Pitching, Pitching And More Pitching Punched Out Seattle

OK, you can all go back to whatever it was you were doing.

Maybe this would be a good time to finish that back-to-school shopping. Plan that Labor Day outing. Harvest.

The team that put lives in the Northwest on hold for a month or two - depending when you climbed aboard - lobbed them back Tuesday night. Resume them however you wish, but for your own sake remember the Seattle Mariners for the breathtaking way they waded so deep into October and not the way they punched out.

Meekly. Weakly. Obliquely.

There. There’s a few descriptives we haven’t had to exhume in a while, thankfully.

And for the time being, stow all the stock adjectives for the bully-boy lineup of the American League champion Cleveland Indians.

Their fairy-tale return to the World Series after a 41-year snooze had so very little to do with menace in the batter’s box and very much to do with Dennis on the mound.

That would be Dennis Martinez, who with some late-inning help muffled the M’s 4-0 on four hits in the sixth and deciding game of the ALCS.

Before him, it was Orel Hershiser - the series’ consensus MVP and before that Ken Hill. And even if the Mariners had managed another miracle to force a Game 7, chances are they wouldn’t have touched Charles Nagy, either.

It wasn’t a case of Seattle not having enough pitching, as Mariners fans feared.

It was a case of Cleveland having too much.

In the end, there was the telling tableau of Edgar Martinez flailing at a pitch in the dirt for strike three in the ninth inning. The Mariners still had one out of life, but that was merely a technicality.

“When Edgar Martinez swung at the ball in the dirt, I came half way up off the bench,” said Indians manager Mike Hargrove. “I had to pinch myself to make sure this was the Cleveland Indians and Mike Hargrove in this position.

“I found out that it really was.”

And the Mariners found out that, well, it wasn’t over even when Jay Buhner’s ground ball became the final out.

Buhner had to walk alone past the mob of Indians celebrating behind the pitcher’s mound - almost reaching the dugout before returning to home plate to pick up his bat. Once more he took in Cleveland’s group hug, his eyes moist.

In the dugout, Joey Cora wept disconsolately, the arm of teammate Alex Rodriguez wrapped around his shoulders. His were tears of disappointment, of course, but also of responsibility - his error in the fifth inning had led to Cleveland’s tie-breaking run, and his failure to get a bunt down in the sixth kept the M’s from getting even.

But for 10 minutes after Buhner’s out, the last baseball convocation of 1995 at the Kingdome - 58,489 - stood and cheered, demanding their new love take a bow.

In a bulging album of big moments, baseball has never had a finer one in this city.

“We made a difference in this town,” said Ken Griffey Jr. “Those people made a difference. That’s something we’ve never had until now. Win or lose, those people were there for us - I didn’t see anyone leave. We have to take our hats off to them.”

And they did. Vince Coleman himself tossed three up into the stands.

Yet as much as they’ll remember the response, the Mariners won’t forget what drove them to tears.

Not that they should have won this series. The Indians are better, not so much position-by-position but in the depth and savvy of their pitching staff. Did we forget they led the A.L. in earned run average by nearly half a run?

The Mariners may well have set a record for longest stay in an ALCS for a team hitting below the Mendoza line. Individual averages sounded like Bingo night: oh-63, oh-74, oh-69. As it happened, both Seattle’s team average (.184) and total runs scored (12) were record lows for an ALCS.

“Our pitching pitched well enough to win this series,” said M’s manager Lou Piniella, “but remember when this thing started I said we need to score runs against this team. That was really our downfall. Their pitchers just shut us down.”

Them and Omar Vizquel, the shortstop Seattle’s previous ownership sent to Cleveland in a virtual fire sale. He made more plays bare-handed in this series than poor Luis Sojo did with his glove.

Don’t think that didn’t go unnoticed by the M’s, who discovered how painful it can be to be so close.

“It’s hard for these guys to accept,” said Coleman, who has been to two World Series. “They battled so far, so long. The anticipation was there.

“Most guys never get the opportunity to be in a World Series. Some guys play 10-15 years and never get the chance. We were knocking on the door. I can feel the disappointment they have, and the crying was an expression of how deeply they hurt inside. Guys feel if they’d gotten a hit or made a big play - not only today but yesterday - it would have turned things around.”

Alas, they didn’t need big plays this night so much as they needed little ones. They needed Cora and Dan Wilson to move runners over at key times, and they needed Wilson to hustle after a passed ball that broke the game open in the eighth.

This one last time they needed to refuse to lose, they couldn’t even say, “No, thank you.”

So for a few days, the Mariners will swallow disappointment and satisfaction in equal dosages. In time, the disappointment will crystalize into determination.

“Throughout the year, it was Mission: Impossible,” said Coleman. “Now it’s Mission: Accomplished. We accomplished a lot by coming to this point, farther than this organization has ever come before.”

Griffey put it in stronger terms.

“I can get the hang of this October stuff,” he said. “We all can.”

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

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