Guzman Continues Mastery Over Mariners

A spectre from the past, fresh from the scrapheap where phenoms go to bury their dreams, Juan Guzman showed up at the Kingdome Saturday night and did what he has done all his life.

He beat the Seattle Mariners.

In front of 47,487 fans, the 29-year-old Guzman ran his lifetime record to 6-0 against Seattle, never allowing the team as many as two hits in an inning, and never allowing a runner to reach second base after the first inning.

“He got that lead, he got better,” Ken Griffey Jr. said. “And we got in the position where we had to go for that two-run home run - and we didn’t get it.”

Guzman, Guzman … you thought he was done?

So did much of baseball after the right-hander who once went 16-5 fell to 4-14 last season. In the last two years, his earned run averages have been 5.68 and 6.32.

“I think he had a lot of little ailments last year that just ganged up on him,” said Mariners pitcher Paul Menhart, a former Blue Jay. “He was mad all last year. This year, he’s healthy.”

For a man who has run the gauntlet in baseball - from Cy Young Award consideration to the brink of being released - there has always been one litmus test Guzman could pass.

Bring him the Mariners and he would win. A man with a fine career record of 59-37, Guzman is undefeated against one team: Seattle.

Seattle had one point-blank shot at Guzman in this one, and the Mariners missed. After Menhart struggled, walking the first two Toronto batters he faced, he escaped the first inning trailing just 1-0.

Two outs into the Seattle half of the first, Griffey tied it, hammering his sixth home run of the season into the netting on the right-field foul pole.

Edgar Martinez then walked, Otis Nixon booted Jay Buhner’s fly ball for an error and Paul Sorrento walked to load the bases. Doug Strange then lined a shot at shortstop Alex Gonzalez … and Seattle never came close to scoring again.

Over the next eight innings, Toronto broke through for a pair of one-run rallies to push ahead 3-1. Seattle never broke through.

“We didn’t do much of anything offensively,” Seattle manager Lou Piniella said. “We had runners on base in the sixth and seventh innings and the next guy up grounded into a double play.”

Menhart went six strong innings, touched for all three Toronto runs, before Tim Davis made his first appearance of the season and added three scoreless innings.

On defense, Seattle played spectacularly at times to fend off Toronto threats. At shortstop, Luis Sojo twice made diving stops of line drives headed toward the outfield. At third base, Strange made a sprawling stop-and-throw of a Joe Carter smash.

Griffey turned in another of those did-you-see-that catches, outrunning a fifth-inning shot off the bat of Carlos Delgado and snagging it at the wall in deepest center field.

For the Mariners, however, it was a night in which the oldest of baseball cliches was disproved: You win with pitching and defense.

They needed four runs to go with that combo, and came up well short of the mark.

“Juan is pitching like he did three or four years ago,” Jays manager Cito Gaston said. “And three or four years ago, there was nobody better.”

After winning eight consecutive games, Seattle has lost two in a row.