Orel Dilemma Shades Of ‘88 Clouds Mariners Hershiser, Indians Strike Back

Listen: The Seattle Mariners have come unstuck in time.

Knee deep in the 1995 American League Championship Series, the Mariners found themselves in a vortex Wednesday, stumbling into a fissure that yanked them back to 1988 - when they weren’t a very good team and Orel Hershiser was the best pitcher in baseball.

“The only real difference I saw tonight was the uniform he was wearing,” Tim Belcher said.

A Dodger in ‘88, when he pitched Los Angeles to a World Championship, Hershiser was an Indian in Game 2 of the ‘95 ALCS, and his reconstructed right arm lifted Cleveland to a 5-2 victory over the Mariners that evened the series at 1-1.

The Mariners couldn’t hit him. The second-largest baseball crowd in Kingdome history - 58,144 - didn’t faze him. And the Bible calmed him.

If there is one thing the Mariners didn’t expect Wednesday, it was some clean-living, Bible-reading, 37-year-old relic from another league to stroll into the Thunderdome and stomp ‘em.

Stomp ‘em, he did.

Using an arsenal of pitches and a infield defense led by ex-Mariner Omar Vizquel, Hershiser shut Seattle out into the sixth inning, when Ken Griffey Jr. smacked his sixth home run of the postseason - matching the major league record.

“I don’t give a damn about the home run,” Junior said quietly. “We lost.”

In defeat, the Mariners achieved what manager Lou Piniella had hoped for, a split of the first two games of the series. But after winning Game 1 behind rookie Bob Wolcott, Seattle came in greedy - knowing a victory would put them up in the series, 2-0, with Randy Johnson pitching Game 3 on Friday in Cleveland.

“We had to win this one,” catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. said.

Even the low-key Hershiser acknowledged the Indians were in the first must-win game of the year.

“We felt we’d beaten ourselves in Game 1, that we’d given one away,” he said. “We couldn’t go home down 0-2 with Randy pitching. This one a game we all knew we had to have.”

Who better, then, than Hershiser to pitch it?

Matched against from Dodgers teammate Belcher, Hershiser used 107 pitches to get through eight innings, allowing one run - Junior’s blast - and just three singles.

A mixture of sinkers, sliders, changeups, cut fastballs and occasional curves were thrown with near pin-point precision, leaving the Mariners frustrated with nothing good to hit.

“Every at-bat we were trying to be patient, and I didn’t get one pitch I could have driven,” Tino Martinez said.

A pitcher who relies heavily on ground-ball outs, Hershiser got help from his infield - Belcher didn’t - and the game turned on the differences that don’t show up in a box score.

Shortstop Vizquel twice robbed his former teammates of hits, third baseman Jim Thome made two fine plays and, at first base, Paul Sorrento turned what appeared to be a Joey Cora single into an out with a diving stop.

Contrast that with an errorless defense by Seattle - but a defense that failed to turn a pivotal fifth-inning double play. Belcher had shut out the Indians into the fifth, given up a leadoff single to Manny Ramirez and then got a grounder to first base from Sorrento.

Tino Martinez flipped it to second base for the force, but shortstop Luis Sojo bobbled the ball and couldn’t make a return throw. Instead of two outs, none on, the Indians had one out and a man on first base.

They used that small crack to break through and score two runs. An inning later, Ramirez hit the first of two home runs - one against Belcher, the second against reliever Bobby Ayala - and Cleveland was up, 4-0.

“I said before the series the key for us wasn’t shutting them out, it was scoring runs against their pitching,” Piniella said. “We didn’t score enough of them tonight. Guys like Reggie Jackson, guys like Hershiser, they like the spotlight. They rise to the occasion. They’ve got experience. Hershiser has been in a lot of these games, and that helps immensely.”

Counting this one and a win in Cleveland’s three-game division series sweep of Boston, Hershiser is now 6-0 in postseason play. After a spectacular season in 1988, when he went 23-8, Hershiser has slowly rebounded from major surgery in 1990.

When the Indians signed him as a preseason free agent, Hershiser’s record since the operation was 35-37. This season, he went 16-6 and rediscovered an old art - pitching without pain.

“For a couple of years, everything I did hurt, every pitch,” he said. “I can’t tell you how satisfying this is. How satisfying and how humbling.”

Said Piniella: “We’re tied at 1-1 in this series, and we haven’t used our No. 1 pitcher. We’ve got the Unit and Andy Benes coming up fully rested. Yeah, the Indians have an explosive lineup, but so do we. I’m not uncomfortable at all going back there 1-1.”