Yankees Take Mariners Long Historic Playoff Game Ends On Leyritz’s Hr In 15th

Norm Charlton said it before the game - “All you ask of yourself and your teammates is, don’t leave anything on the field.”

No one did Wednesday.

Not the Seattle Mariners, who took three leads and got a 12th-inning home run from Ken Griffey Jr., and couldn’t make any of them hold up. And not the New York Yankees, who answered every Seattle surge in a game that lasted five hours and 13 minutes.

When it ended, it ended hard for the Mariners - Jim Leyritz’s 15th-inning home run off Tim Belcher won Game 2 of the American League division series 7-5 and left Seattle trailing the best-of-five-game series, 2-0.

“We’re down,” manager Lou Piniella said, “but we’re not out. Not yet.”

They are, however, as close as they can be to a postseason exit, facing only one improbable possibility: They must beat the New York Yankees three consecutive games in the Kingdome, beginning Friday when they’ll roll out the one weapon unavailable to them thus far.

Randy Johnson.

The Yankees have faced literally everyone else the Mariners have - and survived the encounters nicely.

This time, they absorbed the best the Mariners had and still won.

“Every time we took a lead, they came back,” Piniella said. “And every time they came back, we scored again. We played with heart, and this was one of the best games I’ve ever been associated with.”

For a team with no October experience, this game may well be remembered by Seattle fans as a legend of the fall. No defeat ever meant more. None was ever closer to a victory.

Griffey, following up two Game 1 home runs on Tuesday night, silenced an unruly crowd of 57,126 fans with a 12th-inning home run against closer John Wetteland that gave the Mariners a 5-4 lead. It lasted half an inning.

It was, on the field, the kind of baseball that makes October memorable for the teams who play beyond the regular season. These are two franchises that have hungered for a post-season and, having reached one, have decided to enjoy immerse themselves in dramatic moments.

Don Mattingly, perhaps the last link to the Yankees teams of old, hit the first playoff home run of his career. Paul O’Neill, denied an October by the strike last year, hit another - a long blast in the seventh inning that tied the game.

Yet from the outset, it was the Mariners who forced the action. Trailing 1-0 in the series, in front of a hostile Yankees crowd, they responded to the admonition of veteran Charlton.

“Whatever you got, don’t leave it on the field,” he said.

Charlton certainly didn’t. He pitched four gritty innings of relief, and his performance was just one that kept the Mariners in what must have been the most dramatic game in franchise history.

Vince Coleman broke through first, hammering an Andy Pettitte fastball for an opposite-field home run in the third inning. The Yankees scrambled back to tie in the fifth inning.

Edgar Martinez doubled to open the Seattle sixth, then failed to score from third base when Mike Blowers’ infield grounder was grabbed by a diving shortstop, Tony Fernandez, who flipped the ball to second baseman Randy Velarde, who fired to first for the second out of the inning.

It was the kind of mental mistake that can haunt a player - especially when exposed on national television - but Tino Martinez made it a moot point with a two-out RBI single that got Edgar Martinez home for a 2-1 lead.

Andy Benes took that lead to the mound in the sixth inning and gave up back-to-back home runs to Ruben Sierra and Mattingly that drove that huge crowd into an absolute frenzy. After watching debris reign down on outfielder Jay Buhner in right field, Piniella walked onto the field and waved his team into the dugout.

Down 3-2, the Mariners struck back in the seventh inning, with hits by Joey Cora, Coleman and Luis Sojo to tie the game.