‘Bone’ Atones, But Not Before Some Suffering

Having gone into reverse with the foolish imprecision of a nervous driver’s education student, Seattle Mariners right fielder Jay Buhner was doomed to live with more than his eighth-inning gaffe Friday night.

Buhner suspected he also had to live with the wrath of Randy Johnson. A handful of outs away from giving the Mariners a 2-1 lead in the American League Championship Series, Johnson was thrust into a jam he didn’t deserve when Buhner backpedaled prematurely on Alvaro Espinoza’s eighth-inning fly ball. Instead of representing the second out of a routine inning, Espinoza was on second base and the re-energized Jacobs Field crowd was in second gear.

“I turned and looked at Randy. He gave me that look,” said Buhner, recalling how he contributed unnecessary suspense to a thriller Johnson was threatening to win pretty much on his own. Nobody’s scorching sermon, nobody’s profanity-laced lecture could’ve been one-tenth of one-percent as eloquent as the attack-dog glare Jay “Bone” Buhner insists he got from the pitchers’ mound.

Thing is, Johnson’s glance lasted just a moment. But Buhner’s soul-searching was the stuff of hours, days - who knows? - maybe even years.

“When the game goes into extra innings,” Buhner went on, “you have plenty of time to stand out there and reflect on what happened - and what could happen. I tried to stay as positive as I could. It’s tough, though. It really, really is.”

Turns out there’s only one way to extricate a Bone out of the dog house: With a stick.

The Mariners had two runners on in the top of the 11th when Buhner, standing in against hard-throwing righthanded reliever Eric Plunk, crushed an 0-1 pitch into the right-center-field stands. Not only did the shot give Seattle a 5-2 lead, it pulled the plug on much of the electricity Cleveland has waited 41 years to generate.

It was Buhner’s second homer of the game, his third of the series. On a team whose collective batting average is .210, the right fielder’s hitting is a major reason the Marines are two games away from the World Series.

And yet …

He is a pro, driven by subtle professional standards that only his peers entirely appreciate. For Buhner to break back early on that fly ball was to renounce the wealth of experience in his defensive arsenal.

That’s what made his error so confounding. It wasn’t one of aggressiveness; it wasn’t one of poor judgment. It was one of total, absolute brain lock: The Bone going Bonehead.

“I would have to go back to high school,” Buhner said, challenged to recall a similarly conspicuous defensive lapse. In high school, a ball “hit me right between the eyes. It knocked me out, too, so I didn’t have to feel stupid walking off the field; they carried me off. That’s the last time something like this happened. I still can’t believe it.

“I take pride and joy in my defense,” continued Buhner, who, in fact, made a nice grab on Sandy Alomar’s fast-falling liner moments previous. “As an outfielder, you never start back-peddling that soon. That is taboo No. 1.”

Taboo No. 2, apparently, is attempting to engage Buhner in the warm-and-fuzzy psychology of contrived optimism. Pity the perky teammate who might’ve attempted to console the veteran outfielder with a “keep your head up!”

Said Lou Piniella: “When he came into the dugout, he was mad as hell. I wasn’t going to fool with him.

“You know, I’ve never seen Jay do that. I’ve been with him three years, and he’s always been sure-handed - as sure-handed as sure-handed can get. I guess it goes to show you anything can happen.”

Anything happened in Game 3, to be sure. The Mariners, playing to cement a return visit to the Kingdome, won a game behind their reliable warhorse - long after their reliable warhorse had departed.

They won with Edgar Martinez and Tino Martinez extending their hitting slump to a collective 1 for 22. They won despite giving the Indians the gift of extra innings, where they were 14-0 in 1995. (The Mariners had a 5-7 record).

They won because a sure-handed-as-sure-handed-can-get right fielder needed to atone for his lapse.

“Hey, that’s just part of the game,” said Johnson. “Jay is a Gold Glove outfielder; he gets overlooked every year. But it’s great he picked it up and hit the home run. In a perfect world, Jay makes the catch and we win 2-1 in nine innings. Instead, we had to wait until the 11th inning. But it still ended perfectly. We won.”

And what of The Big Unit Glare Johnson supposedly fired off from the mound?

“He must have some pretty good eyes if he saw me from that far,” said Johnson. “I winked at him.”