Beat-Up Mariners Accept New Roles, Trip Orioles With Griffey, Buhner Out Of Action, Seattle Staves Off Baltimore 5-2

If Ken Griffey Jr. is the heart of the Seattle Mariners, maybe Felix Fermin is one of their kidneys.

That’s not as glamorous, but bodies need all kinds of organs to survive - and if the Mariners are to get along without Griffey for the next few months, they’re going to need everyone they’ve got.

On Sunday against the Baltimore Orioles, lots of Seattle body parts showed up in the Kingdome, and the Mariners used most of their anatomy to pull out a 5-2 victory.

If you’re auditioning organs, maybe Doug Strange could be a gall bladder. Filling in at third base, then second on Sunday, he had two hits and scored a pair of runs.

Chris Bosio could pass for a lung. He went 5 1/3 innings and for the sixth time in six starts, left with a lead. For the third time, the Seattle bullpen hung on and Bosio will wake up this morning with a 3-0 record.

And lots of lesser-known organs chipped in. Mike Blowers, pressed into duty after a first-inning collision sent Joey Cora to the hospital for X-rays, had a two-out, two-run single. Fermin pushed home another run with a timely ground ball. Catcher Dan Wilson broke a 1-1 tie in the fourth inning with an RBI single.

Smaller body parts, all, but each a contributor to life after Junior. And when manager Lou Piniella had to run into center field for the second time in two games Sunday to see how bad an injury was, it was something of an out-of-body experience.

On a pop fly by Jeffrey Hammonds - the second batter of the game - center fielder Alex Diaz and Cora, playing second base, collided face first, hard, and went down in a pile.

“My first thought was ‘Please, somebody get up,’ ” Bosio said. “It just took the breath out of you.”

When Piniella got to the players, both were dazed and bleeding.

“It looked like a flyweight fight and I couldn’t have picked a winner,” Piniella said. “They both wanted to stay in the game. Cora wasn’t sure where he was, but he knew he wanted to stay.”

Cora left to have his jaw X-rayed. Diaz went the distance, a full nine innings, before having a cut over his eye stitched.

“We’re a little short-handed, anyway, with Junior and Jay (Buhner) out,” Bosio said. “We can’t afford to lose more guys.”

After two days of designated hitting, Buhner’s tight hamstring was no better and, instead of returning to the outfield, he went to the bench to rest the injury. So the men who batted third and fourth in the Seattle batting order most of the last three years were both missing.

Their successors, Edgar and Tino Martinez, accounted for two hits and one run, and Tino Martinez turned in a run-saving play in the third inning. With the game tied and Orioles outfielder Brady Anderson at third base, Martinez made a diving stop of Rafael Palmeiro’s hard grounder and threw home in time to catch Anderson in a rundown.

It was the kind of play that doesn’t show up in the box score, but if the Mariners are to succeed this summer, it is the type of play they have to make.

“This was exactly the kind of effort it’s going to take from everybody,” Martinez said. “We’ve got to execute, move runners into scoring position, make the plays defensively, get the runs home. It won’t happen every time, but we’re a good team. We can win.”

It wasn’t a perfect game by any evaluation. The first man Bosio faced, Anderson, homered on the third pitch of the game. Seattle committed a pair of errors, and the bullpen had to pitch the last 3 2/3 innings.

Relievers Bill Risley and Bobby Ayala - make them the biceps of the team - finished this one, with Risley pitched 2 2/3 innings, and Ayala working the ninth for this seventh save.

Ayala allowed a lead-off single in that ninth inning but was spared major trouble when Luis Sojo, a late-inning defensive substitute at second base, robbed Bret Barberie of a single with a diving stop.

In front of a crowd of 16,785, the Mariners played well enough to win and did so, running their record to 16-13 - matching the best 29-game start in franchise history. At home, a record of 9-4 gives the Mariners the second-best home winning percentage in baseball.