The Yankees are like the killer in teenage slasher films. Every time you think they’re dead, they pop back up and continue slashing (or, this year anyway, hacking, but that’s another subject). The point: you cannot declare them dead until they are unequivocally and clinically dead. To do so is folly. They have annoyingly bounced back up way too many times for that.

So if you’re a member of the Detroit Tigers, you can’t feel at all comfortable saying or doing things which assume that the Yankees are dead. Or in the case of Quintin Berry, say things which assume that you won’t be back to Yankee Stadium for Games 6 or 7 in the ALCS. And he more or less did that in this quote to Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan last night about the lack of electricity in Yankee Stadium:

“This is a very easy place to play now,” Tigers outfielder Quintin Berry said. “Coming from Oakland, the fans there were so rowdy. It was easier to come here.”

We can debate how much crowd enthusiasm plays into the game on the field, and we can debate whether the ever-famous “bulletin board material” makes any difference when seasoned professionals are involved, but I just can’t imagine that I’d want anyone on my team saying stuff like that while the series was still going on.