Piniella Just Crazy About Belcher After M’S Pitcher Improves To 3-0

Two things kept Tim Belcher sane last year, and neither of them was baseball.

One was a farm in Ohio, the other a daughter, Maddison Dawn, who arrived the first day of the strike.

“Without them, I don’t know if I’d be here now,” Belcher said of his major-league career. “Without those two things … building a dream house near where my wife and I grew up and then having a baby we’d been trying to have for years kept me sane.”

This season, he’s returning the favor. He’s helped keep Lou Piniella sane, and on Friday Belcher ran his record to 3-0 as Seattle routed the free-falling New York Yankees, 11-1.

“What a pickup he’s been,” Piniella said. “I try hard not to think about where we’d be without him.”

Coming off a pair of no-decisions in which he’d pitched 15 innings and allowed just two runs, Belcher gave the Yankees just one run in seven innings in his fifth start. It wasn’t quite that simple and, without help, wouldn’t have been nearly as pretty.

The play that kept Belcher in the game - and New York out of it - came in the sixth inning with two outs and two Yankees runners on base. Mike Stanley drove a ball toward the wall in right-center field.

Ken Griffey Jr. might have caught the ball, but he wasn’t out there. Alex Diaz was, and the 26-year-old Brooklyn native took off like a man trying to escape the Bronx. At the last possible instant he dove, caught the ball fully extended and then skidded along the warning track and into the base of the fence.

“That was my best ever,” Diaz said, showing badly scraped forearms. “I want that video.”

Granted, Seattle led at the time, 7-1, but if the ball drops its 7-3 and the Yankees have a man on third base with Don Mattingly due up.

Belcher pitched through the sev enth, and turned the game over to rookie Ron Villone, who finished with two scoreless innings and the Mariners made the ninth much easier by rolling another four off reliever Scott Bankhead.

Tino Martinez, whose solo second-inning home run put Seattle ahead, 1-0, ripped a bases-loaded double with two outs in the sixth inning that scored three more runs. And in the ninth, Edgar Martinez and rookie Darren Bragg slammed two-run homers.

Belcher was in the clubhouse by then, watching on television and grinning the grin of rejuvenation.

A year ago, at age 32, he was a Detroit Tiger enduring a summer in which he was 7-15 with a 5.89 earned run average. By the time the strike hit, he knew he was going to be a free agent and wasn’t too sure anyone else cared.

So he and wife Teresa went on with life. They built their dream home in Ohio, welcomed their first child and, when the strike ended and no one called, Belcher when to the free-agent training camp in Florida.

“I can’t even begin to tell you what last year was like for me professionally,” Belcher said.

Piniella managed the righthander when both were in Cincinnati. He saw Belcher twice in 1994.

“The first time, early in the year, he wasn’t throwing well,” Piniella said. “The second time, just before the strike, he looked like his old self. He had better velocity, better location. I thought he could still pitch.”

Notes

Seattle pinch hitters this season are batting .344 with seven RBIs and a trio of Mariners - Chad Kreuter, Doug Strange and Alex Diaz - have three pinch-hits each… . Dan Wilson was originally in the lineup Friday but with a day game today, the Mariners decided to give him the night off before catching Randy Johnson today… . Left-hander Tim Davis has a tender left shoulder and the Tacoma Rainiers pitcher won’t pitch for at least two weeks on doctor’s orders.