M’S Like Their Reflection Better Now
You remember what Lou said a couple of weeks ago - the line his players all had a good laugh over - so you know what they should be called from now on.
Ladies and gentlemen, your Seattle Mirrors.
But at least they are funhouse mirrors.
The good times are back at Safeco Field, even if the sweep of the Chicago White Sox that the Mirrors - all right, Mariners - completed Friday was a killjoy’s conceit.
The M’s of five years back - when steel was first struck to flint and a Northwest October was suddenly warmed with the notion of baseball - knew how to drag out the drama. They spotted New York a two-game head start in that American League Division Series and then took the home folks on a three-day bender, each swig more intoxicating than the previous one. So bad was the hangover that hardly anyone minded (or noticed) getting the heaves - sorry, heave-ho - from Cleveland in the ALCS.
This weekend’s party, however, was over before the fans could get the bottle to their lips.
Better to leave them thirsty for more, apparently.
The breathless comparisons - the contrast, rather - of the ‘95 pioneers to the double-oughts will continue with each run these brave new M’s score without the benefit of a well-struck pitch, with each bullpen heater that befuddles an opposing slugger, with each would-be double the gill-net infield turns into an out, with each bit of hocus pocus that dugout Merlin, manager Lou Piniella, finds in his musty book of spells.
This was baseball before the mound was lowered, the strike zone was perverted, the ball was juiced and hitters discovered dumbbells and Dianabol.
It is good and pure and wholesomely old-fashioned, a soda with two straws and your best girl in gingham.
“I love it,” said Jay Buhner, one of the few bridges from the Kingdome Kwake era to this one. “But I wouldn’t complain if we mixed in a three-run homer now and then, either.”
Jay did, after all, have a front seat a couple of weeks ago and saw what happened when Bambi met Godzilla.
This is the question to be chewed on today, as the A’s and Yankees decide the Mariners’ next destination: Who do they want to play?
Oakland, of course, ripped the very soul from Seattle in Safeco a fortnight ago, and once again rediscovered its collective stroke against none other than Roger Clemens on Saturday. The A’s have Seattle’s number, yes, but they are even younger than the callow White Sox, and all we keep hearing is how experience counts in the postseason.
The Yankees have experience. They have nasty starting pitching. They have $113 million in payroll and the swagger that comes with being champions too many times over. But they’re also playing Luis Sojo instead of Chuck Knoblauch and you figure George Steinbrenner will have something to say about that in a tabloid soon.
Matchups are perhaps less important in baseball than in basketball or football, but they are important nonetheless, and the two teams Piniella least wanted to deal with were Oakland and Cleveland - but some of that was due to how hot both of them were in September.
Now, it’s the M’s who are hot, and a survey of the clubhouse chalks that up to some crazy notion that the pressure is now off.
“We lived on the edge for a month,” is how center fielder Mike Cameron put it. “Nobody could breathe.”
When their pitching and fielding went on inexplicable hiatus in August, the Mariners consigned themselves to a month of the kind of tension that causes hair loss in clumps. This was further exacerbated by a rather wimpy showing in the four-game series with Oakland, which we inkhounds helpfully built up to a status somewhere between OK Corral The Sequel and Armageddon.
“But I’m glad we went through our bad stretch where we struggled,” countered catcher Joe Oliver. “I think we really matured as a club and it helped us get to the next level.
“If we had coasted in, who knows what would have happened? We might have gotten a little complacent. The struggles brought us together, and here we are.”
This is a difficult concept to swallow, if only because we’re constantly lectured that the postseason is so very much different - like when the pot limit goes from $100 to $100,000.
“But we’ve had a playoff atmosphere since August,” said shortstop Alex Rodriguez. “Oakland and Cleveland saw to that. There was a lot more pressure that last series with Anaheim than against the White Sox.
“You play 162 games and you lose one game there at the end and you go home. One game. Where in a five-game series, you lose one and you still have a chance to come back tomorrow.”
And the fact is, if you toss out that Oakland business, the M’s were doing everything as well in September as when they made their big move - or little move, if you prefer - in June. Now, they are playing even better, the whole equation turning on the suddenly impeccable firm of Rhodes, Paniagua, Mesa (yeah, Mesa) and Sasaki out of the bullpen.
They’re even reaping the benefit of almost every break - none bigger than the inattention paid to the foot Carlos Guillen planted on home plate when he dragged that winning bunt on Friday. But, hey, home plate ump Tim McClelland had a liquid strike zone all night; why not a liquid batter’s box, too?
Maybe they are doing it with mirrors, the way Lou said.
And maybe it’s worth asking one if the M’s are indeed the fairest of them all.