Don’t expect the Detroit Tigers to feel sorry for the Chicago White Sox, from whom they snatched the American League Central championship on the third-to-last day of the season after the White Sox had led the division for all but eight days since May 28. In 2009 the Tigers were in first place from May 10 until the next-to-last day of the season when the Minnesota Twins tied them. The teams remained tied by winning their last regularly scheduled games, and the Twins won a one-game playoff, 6-5 in 12 innings, two days later.

The Tigers’ triumph this season is notable for two primary reasons: they were favored to win the division title but had to rally late to do it, and they did it behind the awesome, rare performance of Miguel Cabrera, their third baseman, who became the first winner of the Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski of Boston in 1967.

Cabrera’s .330 batting average, 44 home runs and 139 runs batted in led the American League and should make him the A.L. most valuable player. His value to the Tigers was epitomized in the game in which they clinched the title. He collected four hits, including a home run, in the 6-3 victory over Kansas City.

On the subject of awards, I believe Bob Melvin snatched the A.L. manager of the year award right out of Buck Showalter’s hands as the season ended. As admirable a job as Showalter did in directing the Baltimore Orioles to their first winning season since 1997, how can you ignore what Melvin did in overtaking the Texas Rangers, the A.L. West winner the last two years, who led the division this season from the fourth day?

The Rangers still don’t know what hit them and may not have time to recover before their one-game wild-card playoff with the Orioles, who at least had the long-running experience of sticking with the New York Yankees but being unable to dislodge them from first place. The Orioles tied the Yankees for first on 10 days in the last month of the season but never inched ahead of them.

The Rangers owned their first place. Winning two consecutive titles and holding what seemed like a commanding lead on a third gives you that feeling. The Athletics never seemed to be in the race. They were nine games behind the Rangers at the All-Star break and even further back (13) 10 days before that. Much has been made about the Yankees squandering a 10-game lead they held a few days after the break, but the A’s ascent to the top of their division happened too suddenly and too recently for there to be time to generate much talk about the Rangers’ collapse.

Let us, however, appreciate what the A’s and Melvin have done. To start with, Lew Wolff’s $59 million payroll was the lowest in the major leagues this season. The team with the next lowest payroll to get to the post-season is the Cincinnati Reds, whose $87 million payroll ranks 20^th. This is the first time a team with the lowest payroll has made the post-season.

The average rank of the 10 playoff payrolls is 12.8, slightly higher than last year’s 13.375. Had the White Sox and not the Tigers won the A.L. Central, the average playoff payroll rank would have been 13.4. That would have been the highest average in the 18-year wild-card era. As it is, the post-season payrolls rank 1^st, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 9^th, 15^th, 16^th, 19^th, 20^th and 30^th. Among the high-priced missing are the Phillies, the Red Sox, the Angels, the Dodgers and the Cubs.

Besides having the lowest payroll, the Athletics have another unusual playoff component. They have the youngest team in the playoffs. Most notable among their youngsters is their all-rookie starting pitching rotation, headed by Jarrod Parker and Tommy Milone. As far as I know, no team whose starters were all rookies has won the World Series. Feel free to tell me if you know otherwise.

Although the Athletics have good rookie pitchers, they don’t have any hitters who rise to the level of Triple Crown hitters. Those pitchers will face the new Triple Crown winner in the division series.

Cabrera is the first Latin player and the 10^th player in history to achieve the Triple Crown (Ted Williams and Rogers Hornsby each won two Triple Crowns). Some reference books or Web sites list four earlier players, including Ty Cobb, but Elias Sports Bureau doesn’t include them in its record book because runs batted in didn’t become an official statistic until 1920.

In a statement issued by Major League Baseball, Frank Robinson, a major league executive and a 1966 Triple Crown achiever with the Orioles, said, “Miguel has been outstanding all year long by coming to play every day, showing his discipline at the plate and making the most of his great talent.”

That’s not what anyone was saying about Cabrera exactly three years ago. The Tigers, trying to hold off the Twins, played the White Sox on the final weekend of the 2009 season. After the Tigers’ 5-1 loss Friday night, Cabrera went out drinking with some of his White Sox buddies, got home around 6 o’clock Saturday morning decidedly drunk and got into a scrape with his wife, who called police.

He failed a blood alcohol test but was not charged. Later that morning Dave Dombrowski, the Detroit manager, picked him up at the police station, and he played that night, failing to hit in four at-bats as the Tigers lost. They lost the next day, too, forcing the one-game playoff, which they also lost.

Cabrera had another drinking incident in Florida last January when he was arrested on drunk driving charges. The arresting police officer said that while he was stopped, Cabrera grabbed a bottle of Scotch and started drinking from it.

Cabrera obviously was better with a bat this year than he was with a bottle.