Roaring M’S Close In On History Mariners Rout Angels To Reduce Magic Number For Division Title To Three
A history of bad owners, bad players and a bad building, and even a bad vote to replace the building, has given way to bedlam.
With a Tuesday afternoon Kingdome crowd of 46,935 roaring from Andy Benes’ first-strike pitch to Bobby Ayala’s last-pitch strikeout, the Seattle Mariners moved two steps closer to their first-ever postseason appearance with a 10-2 drubbing of the California Angels.
The Mariners cut their magic number for clinching the American League West Division title from five games to three. A win in today’s soldout 4:30 p.m. game, their last home appearance of the regular season, cuts that number to one.
A victory guarantees that even if the M’s go to Texas and somehow find a way to lose four times and the Angels go home to play Oakland and somehow find a way to win four times, they would tie for the division title and these hysterical Seattle fans would get a tie-breaker game next Monday.
But all of that seems extremely unlikely after the clinic the Mariners put on for the Angels in running their winning streak to a season-high seven games, all at the “Thunderdome,” where they now have a franchise record nine-game streak.
“The kids are playing good baseball,” low-key Mariners manager Lou Piniella said. “Our bats came alive and Benes did the rest. I’m looking for tomorrow and that’s it.”
The Mariners scored seven runs with two outs while the Angels got the leadoff man on base six straight innings against Benes and never cashed in.
By now, with the Mariners 13 games over .500 for the first time ever, it appears the S on their caps stands for a collective Superman. Seven players combined for 10 hits, six different players scored and five different players drove in runs. In addition, Benes ran his record to 7-1 since being traded from San Diego on July 31 with 7-1/3 efficient innings.
Jay Buhner set two team records. His RBI single in the third inning gave him 117 runs batted in, surpassing Alvin Davis’ 1984 total. Then he blasted a 439-foot solo home run to left field in the fifth, giving him 12 homers this month, eclipsing the 11 Gorman Thomas hit in July 1985.
The Angels, meanwhile, lost for the 27th time in 36 games and watched a 13-game lead over the M’s turn into a three-game deficit. The CA on their caps could stand for Choke Artists.
The Angels bunched their nine hits among five players and only got a leadoff home run from Garret Anderson in the fifth and a one-out second-deck blast by Greg Myers off Ayala in the ninth.
Though retired in order in just the first inning, the Angels only got two runners on base twice in the same inning - in the third, when second baseman Joey Cora turned a screaming line drive into a double play; and in the eighth, when Benes got a groundout and Ayala fanned Chili Davis and got J.T. Snow to fly out.
Starter Shawn Boskie fell to 7-7, including 1-5 in September with a 7.48 earned-run average.
Boskie had allowed harmless singles in each of the first two innings and had two outs and a strike on Cora in the third when he clipped the diminutive former Spokane Indian. Ken Griffey Jr. then ran his hitting streak to eight with a scorcher that rolled to the wall in right-center for a 1-0 lead.
Edgar Martinez matched Griffey’s streak with an RBI single to right and later scored on Buhner’s hit off reliever Rich Monteleone to make it 3-0.
Then the Mariners went to textbook baseball, proving that Piniella is just as hot as his team that set a club record for wins in a month with 17.
Dan Wilson led off the fourth with a double and Piniella had Vince Coleman, on a .419 tear entering the game, bunt Wilson to third with the 5-foot-8, 155-pound Cora coming up. Cora then launched a sacrifice fly to the warning track in right field. Griffey followed with his 16th home run for a 5-0 lead.
Even when the M’s didn’t follow conventional wisdom they made the right decisions.
Myers followed Anderson’s homer Tony Phillips slapped a grounder to Tino Martinez at first and with a 5-1 lead, a second out would have been sufficient. Tino Martinez, however, fired the ball home and Wilson blocked the plate perfectly for an easy out.
That was all Benes needed. All that was left was to see if the new Kingdome tiles could handle the deafening crowd.
The fans began to chant “Tino” while Edgar Martinez was receiving an intentional walk to load the bases with two outs in the sixth inning. When Tino Martinez lashed a double just inside first base to clear the bases, the tiles survived, which is more than can be said about the Angels.
, DataTimes