One Swing Puts Toronto Back in Catch-Up Role : AL Game 1: After Blue Jays tie it in the eighth, A’s Baines delivers bases-empty home run in the ninth for 4-3 victory.

It was Jack Morris’ game to win, and he didn’t. Now, the edge gained by the Oakland Athletics Wednesday night in their 4-3 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays might have greater significance than merely a 1-0 lead in their American League championship series.

Morris this season was the Blue Jays’ money pitcher, their unquestioned leader, as he was for the Twins last season in defeating the Blue Jays twice in the playoffs and the Braves twice in the World Series. When Harold Baines led off the ninth inning with a home run to right, erasing the euphoria created when John Olerud’s run-scoring single against Jeff Russell tied the score in the bottom of the eighth, the Blue Jays and the 51,039 fans in the SkyDome sat in stunned silence.

The A’s were stunned, too.

“I can imagine how they feel. We’re sort of in shock,” said Dennis Eckersley, who gave up a single to pinch-hitter Ed Sprague in the ninth but retired Devon White on a pop-up to extend his own playoff-record save total to 10. “The game turned around so quick.”

It turned into the Blue Jays’ fourth consecutive playoff defeat and seventh in their last eight postseason games when Baines drilled a letter-high, 1-and-0 slider from Morris 384 feet and into the upper deck in right.

“Call it what you will,” said Dave Winfield, whose first postseason homer had narrowed Oakland’s lead to 3-2 in the sixth inning, “but the excitement is blunted right there.”

Cautious about subjecting themselves to another playoff disappointment, the fans had become excited as the Blue Jays caught up to the A’s.

Morris, the first pitcher to start a playoff opener for three different teams, had regrouped impressively after giving up back-to-back home runs to Mark McGwire and Terry Steinbach in the second inning that gave Oakland a 3-0 lead. He allowed only a single by Baines over the next seven innings and showed no signs of flagging, leading Toronto Manager Cito Gaston to stay with Morris in the ninth.

Asked if he had considered going to his bullpen, Gaston smiled wearily.

“I figured I’d get that question sooner or later,” he said. “It’s easy to say after it happened. I think Jack’s pitched well enough for us this year to send him out again.”

Morris, who pitched 10 shutout innings in the Minnesota Twins’ World Series-clinching triumph over the Braves last October, wanted to go out for the ninth.

“I wasn’t tired. I threw a slider and he jumped on it,” Morris said, leaning back in his stall in the quiet Toronto clubhouse. “They played very well and they beat us. We gave it our best shot. You can say it until Christmas comes, but the bottom line is they beat us in every way they could.”

That they beat Morris didn’t escape the A’s notice.

“Is it a big deal? I guess. Like if they beat (Dave) Stewart, the same thing,” Eckersley said.

Morris, however, refused to give the loss that much significance or give the A’s that much satisfaction. He didn’t feel invincible, he said, despite a cumulative 7-1 postseason record compiled with the 1984 and ’87 Detroit Tigers and the Twins last season.

“I’m a human being and I know that I make mistakes,” he said. “I did the best I could tonight. I regret a couple of poor pitches, but you look back at 99% of my games and I regret a few poor pitches. There are no excuses. The bottom line is they won.

“We’ve got a game to play (today) and we had this game in range. The game wasn’t over until the last out was made.”

The game looked as if it might get out of reach quickly after Baines singled and McGwire lined a 1-and-0 pitch 417 feet and into the left-field stands. Steinbach followed with a homer off an 0-and-2 fastball that Morris left over the plate, making the duo the first players to hit back-to-back homers in the AL playoffs since 1980, when the New York Yankees’ Rick Cerone and Lou Piniella hit successive homers off Kansas City’s Larry Gura in the second inning of the series opener. It was accomplished more recently in the National League, when Darryl Strawberry--then of the Mets--and Kevin McReynolds homered off the Dodgers’ John Tudor in the fourth inning of the fourth game of the 1988 playoffs.

The Blue Jays answered when Pat Borders homered off Stewart with one out in the fifth and Winfield, making his first postseason appearance since 1981, lofted a 411-foot shot over the left-field fence for his first career homer off Stewart in the sixth. They finally pulled even in the eighth on a two-out double by Winfield and Olerud’s single to center against Russell.

“They had three runs on us and we caught them,” Winfield said. “It could have gone either way.”

But it went Oakland’s way because of Baines, who might have been the calmest person in the building after his homer.

“I was thinking, ‘It put the A’s ahead, 4-3,’ ” Baines said. “I’m not an emotional person. Tonight was a great highlight and maybe if I get a (World Series) ring I will get excited. . . .

“I can’t worry about it being Jack Morris out there. I can’t worry about anything except that little white ball.”

The Blue Jays had to worry about facing Eckersley in the ninth. “They went up with one inning left to go and with their closer, your odds are diminished right there,” Winfield said.

The A’s don’t mind their odds in these playoffs either.

“To open with a win against a guy like Jack Morris is very, very nice,” said McGwire, who also homered against the Red Sox in the 1988 playoffs and against the Blue Jays in 1989. “You’ve got to work your (butt) off against that team. . . . It doesn’t matter if the first game is on the road or at home. The first one is always the most important. Just to win the first game is great.”

* AL REPORT

David Cone thought he might be traded to the Oakland A’s in August. Tonight, he faces them in Game 2 of the AL playoffs. C9