Mariners Sick ‘Em Griffey, Martinez Save Ailing Johnson With Back-To-Back Homers Twice

On the mound, Randy Johnson was wobbling like a kid on a new bike. Off the field, it was worse.

“I got to see my dinner twice last night and I threw up again before the game today,” Johnson said. “Then about the third inning, I was back here throwing up again.”

Given the circumstances, most of the 34,915 folks in the Kingdome on Sunday might have chosen to head home and crawl into bed. The Big Unit isn’t most folks. “We had a 6-1 lead,” Johnson said, cracking a slight smile. “I was going to go five innings if I had to take a barf bag or a pail out to the mound with me…”

A starting pitcher needs five innings to qualify for a victory. On Sunday, Johnson went five innings and was the winner as Seattle pounded Toronto and ex-Mariner Erik Hanson, 9-5 - riding the bats of Edgar Martinez and Ken Griffey Jr. to an April record for victories.

With eight games remaining in the month, Seattle’s 13-6 start has given the team more victories than in any opening month in franchise history, and far-and-away the best 19-game start.

“It was a luxury today, going five innings and getting out,” Johnson said. “With Edgar and Junior, you get lucky sometimes.”

As the Unit gamely threw 105 pitches, Messrs. Griffey and Martinez did something no one in team history had done. They hit back-to-back home runs - twice.

“I’d never seen that,” manager Lou Piniella said.

Tied in the second inning at 1, Griffey took Hanson’s pitch over the right field fence for his seventh home run, a two-run shot that put Seattle ahead for good. Before the buzz of the crowd had died, Martinez hit his fourth home run.

Two innings later, they did it again. Griffey hit No. 8, Martinez No. 5, and Johnson had an 8-2 lead.

Snapping a two-game losing streak, the middle of Seattle’s lineup - which includes the only three men still with a Mariners team that Hanson left after the 1993 season - broke loose:

Griffey had two home runs, scored three runs, drove in three. It was the 16th two-homer game of his career, pushed his average from .215 to .232 and left him leading the team in homers and RBIs (17).

Martinez extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a double and two home runs. Batting .207 in Detroit on April 10, Martinez is now hitting .362.

“I thought when I was hitting .207, ‘I can do better than this,”’ Martinez said. (Yes, he was joking.)

Jay Buhner had two more hits, two more RBIs. Though he hasn’t hit for Martinez’s average or Griffey’s power, the right fielder is batting .269 with three home runs and 14 RBIs in 19 games.

“I’m not there yet, but this team is playing well,” Griffey said. “You’re not always going to have everybody hitting at once, and sometimes it’ll be key guys who aren’t hitting. When we had that eight-game winning streak, we did the little things teams do to win. That’s the mark of a good team.”

For all that offense, Toronto might have come back. When Johnson headed for the clubhouse after five innings, the score was 8-4 and the Blue Jays had four innings to make their run. Relievers Bob Wells and Norm Charlton made sure it didn’t happen.

“Wells is the lost guy on this team,” Johnson said, “but I don’t know what we’d have done without him today.”

Wells, the Yakima-born right-hander whose role is long relief - spelled “a-n-o-n-y-m-o-u-s” - shut out the Blue Jays for three innings. In four appearances this season, Wells has pitched 14-1/3 innings and compiled a 1.88 earned run average.

“Those three games we played in Detroit, it was so cold nobody felt comfortable,” Martinez said. “Since then, it’s been warmer - we’ve been indoors in Toronto and then here at home. Everybody is more comfortable.”

Comfort, apparently, is a good thing. “We proved to ourselves last year we can win,” Griffey said.

“We can beat anybody. We can come back on anybody. And we’re especially tough here at home. It’s not like everybody is hot, but we’re still winning. That’s because we’re playing well, and that’s not the same as everybody kicking butt at once.”