BASEBALL PLAYOFFS DAILY REPORT : AMERICAN LEAGUE : Athletics Can Turn to Wilson for Comeback Advice

As the Athletics attempt to become the third team to win the American League pennant after facing a 3-1 deficit, they need only ask center fielder Willie Wilson for advice.

Wilson played for the Kansas City Royals in 1985 when they rallied to win the pennant after losing three of their first four games against the Blue Jays.

“I thought back to it, and when you’ve been in that situation before, it’s a funny feeling,” said Wilson, who batted .310 in that playoff series and .367 in the Royals’ seven-game World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.

“But this is a little different. We lost the first two on the road and then came home. But we also had to win the last two there, just like this time.

“That year, we had a lot of young kids on the team, like Bret Saberhagen and Mark Gubicza, but we also had a lot of veterans, like Dan Quisenberry, Jim Sundberg, George Brett and myself. We just played father roles and kept them happy and alive and kept them from thinking about the negative.

“Sometimes, when you’re winning and you’re ahead, you try so hard because you want it so bad. Like the Blue Jays in ‘85, they could taste the champagne. With the Royals, we figured we would just go out and play hard as we could and we might get a break.”

One year later, the Boston Red Sox made the same kind of comeback against the Angels after scoring an 11-inning victory at Anaheim Stadium in Game 5. But Dave Henderson, then with the Red Sox and now with the A’s, said the scenarios are different.

“There’s no comparison,” said Henderson, who was left off Oakland’s postseason roster because of sore hamstrings. “The difference was we knew when we won Game 5, we were going home. We knew we were going to win that series.”

Despite two sub-par performances against the A’s, Jack Morris is scheduled to start for the Blue Jays if the A’s extend this series to seven games.

Morris lost the series opener, 4-3, pitching a complete game. All four runs resulted from home runs, starting with back-to-back home runs by Mark McGwire and Terry Steinbach and a ninth-inning homer by Harold Baines. Morris was knocked out of Game 4 Sunday after 3 1/3 innings, his earliest postseason exit in 11 playoff and World Series starts, and has an earned-run average in this series of 6.57 (nine earned runs in 12 1/3 innings).

“I don’t think anybody really wants to have a seventh game happen,” Morris said. “But that’s the beauty of this game. Anything can happen.”

Morris, who won the seventh game of the World Series last year by pitching 10 shutout innings for the Twins against the Braves, hopes the Blue Jays today will capitalize on their second chance to clinch the AL pennant and give him time off to rest for the World Series.

“The only real advantage is we’re going home,” he said of the SkyDome, where the Blue Jays were 53-28 during the season and 1-1 in the first two games of this series. “We can’t dwell on what happened (in Monday’s 6-2 loss). We’re up, 3-2, and the next one is the most important game we’ll play all season.”

Ron Darling, who lost Game 3, would probably start for Oakland in a seventh game, but Manager Tony La Russa hasn’t ruled out bringing back Dave Stewart after Stewart’s Game 5 victory. “Everyone should be available,” La Russa said. “I hope there is a Thursday.”

The A’s canceled a Tuesday afternoon workout at the SkyDome, but didn’t notify Blue Jay officials until after the team had hired security personnel to staff the building. The Blue Jays had to absorb the cost. . . . This is the first playoff series involving the A’s that has gone longer than five games.