke. Not thinking that their roster, compared to, say, the LA Dodgers, is like a high school cast of “Pippin” being compared to Broadway.

Thinking is overrated. Doing is what matters. And right now, the Tigers are doing exactly what they need to do. Their pitching decisions, the baseball equivalent of pickup sticks, have held Cleveland scoreless for 25 of the 27 innings they’ve played this series. Their hitting is coming from everywhere, be it Parker Meadows in the leadoff spot, or Rogers at the bottom of the order. Rogers, at .333, actually has the highest batting average of the starters. And this is a guy who has fought his whole career to bring his hitting up to the level of his catching.

“It’s fun, man,” he said, of his offensive contributions. “It’s like the age-old thing A.J. says: ‘Catch a winner, everything after that is a just a bonus.’ “

I guess we’re in bonus time right now.

Now, it’s true, all this gooey joy could melt if Thursday’s game is lost and the Tigers have to return to Cleveland for a winner-take-all Game 5. But honestly, even if that happened, why should anyone assume it’s a negative? These Tigers have been coming through against the odds for so long now, maybe it’s time to reconsider the odds.

“We’re all human, we can hear the noise,” Torkelson said. “We know how close we are. But it all goes back to one pitch at a time, one out at a time. …

“Things started to click a couple weeks, a month ago, whenever it was. So that’s what’s worked. And if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

That’s how you end a drought. Torkelson’s. The Tigers’. The fans’. A 10-year thirst was finally quenched. As the crowd teemed into the streets, and the October sun set into a clear autumn sky, the simple satisfying conclusion was that we had just witnessed a perfect baseball day.

Why not do it again?

Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Tigers thirst-quenching run leaves no time to think