Williams, Yankees Put Out All the Fires

New York Yankee third baseman Wade Boggs wasn’t so worried about a hot smash off the bat of Texas Ranger Juan Gonzalez coming his way Saturday.

“I was more concerned about fans in the outfield bleachers getting hurt,” Boggs said. “Man, I’ve seen some guys on fire before, but he was en fuego. Thank God they didn’t have eight more of him.”

How would the Yankees counter? They’d simply order up another Bernie Williams or two.

Upstaging Gonzalez in this American League division playoff series was tougher than stealing the spotlight from Michael Jordan in the NBA finals, but Williams almost did it, smacking two home runs Saturday to lead the Yankees to a 6-4 series-clinching victory over the Rangers in front of 50,066 at the Ballpark in Arlington.

New York came from behind for the third consecutive time, designated hitter and Detroit Tiger import Cecil Fielder had two key run-scoring singles, and the Yankees got another flame-extinguishing performance from their remarkable bullpen to win the series, 3-1.

That gave New York its first American League championship series berth since 1981. The Yankees will face AL East rival Baltimore, a team they handled with relative ease this season, winning 10 of 13 games. Game 1 of the best-of-seven series is Tuesday in New York.

“Remember, Texas handled us pretty well this season, so you can forget about that stuff in the postseason,” Boggs said.

“You can throw the records out the window once you get into a series like this. There’s so much excitement and adrenaline, it’s hard for one team to dominate.”

The atmosphere was similar for this division series, with two games in hostile Yankee Stadium and two in Arlington, where fans were pumped about the city’s first playoff games, and Williams fed off it.

“There was an electricity in the air, and it seemed to bring out the best in me,” said Williams, 28, who played with Gonzalez on a youth team in Puerto Rico in the 1980s. “I don’t know why, but I was able to stay focused.”

Williams’ homer from the left side of the plate against Roger Pavlik pulled the Yankees even, 4-4, in the fifth inning Saturday, and his ninth-inning smash from the right side, against Mike Stanton, gave the Yankees a 6-4 lead and some breathing room.

Williams became the first player in postseason history to homer from each side of the plate in the same game.

Williams, who also homered and robbed Rusty Greer of a homer in Game 3, went seven for 15 (.467) with three homers, five runs batted in and five runs in the series, only a shade less amazing than Gonzalez’s .438 (seven for 16), five homers and nine RBIs.

If Williams truly believes the best years of his career are ahead of him, opponents may want to get together to discuss how to deal with him.

“I don’t think Bernie knows now what he’s capable of,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said. “He’s learning all the time, he’s improving all the time, and he’s becoming a big-play guy.”

So is Gonzalez, the most valuable player candidate whose solo homer in the third started a two-run inning that gave Texas a 4-0 lead Saturday.

But after the Yankees closed the gap with a three-run fourth, on RBI singles by Fielder and Mariano Duncan and Derek Jeter’s RBI fielder’s choice, the Mighty Juan was reduced to a mere mortal in the bottom of the fourth by the not-so-mighty David Weathers.

Ivan Rodriguez singled and Greer walked against reliever Brian Boehringer to open the fourth, and up stepped Gonzalez, who had launched a ball 416 feet into the left-field seats in his previous at-bat.

On came Weathers, who was demoted to the minor leagues in late August after four starts in which he said he was “the worst pitcher in the major leagues.” Weathers fell behind on the count, 3-1, but then threw two nasty sliders, each low and away and out of the strike zone.

An eager Gonzalez swung and missed at both, and Will Clark bounced into an inning-ending double play. Weathers pitched a scoreless fifth and sixth, Mariano Rivera added a scoreless seventh and eighth, and John Wetteland blanked the Rangers in the ninth for his second save of the series.

“You have to give Weathers all the credit,” Jeter said. “Juan, heck, I would have walked him intentionally every time up. But that strikeout really turned the momentum around. They had guys on first and second, no outs, their big gun up, and they didn’t score. I think that turned the tide.”

So did Williams’ homer in the fifth and Fielder’s RBI single in the seventh, which gave New York a 5-4 lead. With Rivera and Wetteland left in a bullpen that gave up one earned run, nine hits and struck out 15 in 19 2/3 innings (0.46 earned-run average) in the series, the Rangers were finished.

“Our bullpen,” Yankee pitcher David Cone said, “was phenomenal.”