Seattle Pitching A Hit With Cordova, Twins M’S Fall 8-6 On Fleming’s Faux Paus; Griffey’s Two-Run Shot Goes For Naught

Two big-league teams played by Little League rules Friday - the team that makes the last mistake loses.

It went back and forth for a while, with the Seattle Mariners committing one error, the Minnesota Twins making another. And then Seattle turned a one-run game over to reliever Dave Fleming in the seventh inning.

Point, set, match. In the span of six pitches, Fleming had gotten one out, thrown a wild pitch, fallen behind hot-hitting rookie Marty Cordova and given up a three-run home run that put the Twins’ 8-6 win out of reach despite two ninth-inning homers by Seattle.

In a game filled with mistakes - and opportunities each team used to score - Fleming’s 2-0 fastball was the biggest and last, and came on his first relief appearance.

“It’s reached the point where you wonder, is it mechanics or am I that much worse than I was,” Fleming said. “I thought that pitch was going to be low and away.”

Manager Lou Piniella hadn’t wanted to bring Fleming into a jam, but had little choice. The Mariners bullpen, which had pitched 14 innings in the two previous nights, was all but out of commission.

Bill Risley was being saved for one inning if the team needed a closer, but Bobby Ayala, Jeff Nelson, Rafael Carmona and Bob Wells were unavailable. So when starter Tim Davis got into the seventh inning and staggered - his longest outing in the major leagues - the options were limited.

“That was the only positive tonight - we rested the guys who needed rest and the bullpen should be close to full strength again,” Piniella said. “But I couldn’t bring them in tonight.”

Fleming’s gopher pitch wasn’t the only mistake made in the Metrodome:

Twins rookie Brad Radke, in his third big-league start, put a fastball in the wrong part of the strike zone in the first inning and Ken Griffey Jr. launched it for a two-run home run and a 2-0 lead.

Second baseman Joey Cora dropped a pop fly in the Twins’ second, leading to a pair of unearned runs that tied the game 2-2.

With a runner on second base in the third inning, Griffey hit a towering pop fly to center field, where Jerald Clark lost the ball and ran the wrong way - toward the fence - allowing the ball to drop for an RBI double.

“I knew I didn’t hit it that hard, but I saw him going back and I thought, ‘Maybe I did hit it that hard,”’ Griffey said.

“I felt like I was caught out there with my pants down,” Clark said.

Nursing a 4-2 lead in the fourth, the Mariners watched Dave McCarty line a ball to right field that Jay Buhner hesitated on, dove for and missed. It became an RBI triple.

“Historically, weird things happen in this park,” Piniella said. “I played a routine fly ball into an inside-the-park home run here once.”

Oddly enough, stirred into the mix Friday were a few marvelous defensive plays. Rookie Darren Bragg threw out a runner at third base in the second inning - his American League-leading fourth assist - and Griffey picked up McCarty’s sixth-inning single and threw out Cordova at the plate, where Dan Wilson held on despite a jarring collision.

For all that, the game was tied at 4 after six innings. Davis, laboring, struck out the first Twin he faced in the seventh, but his first pitch to Pat Meares became a solo home run and the first Minnesota lead of the night, 5-4.

“He didn’t pitch great, he didn’t pitch terrible,” Piniella said. “He gave us an average game and gave us some innings.”

After Kirby Puckett singled and Pedro Munoz walked, Fleming was brought in to face a largely right-handed lineup - the kind he faced in most of his 89 major-league starts.

He got a fielders choice ground ball from Clark that nearly became an inning-ending double play. When it didn’t, Fleming faced Cordova, a 25-year-old outfielder who’d homered in his last three games. Fleming fell behind in the count, then went for a corner.

He missed, Cordova didn’t, and the ball went over the wall in right for an 8-4 lead.

That done, ninth-inning home runs by Tino Martinez and Buhner only closed the final gap and Rick Aguilera was summoned to close the game, which he did.