Sorrento Bails Out Mariners Grand Slam Keys Five-Run Ninth Inning As M’S Stun Texas 9-5 In Chess Match

It was 104 degrees late in the afternoon and Johnny Oates and Lou Piniella swapped lies about a game their two teams were about to play.

“You manage the same way, April or July or September,” Piniella said.

“This is just another July game,” Oates said.

And when the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers squared off in the Texas heat Thursday, Oates used seven pitchers in nine innings and Piniella emptied his bench - using all 14 position players on his roster in a dramatic 9-5 Seattle victory.

“I used every conceivablale matchup to give us an edge,” Piniella said. “The more I make him go to his bullpen, the better I like it. Their strength is in their rotation, not their bullpen.”

The chess match was so complex that by the end of the night, most every scorecard in the stadium was a messy mass of names and arrows, scribblings and corrections.

“Lou doesn’t give away games no matter what month you’re in,” Alex Rodriguez said. “He uses computer printouts and hunches, his experience and his knowledge of this team - and the result tonight was our biggest win of the year.”

Hard to argue that point: Trailing 5-4 in the ninth inning, Seattle had blown a 4-1 lead and was in danger of falling seven games behind the Rangers in the West.

But Paul Sorrento, platooned against right-handed pitchers, hit the fifth grand slam of his career, against lefty Dennis Cook - a bolt into right-center field that blew the game open and left a crowd of 46,668 stunned.

Sorrento’s heroics bailed out Rafael Carmona, who had committed a mortal pitching sin in the seventh inning, hanging an 0-2 pitch that Dean Palmer turned into a three-run home run, pushing Texas to the 5-4 lead after Rusty Meacham had been brilliant for 6-1/3 innings. “I didn’t want to go in the dugout after that inning,” Carmona said.

Those fears weren’t groundless. Not only did he leave that 0-2 pitch floating in the strike zone, he committed a two-out error that brought Palmer to the plate.

“Palmer was 0 for 4 against Carmona with three strikeouts, he falls behind 0-2 and gets a hanging slider,” Piniella said. “I’m telling you, these kids are making me old.”

Two innings later, the M’s tried to give Piniella back a few years.

Texas brought in closer Mike Henneman to open the ninth, and though he had 20 saves this season, he carried a 7.00 earned run average to the mound. And watched it go up.

Edgar Martinez singled. Jay Buhner singled. Piniella had Brian Hunter bunt the two men into scoring position, and the Rangers intentionally walked catcher Dan Wilson to load the bases.

For the second time in the game, Piniella then sent up a pinch-hitter - and pinch-hit for that man when Oates called for a pitching change. This time, the matchup he finally ended up with was right-handed hitting John Marzano against Cook.

Cook jumped ahead in the count, 0-2, and then made Oates grow old by hitting Marzano with a fastball that forced home the tying run.

Sorrento followed with his homer, and Bobby Ayala blew through three Rangers in a 1-2-3 ninth to make a winner of Carmona (5-0) and pull the Mariners to within five games of Texas in the standings.

“It is July, there is a long way to go,” Piniella said, “and I know Oates and I threw everything we had at one another tonight. We’ll probably do the same thing the next three games. These are two good teams that don’t quit.”

The intensity in this one showed early. Oates was so angered by an umpire’s decision in the seventh inning that he officially protested the game. Three times, Rangers outfielders crashed into walls pursuing - and catching - long fly balls by Seattle hitters.

Meacham, meanwhile, got into and out of early trouble by inducing double-play ground balls in the first and second innings, then forcing the Rangers to leave the bases loaded in the third inning.

“My God, I was scrambling early, wasn’t I?” he asked. “The good thing was, I made the pitches when I had to. The bad thing was, I kept having to make them.”

Piniella waved away Meacham’s concerns. “He’s been a great pick-up for us. He’s done all we could have asked,” the manager said. “Rusty deserved to win this game - he got us into the seventh inning with a 4-1 lead, he did his job.”

Added Sorrento: “We’re scrapping, doing anything we can to stay close until we get a couple of our big guys back.”