DETROIT -- The New York Yankees have devolved into a loose assembly of aging, flailing ballplayers with no business competing for a World Series ring. Over three American League Championship Series games, they have reduced the number on their manager's jersey, 28, to someone's idea of a hoax.

In vain pursuit of the franchise's 28th championship, Joe Girardi pleaded with his hitters to make an adjustment, any adjustment, and even broke from a no-exceptions policy of never ridiculing his players in public when he wailed, "They are not going to put it on a tee for us."

And so how did the Yankees respond against Justin Verlander, a formidable pitcher but not an unbeatable one? By setting an impatient tone in the early innings Tuesday and by managing all of three Game 3 hits off him, including two singles from 38-year-old Ichiro Suzuki, who must be wondering why he ever agreed to gamble his own elusive title chase on this hopeless cause.

Raul Ibanez ran out of magic in Game 3. His teammates didn't have much to begin with. AP Photo/Paul Sancya

The Yankees didn't rouse from their series-long slumber until the ninth inning, when Eduardo Nunez fought off an 0-2 count, fought Verlander like his older, not-so-wiser teammates hadn't all night, and sent his ninth pitch -- a curveball -- whistling over the left-field wall.

Verlander recorded one more out before he was done at 132 pitches. Mark Teixeira would single off Phil Coke, and Robinson Cano would do the same to end his biblical 0-for-29 drought, and suddenly it felt like the Yankees were an honest-to-God big league team again. Before Nunez went deep in the ninth, his team had played 29 innings in this series and had failed to score in 28 of them.

In fact, the Yanks hadn't come close to scoring in this ALCS since Alex Rodriguez reportedly courted some female fans in Game 1.

But Raul Ibanez did something he hadn't in a while -- he lost a heated duel in the clutch -- and that was that. The Yankees were left to face the same impossible 3-0 deficit the 2004 Boston Red Sox faced before those Red Sox clawed their way into a forever corner of baseball lore at their longtime tormentors' expense.

The 2012 Yankees don't have a prayer of matching that feat, not with a lineup of zombies staggering toward the finish line of a season that probably feels a lot like 1964, the last year of prolonged pinstriped greatness before the dark ages set in.

"We dug ourselves a big hole," Teixeira said.

Does anyone really believe they can dig their way out without the injured Derek Jeter and the benched and emasculated A-Rod, two all-time greats good for a combined 6,205 hits?

Jeter's fractured ankle only further exposed a fractured team. Girardi was so overwhelmed by the Yankees' flaws, by their noncompetitive at-bats, that he failed to see Jeter's absence as another reason to play the only Yank who matched the captain's profile, Rodriguez, never mind A-Rod's history of homering off Detroit's ace.