Twins Bump Mariners From Wild Card Lead Seattle Bungles Away Leads In Losing A 12-10 Decision That Drops Them Behind Yankees

For the rest of the season, the Seattle Mariners should come with a warning label sewn onto their uniforms - listen at your own risk.

If you’re headed for the Kingdome, check your heart at the gate.

Pulse rates were running as high as earned run averages Monday, when the Mariners and Minnesota Twins seemed intent on seeing how much pleasure and pain could be injected into a wild card race in nine innings.

A lot, as it turned out.

Rallying from deficits and then fumbling away leads, the M’s watched their grasp on a victory - and first place in the American League wild card derby - slip away in a 12-10 defeat that was as costly as any in the history of a franchise that has known so many.

Seattle scored 10 runs after the fifth inning, and gave up nine. Of such things are nervous breakdowns born.

Many of the 18,193 fans who took advantage of a family night 2-for-1 admission seemed afraid to leave their seats, and with good reason. Down 3-0, Seattle rocked the Kingdome with a six-run sixth inning to take a three-run lead that lasted until Minnesota next came to bat.

Trailing 7-6, the Mariners rolled out two more runs in the seventh. Again, that lead lasted until the Twins - with the worst record in all of baseball - came up again.

After scoring four runs in the seventh inning, Minnesota broke the game open with a five-run eighth that featured a full-blown Seattle breakdown.

Three errors and a passed ball all but forced a victory upon the Twins and made each of their last five runs unearned. And none of the three Mariners relievers who had a piece of that inning was able to stop Minnesota until it was far too late.

For most of the game, the out-of-town scoreboard told the news that New York had beaten Cleveland, so the Mariners knew for several hours that to keep their half-game lead in the wild card race they had to win.

They tried.

When starter Tim Belcher went to the mound with nothing but heart, he was lucky to come out after 5-1/3 innings trailing just 3-0 - he’d given up eight hits and six runs in a grueling 110-pitch effort.

Over the same span, rookie Brad Radke had allowed just one hit, so the Mariners got to the sixth inning facing the possibility that Radke was on the brink of beating them for the third time this season.

Radke never got out of the sixth.

Catcher Dan Wilson led off with a solo home run and Tino Martinez’s bases-loaded double tied it at 3. Jay Buhner untied it with a three-run home run, his 31st of the season that got him to the 100 RBI mark.

A long, loud ovation brought Buhner out of the Seattle dugout for a curtain call, and the M’s turned that 6-3 lead over to a bullpen that has so often set up victories this season.

Not this time.

Bill Risley was pummelled - five hits and four runs in 2/3 of an inning. Jeff Nelson followed him and was dinged in the eighth inning, as were Lee Guetterman and Bobby Ayala.

In all, the Twins scored nine times in two innings against four Seattle relievers and manager Lou Piniella eventually ran out of veterans. So in the ninth inning, he tried rookie Scott Davison.

Wouldn’t you know, Davison worked a 1-2-3 inning.

By then, most of the crowd and all but three outs of the game were gone.

Wasted was the five-RBI performance of outfielder Buhner, who has now hit five home runs in his last seven games. Wasted, too, was a two-hit, two-RBI night by Tino Martinez, who now has 97 RBIs.

And lost in the disappointment was a two-run, ninth-inning home run by Ken Griffey Jr. during a rally in which Seattle brought the tying run to the plate with one out.

Three Twins relievers kept it there, each of them managing to get one out in a rally in which Seattle sent six men to the plate.

Most importantly, however, the Mariners wasted an opportunity to inch a day closer to the postseason in control of their own playoff hopes. Now, down by a half game to a team they don’t play again, the Mariners must win games while waiting for someone else to lay a loss on the Yankees.

Notes

Pennant fever apparently hasn’t reached epidemic status yet - the 2-for-1 night crowd of 18,193 Monday wasn’t what Seattle had hoped, but for the next two nights advance sales haven’t yet reached 8,000 for either game. … Vince Coleman tested his injured left hip again before Monday’s game and, though he didn’t start, is improved and could be available today or Wednesday. “There are worse things than having Vince Coleman as a pinch-runner,” Piniella said. … The Mariners have their rotation set for the remainder of the season. Andy Benes would start the last game of the regular season in Texas on Sunday, Oct. 1 and Randy Johnson would be in rotation to start Game One of the American League playoffs on Tuesday, Oct. 3.