BASEBALL PLAYOFFS : Twins Take High Road to a 3-1 Lead : AL Game 4: Puckett’s home run sparks a four-run fourth inning and the Blue Jays lose at the SkyDome again, 9-3.

Their World Series championship in 1987 was a wild dance, a rollicking joy ride of emotion.

The path the Minnesota Twins have followed this season is steadier and more deliberate, but it has been no less enjoyable--and no less successful.

The Twins moved within a game of their third American League pennant Saturday, after Kirby Puckett’s home run highlighted a four-run fourth inning and propelled them to a 9-3 rout of the Blue Jays before 51,626 at the SkyDome. Jack Morris pitched eight strong innings for the Twins, who can end the series today at the SkyDome or, at worst, return home to the Metrodome on Tuesday.

Of the 41 teams that have taken 3-1 leads in postseason play, 34 have won those series. The last team to squander a 3-1 lead was the Angels, who lost the 1986 AL playoffs to the Boston Red Sox.

“I feel pretty damned good,” Minnesota second baseman Chuck Knoblauch said. “You just have to make sure you don’t let up and that you finish them off in the next game. You don’t want to go more than it takes. I’m sure this team won’t let up.”

Puckett’s 426-foot homer to center field against Todd Stottlemyre ignited the Twins’ offense.

“It lifted us,” said Puckett, who added a sacrifice fly in the eighth inning when the Blue Jays’ 10th loss in 12 playoff games was all but official. “We were down, 1-0, at the time, and I guess it was a boost. It was time for us to start swinging the bats--finally.”

If they aren’t producing home runs at the pace they did in 1987--Puckett’s homer was the Twins’ second in four games--those bats are performing the necessary tasks. After Kent Hrbek followed Puckett’s homer with a fly ball to the warning track in center field, Chili Davis doubled. Brian Harper moved him to third and Shane Mack walked, and both scored on Mike Pagliarulo’s single. After Greg Gagne was hit on the shoulder by a 1-and-2 pitch, Dan Gladden drove in two more runs with a broken-bat single to right.

Doubles by Harper and Pagliarulo and a single by Gladden in the sixth inning produced two more runs and sent the fans streaming for the exits before the end of the Blue Jays’ fourth consecutive home playoff loss.

Toronto lost its playoff debut in 1985 to Kansas City after taking leads of 2-0 and 3-1, and lost a five-game series to Oakland in 1989.

“We’re doing all the little things right, all the fundamentals,” said Hrbek, who was hitless in five at-bats Saturday and is one for 16 in the series.

“We’re not just riding emotion like we did in ’87. There’s a different attitude on this ballclub and more confidence. We were still moving runners over in the late innings, getting a run on a sacrifice fly.”

Puckett agreed. “We had more power in ‘87, and we hit home runs out of the ballpark all the time,” he said. “This is a different team. We each have a job to do, and we don’t just rely on three or four people. It’s still fun, believe me. There are a lot of teams that aren’t here with us. A lot of people play all their lives and never get this chance, so we appreciate it.”

His teammates appreciated the jolt Puckett’s home run gave them. “It got us going,” Hrbek said. “We were fired up. Chili comes up and hits a double, and we really got rolling. After we got those runs, we got the crowd out of it a little bit and got them booing, which is one thing you try to do to a crowd, make them work for you.”

Morris, who was 2-0 against the Blue Jays during the season and defeated them in Game 1 last Tuesday, had his breaking pitches working well Saturday. He gave up a run in the second inning on a single by Candy Maldonado, a wild pich and a line-drive single by Pat Borders, but he stranded two runners in the third, one in the fourth and one in the fifth before giving up another run.

Blue Jay Manager Cito Gaston reiterated that Tom Candiotti, the loser in Game 1, will start tonight, but some of the Twins said they believed Game 2 winner Juan Guzman would take Candiotti’s place. Guzman kept the pitching chart Saturday, a job usually assigned to the next game’s pitcher.

Saturday’s pitcher, Stottlemyre, cited his two-out walk to Shane Mack in the fourth inning and his inability to retire Gagne as key points in the inning and the game. Stottlemyre’s 3 2/3-inning outing was his shortest since a three-inning stint on July 25, 1990.

“That’s a class ballclub over there,” he said, tilting his head toward the Twin clubhouse, “and you have to be able to execute. To this point, they’ve played some class baseball.

“Tonight was the third time in my last four starts that I’ve had to face them, so maybe that gave them an advantage. To Shane Mack I threw two sliders, and maybe because he’s seen those pitches, he knew what to expect. To me, that walk set up the inning.”

And that inning set up Minnesota’s chance to clinch the pennant today.