World Series Could Use The Mariners

The other night, as the Indians’ Eddie Murray was pointing a finger at the Braves’ Greg Maddux - the universal cue for dugouts to empty, bullpens to clear, and national network TV announcers to warn, “uh-oh, you hate to see this” - an actual thought found its way through the jackhammer-loud Jacobs Field speaker system and into my brain.

I miss the Mariners.

I know, it does nobody any good to lament Coulda Beens and Mighta Beens. It’s over. They lost. They were beaten by a better team.

But the more I watch this World Series, the more I see the joyless Cleveland Indians and the mirthless Atlanta Braves, the more I miss the dauntless Seattle Mariners.

There is a danger of falling victim to selective memory here, but during he Mariners’ joy ride toward the playoffs and into October, I cannot recall Lou Piniella’s team involved in the kind of confrontational incident that interrupted Game 5. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting the Mariners’ 1995 highlight video be called “Lillies of the Artificial-Turf Field.”

But Seattle embodied all that is fun about the spectacle big-game of baseball, and during the 91st World Series - the biggest games baseball has staged in two years - fun doesn’t fit. Amid the climate of four-letter words, fun only has three.

The Indians want to win to elude comparisons to other powerhouse clubs that did everything possible on a baseball field but score more runs than the other guys on the nights it mattered most. The Braves want to win to elude the distinction - the first in baseball since John McGraw’s 1911-1913 New York Giants - of being World Series runners-up three times in four tries.

The Mariners? They brought no ponderous psychic agenda into their clubhouse. They wanted to win to elude, um, losing.

And when they finally got on a roll, it was all so fresh and new, they didn’t think of fans as a necessary stage prop and journalists as an unnecessary nuisance. They were playing baseball in October. They were having the times of their lives.

We can excuse the Braves for looking at the World Series more as business to be completed than dreams to be chased. This is their fourth straight postseason appearance, which explains why no Atlanta players brought their camcorders to the clubhouse last weekend.

But what’s the deal with the Indians? Let me rephrase the question: Outside of acting like insufferable jerks who’ve conveniently forgotten the cobwebs a franchise trophy case accrues during four decades of mostly awful baseball, what’s the deal with the Indians?

Eddie Murray strikes the game-winning hit Tuesday in an 11th-inning thriller … then refuses to give a national TV reporter a brief moment of his precious time.

“Eddie just blows him off,” said ABC sportscaster Al Michaels, discussing baseball’s lingering public-relations woes on “Nightline” Wednesday. “If Eddie, at 39, doesn’t get it, it almost makes you want to give up.”

At least Murray is civil about choosing to stay aloof. So is Manny Ramirez, still another Indians slugger who has distanced himself from the media during the Series.

On the other hand, Albert Belle’s obscene dugout tirade, directed at NBC sportscaster Hannah Storm long before Game 3 Tuesday, was completely in character. If Leona Helmsley was known as “The Queen of Mean,” Albert Belle ought to be recognized as “The Earl of Churl.”

Belle, a former standout on the LSU baseball team and the son of educators, is a smart man. He must realize baseball’s postseason contract with television is the source of some of those extra zeroes he commands on his biweekly paycheck.

And yet, so acute is his contempt for the world in general, The Earl of Churl can’t calculate the connection between his $4 million annual salary and Hannah Storm’s right to conduct an interview with one of his teammates. So fearful is the Cleveland front office of some rumpled stranger disrupting the superstar’s space, the Indians are now keeping a team representative in front of Belle’s locker.

Enough, already.

I miss Jay Buhner misplaying that fly ball in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, then making up for the mistake by crushing a home run. I miss Buhner, with his crazy-horse wit, emphasizing the error afterward.

I miss Ken Griffey Jr.’s grace and Randy Johnson’s glare and the dirty uniform of Joey Cora. I miss the ability of Mike Blowers and Tino Martinez, and the nobility of Edgar Martinez.

It’s the last week of October, and I’m watching a wonderful World Series between the two best teams in baseball. I miss the Mariners.