Johnson Pitches M’S Out Of Another Jam

Suppose Randy Johnson has any plans for tonight?

Think he could do Lou and the fellas one more favor?

Any chance the Mariners might just hand him the baseball and have him save Seattle’s act one more time?

Or perhaps the M’s are thinking of suiting him up and sending him down to Olympia to throw a few high, hard ones at our courageous conservatives who don’t dare exhale - much less stick out their necks to fund a new stadium - without a public vote.

If he can handle that, we’ll let him have a crack at health care.

OK, so maybe Randy Johnson can’t do it all - but it’s obvious the Mariners can’t live without him.

And live on they do, having outlasted the New York Yankees 7-4 in Game 3 of their best-of-five American League Division Series in front of the second-largest baseball crowd in Kingdome history - 57,944, minus one tomato-tossing vacuum-skull who was being fingerprinted about the time the M’s were breaking this one open.

The victory saved the Mariners from the shame of being swept out of the post-season in three games - a fate that befell the Red Sox and Dodgers this same night.

Seattle’s reward: yet another date with sudden-death today.

“But that’s the way it was all September,” said right fielder Jay Buhner. “It’s not something that’s new to us. Trying to win the wild card, then trying to catch California, then the playoff game and now this.

“The great thing is, getting to do it at home in front of this crowd.”

The scary thing is, trying to do it without Johnson on the mound.

It was the Biggest of All Units the Mariners called on to rescue them Monday in the one-game playoff against California. It was Johnson they pushed out into the footlights to face New York, knowing the show would close if he couldn’t remember his lines.

It was Johnson they sent out to start 30 games this baseball season. Ten of those times, he wasn’t the winner - but the M’s almost always were. Twenty-seven times.

Make that 28. With apologies to Edgar Martinez, the people’s choice hereabouts, this is your American League MVP.

And if you’re manager Lou Piniella, don’t you have Johnson pitch to the leadoff hitter today - to at least take advantage of this goodluck charm if you can’t wring another win out of his arm?

Well, of course not - though it did cross at least one Mariner’s mind.

Indeed, Vince Coleman - whose triple triggered the rally that ripped the heart out of the Yankees - lamented that it came an inning too late.

“We were hoping to get Randy a couple more runs early,” said Coleman, “so he could be a lot more relaxed - and hopefully get him out of the game, maybe by the fifth inning, so he could come back and pitch tomorrow.”

It was a joke. Sort of.

But you can understand why Randy Johnson trudged to the Kingdome mound on Monday feeling as if he “had the weight of all of Washington on me.”

“My last two starts have either been win or go home,” he said. “I like being in that situation - but not every start.”

Compounding the pressure was fatigue - not so much against California, when he was working with just three days rest, but when he was asked to do it again Friday night.

“I was tired - physically and mentally I was drained after my last start,” acknowledged Johnson, who carried his compadres into the eighth inning. “I was pitching on emotion and adrenaline out there and I think my teammates knew it was important to get me some runs.”

Certainly they knew it after the top of the sixth, when the Yankees managed to load the bases with two out only to see their captain, Don Mattingly - something of a Johnson nemesis over the years - strike out on three straight sliders.

If you are late to the Seattle bandwagon - and it’s no crime if you are - then you may have missed the evolution of Randy Johnson, who when he came aboard the Listing Ship Mariner (and for several summers thereafter) was celebrated mostly for being 6-foot-10 and having a fastball that could kill a moose (preferably the Mariner Moose).

“He isn’t just a power pitcher,” said Mattingly, who whiffed three times against Johnson. “He’s a pitcher, period. I’ve had some success against him in the past, but the difference tonight was that he got the breaking ball over on me all night long.”

Shrugged Yankees manager Buck Showalter, “Comparatively speaking, he wasn’t carrying the same stuff he usually has - which is still better than most pitchers.”

The unfortunate soul who must follow this act is Chris Bosio - and on three days’ rest himself. And since the Mariners must still win twice to advance, Andy Benes is not yet off the hook, either.

No one in the Seattle clubhouse was speaking of the season in the past tense, by any means, but it was understood that one and all would feel considerably more at ease if there was another start in Big Unit’s holster.

“I don’t think we’ve been spoiled - maybe we have,” said Buhner. “We just expect it, period. He knows what he has to do and he does it every time.

“And he’d better not ever let us down.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review