Moyer Takes Center Stage As Second Fiddle
So now Jamie Moyer knows how Salieri must have felt.
OK, maybe he already knew. Jamie Moyer is not building a new wing on his house to accommodate all his many Cy Young awards, yet he is as accomplished a pitcher as they come without any baseball fan beyond the reach of Dave Niehaus’ voice giving him a sniff of regard. He is one of those guys whose fastball can shatter a pane of glass, but only if it’s already cracked, so therefore he will be on no magazine covers anytime soon.
He’s made a hell of a career for himself in baseball’s shadows. Why should it be any different on his first Opening Night?
Oooh, Opening Night. Gives you the shivers. And it always will in Seattle, now that the Kingdome has done a Mount St. Helens.
(Which reminds us - the Seattle Mariners’ weird new ad campaign? SoDo Mojo? Since the “Do” - that is, the Kingdome - has come crumbling down, technically there is no longer a South-of-the-Dome neighborhood, right? So just where is Safeco Field located, anyway? SoDust?)
Anyway, back to Opening Night. Safeco Field had one of those last July, only with lots of last-minute drilling and hammering and installing of cupholders. This time the joint was ready for it, except for the overhead heaters - a la Dick’s Hamburgers - they neglected to hang from the erector-set roof.
Being of hearty Northwest stock, it would seem unmanly - or unwomanly - of any of us to complain about the temperatures Tuesday night, particularly since we’ve all been lowing about the glories of outdoor baseball for years, even pseudo-outdoor baseball. By golly, we can take it.
Just to test our resolve, however, Mariners management invited the coldest fish they could find to throw out the first pitch - baseball commissioner Bud Selig. Yes, the same Bud Selig who as a successful young car dealer brazenly ripped the late, lamented Seattle Pilots from this city 30 years ago and turned them into the Milwaukee Brewers.
Nice touch, fellas. What next - another round of cost overruns on us? Non-stop Ken Griffey Jr. highlights on the matrix board? Bobby Ayala as assistant pitching coach?
We might have expected this to segue into more of the madcap nonsense we have come to expect on a Mariners Opening Night. Like last year, when the M’s suited up six rookie pitchers, jacked up ticket prices and made a bald-faced plea for patience. Or the year before, when Tony Fossas and the other hapless hombres of the Mariners bullpen blew a 42-run lead against Cleveland.
Remarkably, it did not. It merely segued into baseball. Quite possibly we will see more. This would be a good year for it.
And it was well-received, even though during the seventh-inning stretch a goodly third of the outfield and upper-deck denizens in the Safeco “record” crowd of 45,552 arose and - discovering that they still had feeling in their lower extremities - shuffled off in the direction of their car heaters. This was the height of prudence, for by then the Boston Red Sox had scraped across the only two runs they would need against Moyer and the Mariners were still staring down the barrel of Pedro Martinez.
Mozart, if you will, to Moyer’s Salieri.
Each year, we are reminded that Opening Night is only one of 162 games and that no meaningful conclusions should be drawn, and never has that been more the case than this year. When - until the next time the Red Sox roll through town - will we see the likes of Pedro Martinez?
“How can you judge?” said M’s manager Lou Piniella. “Let’s just hope the other Martinez (brother Ramon) isn’t as good (tonight).”
And yet if this was a throwaway, it was also very much a keeper.
No one felt more strongly about that than Moyer.
He had never pitched an opening game - indeed, about eight years ago, he wasn’t deemed fit enough to pitch batting practice for the Chicago Cubs. In Triple-A.
“How was this Opening Day different?” Moyer said, laughing. “Really, not at all - except for the fact that I’m the guy usually pitching four days later.”
An exaggeration. In fact, over the past four seasons, Moyer has the second-best winning percentage in all of major league baseball - 59-25, or 70.2 percent. Second only to Pedro Martinez.
Bad enough the Red Sox ace is 72-29 since 1996. Now, after throwing a two-hitter at the Mariners on Tuesday night, he is 5-0 lifetime against Seattle, with an 0.75 ERA. So willing were the M’s to concede this game that tough-guy Jay Buhner - 0 for 8 lifetime against Martinez, all strikeouts - was held out so he wouldn’t screw up the groove he spent all spring getting himself into.
That left the competing to be done by Moyer.
“It was fun and I enjoyed it,” he said. “I mean, you hate to lose and I wasn’t sitting in the dugout laughing, but this is what you play for.”
It was four innings before a Mariner reached second base. Only one more after that would. If Moyer didn’t come into the game knowing he’d have to be pretty close to perfect, he had a good idea after Seattle had gone through the order. “You know you’re not apt to give up two, three, four runs and get away with it,” he said.
“You know you’re going to have to get some breaks. If a ball gets away from (Boston catcher Jason) Varitek while Alex (Rodriguez) is stealing second, or the throw bounces off him and into left field - that’s the stuff you need to have happen to beat him. You need them to bobble a ball and us to win a bang-bang play. That’s the way you beat a guy like that.”
Good pitching helps, too, and Moyer certainly delivered. He had a two-hitter of his own going through five innings, and though he gave up a pair of hard singles in the sixth, was an eyelash away from getting out of that pickle when Boston got the break Seattle needed.
With two out, Mike Stanley worked three balls from Moyer in a rare lapse of the lefty’s control. Stanley fouled off the next pitch, then amazingly refused to bite at what Moyer thought was strike two.
“In those situations, my feeling is a batter has to swing the bat at something that close - but obviously he didn’t. When he took a good hack at 3-0, I felt I was back in the count - and I felt I made a pretty quality pitch.”
Then Troy O’Leary dubbed a lazy roller just wide of Moyer’s glove toward second baseman David Bell - too lazy, in fact, for Bell’s throw to reach John Olerud in time at first to prevent the run from scoring.
“No man’s land,” sighed Moyer. “It was like watching slow-motion when the ball went past me.”
Another run would get pushed across - walk, sacrifice, double - the next inning, but in all respects the game was over. All that was left was a few more innings of Martinez appreciation.
“It’s phenomenal,” said Moyer. “Every time I’ve seen him pitch in person, it’s the same type of outing. You never see him get flustered. He knows his limits.”
Limits? What limits?
“He just lets his ability dictate what he’s doing and never tries to push beyond it,” Moyer explained. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but he’s the same pitcher I am only with a lot more velocity. He’s pumping it up there at 95 mph, but then dropping an 85 mph changeup and an 81 mph change and a breaking ball on top of that. It’s tough for a hitter to feel comfortable, to sit on a pitch or look for a pitch on a particular part of the plate. It’s just such a challenge to face him, either as a hitter or an opposing pitcher - a fun challenge. But it can be frustrating.”
Cold reality. Tuesday night, this was the perfect place for it.