Leave It To Orel To Silence M’S In Second Game

Long before anyone in Seattle had heard of Randy Johnson, there was Orel Hershiser.

He wasn’t 6-foot-10, he didn’t throw 100 mph in an 85 mph zone and he may even have offered a civil “Hello” to his teammates on the days he pitched. He didn’t affect the look of an old grunge-band refugee. He was vaguely bookish, his ferocity cloaked, no more outwardly threatening than Wally Cleaver.

But for a couple of seasons in the ‘80s, he was the Big Unit - better, actually - before the Big Unit ruled.

Guess what? He’s ba-ack.

Reincarnated with the Cleveland Indians, Hershiser sucked all the sound out of the Kingdome on Wednesday night - making the precaution of earplugs redundant, saving a run on gargle today.

And singlehandedly, too.

What the Angels and Yankees - and the Indians in Game 1 of this American League Championship Series - couldn’t do in ensemble, Hershiser did pitch by pitch in a 5-2 victory over the Mariners that squared the ALCS at a victory apiece.

Now the spent Domies must yield to the revivalists in Cleveland, who have been all but slapped across the face with a glove and challenged to make it shake in the Jake by the lake.

Shake it will. That will not save their Tribe from having to step in against Johnson on Friday.

But the Unit will have to stand pretty tall to top Hershiser.

Aside from a solo home run by Ken Griffey Jr. in the sixth inning, Hershiser was borderline untouchable. At one point, he threw 29 of 32 pitches for strikes. He painted corners, finessed the throttle and generally left Seattle’s hitters as frustrated as if they’d locked their keys in their cars.

“I’m a pretty aggressive hitter,” said Tino Martinez, one of five starters saddled with an oh-fer. “But I didn’t get a lot of good pitches to hit. He pitched me differently every time.

“Inside, outside, slider down and in - it was impossible to get a read on the guy.”

In getting out Edgar Martinez with Junior aboard in the eighth, Hershiser brought the crowd of 58,144 - the second-largest in Kingdome history - to utter silence.

The P.A. announcer alertly slipped in a plug for a stadium rally in Olympia today at noon, but nobody was listening - and many were headed for the doors.

They like their bandwagon in overdrive here.

For one old friend, watching Hershiser was an eerie flashback.

Seattle starter Tim Belcher - who pitched well enough to give the M’s a chance - was in the same rotation that pitched the Los Angeles Dodgers to the World Championship in 1988. Together, they accounted for six of the Dodgers’ eight post-season victories, but Hershiser’s numbers stood alone: 23 wins, eight shutouts, 59 consecutive scoreless innings.

So what separated him Wednesday from his Cy Young form?

“Not much more than the uniform, really,” conceded Belcher.

That the uniform is different, Hershiser thinks, is the fault of the baseball strike.

After radical surgery to repair his shoulder in 1990, Hershiser was not the same dominant pitcher the next few seasons that spoiled the Dodgers in ‘88. But he felt himself beginning to regain comparable strength in off-season workouts last winter.

“My fastball picked up three to five mph,” he said. “But because of the strike, the Dodgers weren’t able to see my continued recovery. The first team to see it was the Indians, after they’d signed me as a free agent.”

L.A.’s loss, Seattle’s nightmare.

“He’s getting close,” said Belcher. “I’ve read some comments where he feels his velocity is coming back. I don’t know what the radar guns are reading, but I haven’t seen one of those that can get anybody out anyway. But stuff-wise, he’s close. That sinker he throws inside to lefties that comes back - he got Vince Coleman on one of those that was nasty. That was a big pitch for him in ‘88. And his breaking pitch seems to have more bite.”

And at 37, Hershiser’s bulldoggedness hasn’t abated a bit.

“I really feel a burden not to let the team down,” he said. “A pitcher is so responsible to get the team off to that first good step.”

Cleveland hasn’t really needed a Johnson-type savior on the mound this season - how much have you read about the Tribe’s pitching staff, anyway? - but Hershiser was a reasonable facsimile the second half. When the Indians clinched early, he was able to use September “as almost a mini-spring training,” to perfect some pitches.

“Now I’m pretty doggone close to ‘88,” he said. “It’s hard for me to get those words out, because I’ve had to come so far. To think that I pitched the first year or so with the Dodgers after coming back from surgery with pain almost every outing, and now to say I’m almost completely back, well, it’s very humbling and fantastic.”

The humbling part, the Mariners can identify with now.

The fantastic part?

Well, Randy Johnson hasn’t pitched yet.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review