So much for that big-bang theory. For six months, Seattle’s Mariners spread terror throughout the game. Their lineup created havoc, under a roof or a blue sky, in two leagues, across the United States and Canada.
But there they were Sunday, waving goodbye to a wondrous season. With a runner on in the eighth inning, Alex Rodriguez checked his swing and rolled into an out. Then came Ken Griffey Jr., whose only objective was to go deep.
“I had to try for a home run, to tie it up,” he said. “You have to get the barrel out in front, but I was a little ahead of it. Just never happened for us. Never happened all week.”
Griffey, who had lost 56 baseballs this summer, tapped innocuously to Cal Ripken at third, and the show was about over. The Mariners would succumb quietly to the Baltimore Orioles, who dearly want what they’ve earned–another attempt at their first American League pennant since 1983.
The Mariners broke a record with 264 homers, drew more than 3 million fans in a region that once ignored the sport, won 90 times for the first time in franchise history and passed big-market teams in paraphernalia sales. But against the Orioles, the operative gear was pfft.
The Mariners hit a dainty .218 for the tournament, with only 52 total bases, and Junior pointed the way to winter. He had two singles in 15 appearances, not the first icon to become cannon fodder in a short series, or the last.
“You’ve seen it before,” groused manager Lou Piniella, who has been on the champagne end. His Cincinnati Reds had no business sweeping Oakland in the 1990 World Series, but you could look it up.
Piniella came to the mound once Sunday and glanced toward his bullpen. Had he made a motion, it might not have been a call for help, but another kind of salute. The Mariners’ relievers were atrocious, and how General Manager Woody Woodward could have exchanged Jose Cruz Jr. for more rag arms is positively stupefying.
Only the Cubs pull such spectacular miscalculations, and indeed, it was Randy Myers who closed this neat 3-1 Baltimore triumph. In two seasons since being deemed perishable by the think tank at Wrigley Field, he has merely amassed 79 saves.
Because Seattle doesn’t own one of those, and because Randy Johnson is the ultimate warrior, Piniella stayed with the Big Unit on Sunday. Despite 13 strikeouts, Johnson couldn’t keep the efficient Orioles out of his scraggly hair. He made five starts against them in 1997, two in this playoff, and the Orioles won all five games.
The first inning capsulized their spell over him. Johnson whiffed three, but he also made 35 pitches and yielded a home run, one offering after he thought he’d nailed Jeff Reboulet, a right-handed swinger substituting at second base for the infinitely more gifted Roberto Alomar.
Reboulet’s blast was only his 14th in a career of almost 1,300 at-bats, but he obeyed the playbook. Lay off Johnson’s high, hard stuff and try to turn on everything from the belt down. It was more than that, though. The Orioles–who, by the way, were wire-to-wire division champions–caught everything, too, and even Johnson couldn’t better Mike Mussina, who also outdueled the Big Unit in Game 1.
“A lot of good teams are finished,” Griffey went on. “San Francisco, Houston. Dodgers didn’t get as far as us. We tasted it, we didn’t get what we wanted, and now we’ll want it even more. I’m already thinking about spring training.”
Still, the Mariners will be the best team of the ’90s to avoid the World Series until and if. But they met their match in the Orioles. The big bangers scored 11 runs in four games as all those bats were turned to ashes.
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“We never got it going,” Junior said, “and now we’re gone.”