Olivo’s bizarre homer helps M’s to win

DETROIT – Miguel Olivo still hadn’t seen a replay of his first home run this season and swore up and down that he wasn’t about to. Olivo wanted no part of tempting fate following a second-inning home run Tuesday night that he suggested both God and Lady Luck had a hand in. One could forgive Olivo some hyperbole given how his season had gone up until a fluke, deflected home run on his line drive to left set the stage for a 7-3 ———————- ———————- win by his Mari ners over the De troit Tigers. The Mariners never trailed af ter Olivo’s tying shot, which struck the glove of sprinting left fielder Ryan Raburn at the lip of the warning track and deflected at least 15 feet up and over the fence. Not only that, but the spot of good fortune seemed to help some other hard-luck Mariners get their bats going. “When the ball hit his glove, I thought he caught it,” Olivo said. ———————- ———————- “It was so obvious. All the balls I hit, everybody catches them. Then, I saw the second-base umpire doing the home-run signal and I said ‘Thank God! My luck is coming back.’ ” Olivo followed up the long ball with a fourth inning double ahead of a two-run homer by Justin Smoak off Tigers starter Phil Coke. Smoak was playing his first game since his father, Keith, passed away from lung cancer last week, and Olivo was among the first to greet — Jump from page 1 to page 4 — him as he headed back to the dugout. “I said ‘Hey, that’s for Papa,’ ” Olivo said he told Smoak. “I got chills when he hit it.” Seattle broke things open for good in the fifth inning, scoring four times off Coke to snap a 3-3 tie and silence 18,027 fans at Comerica Park. Two of those runs came on a triple by Chone Figgins, a hitter faring just as poorly as Olivo when it comes to luck. Olivo spoke about the need for the Mariners to support one another and in deed, they rallied together here. Besides the Figgins triple, .236-hitting Jack Wil son had a single and a key double as well, helping to pick up a laboring Felix Her nandez on a night he didn’t have his best stuff. ———————- ———————- Hernandez survived a shaky first in ning and battled through six tough frames for the victory despite being unable to lo cate his breaking balls for much of the night. David Pauley took over for two key shutout innings, followed by a perfect ninth from Brandon League. And the hitters took their cues from Olivo. Despite a 23 percent line-drive rate that’s his best in years, Olivo was hitting just .164 coming in because some of his best-hit balls keep landing in opposition gloves. But Mariners manager Eric Wedge, knowing Olivo was hitting the ball well, inserted him in the cleanup spot and moved a struggling Jack Cust down to No. 6. Wedge insisted pregame that it was im perative for his players not to give away easy outs, fearing the hard luck was taking a mental toll on them. ———————- ———————- “I want them to make better outs,” Wedge said. “I know some people prob ably roll their eyes when I say that, but I want you to get something from those outs. I want to make progress with those outs. And I think the approach and the mindset and ultimately your confidence level comes right along with that. “What I don’t want to see is for us to keep spinning our wheels.” Figgins was one of the first to congratu late Olivo after the home run. Much like Olivo, Figgins has a good line-drive rate, but terrible luck at getting balls to drop in. “That’s something we’ve talked about, me and him,” Figgins said. “We’ve been going through it for a while. And after he hit it I said ‘Man, you’re in a different ca tegory now, because your break was off his glove.’ ” But Figgins quickly added that, without the line drive, Olivo would not have been ———————- +36 ———————- in a position to catch a break. Figgins kept dreading that his own triple would be caught until he finally saw the numbers on the back of center fielder Austin Jack son. At that point, he realized Jackson was turned completely around and that the line drive was going over his head and not in his glove. Figgins had changed his plate approach slightly after a lineout in his first at-bat, then, after an ensuing pop out, chastised himself and reverted back to doing what had been causing him to hit balls hard. “That’s the thing about it,” Figgins said. “You have to stick with it and not try to change.” That’s something Wedge continued to preach after this one was over. The Mari ners notched six extra-base hits in the game. “I think we’re very capable of doing that if we put up better at-bats,” Wedge said. “We probably don’t have guys that are recognized as home-run hitters, but we most definitely have guys who can hit for extra-base hits, hit doubles, who are quick enough to get some triples. So, if we put up better at-bats, which will lead to extra contact, the extra-base hits will come.” And presumably, some better luck as well.