Yankees Slip Past Orioles on Error

It was as sudden as Buster Douglas’ 1990 knockout of Mike Tyson, a swift and stunning turn of events that left a Camden Yards crowd of 48,635 in shock and the Baltimore Orioles dazed and confused.

Wasn’t Oriole ace Mike Mussina cruising with a four-hitter through 7 2/3 innings Friday night? Hadn’t the New York Yankee offense, three for 27 with runners in scoring position in the American League championship series, been reduced to rubble by Mussina’s superior repertoire?

Wasn’t the Yankees’ mysterious hold over the Orioles in Camden Yards, where New York went 6-0 during the regular season, finally coming to end?

It looked that way until the game literally slipped out of the Orioles’ hands in the top of the eighth, when the Yankees jolted Baltimore with a two-out, four-run rally to pull out a 5-2 victory in Game 3.

Yankee left-hander Jimmy Key crafted an eight-inning masterpiece, giving up two runs and three hits, the go-ahead run scored on a bizarre error by Oriole third baseman Todd Zeile, and Cecil Fielder iced the game with a two-run homer, as the Yankees came from behind for the fifth time in the playoffs to take a 2-1 series edge.

“They’re probably shocked now,” Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter said of the Orioles, “but they’ll come back [tonight]. It’s just too big of a series for them not to. But one thing this does is guarantees we go home [for Game 6].”

Unless the Yankees win the next two games in Baltimore, which, considering the way things have gone in Camden Yards for New York, is certainly possible. Three of the Yankees’ six regular-season wins here were by one or two runs, and an 11-6 victory on May 1 went 15 innings.

Friday night’s victory could only have fueled a feeling in both clubhouses that the Yankees have the Orioles’ number in Camden Yards.

Zeile’s two-run homer off Key’s hanging curve ball in the first inning gave Baltimore a 2-0 lead, and the Yankees cut it to 2-1 in the fourth on Bernie Williams’ walk, Tino Martinez’s single and Fielder’s run-scoring fielder’s choice.

After escaping a two-on, one-out situation in the fifth, Mussina retired the side in order in the sixth and seventh and got two quick outs in the eighth.

But Jeter, the kindling for so many Yankee postseason rallies, doubled down the right-field line and Williams, the new-generation Mr. October in New York, slapped a hanging curve into left for an RBI single and a 2-2 tie.

Martinez then doubled into the left-field corner, where B.J. Surhoff retrieved the ball quickly and threw all the way to Zeile at third.

Williams made it easily to third with a headfirst slide and Martinez pulled up at second. But after catching Surhoff’s throw, Zeile spun around and faked a throw to second. The ball slipped out of his hand, went straight into the ground and rolled toward shortstop Cal Ripken.

Williams sprinted home just ahead of Ripken’s throw, and the Yankees had a 3-2 lead. Fielder then blasted a two-run homer to left to make it 5-2, touching off a wild celebration in front of the Yankee dugout.

“Very, very rarely do you see that happen,” Mussina said of the Zeile play. “But strange things happen in big games.

“It was fun being in a big game, a playoff game in your own park, then all of a sudden it’s 3-2, I make a bad pitch and it’s 5-2. I’m going to be thinking about this for a long time. It was one of my better games. . . . I wish I could have finished it.”

Zeile said he was going to throw to second on the play, but when he saw Martinez was already on the bag, he tried to hold up. “But it slipped out of my hand,” Zeile said, “and Bernie read it right away.”

Williams didn’t get any help from third-base coach Willie Randolph. Pure instinct got him home.

“It was just a reaction play,” said Williams, who is batting .480 with four homers and nine RBIs in the playoffs. “I saw the ball on the ground and figured by the time Cal got it, he’d have to make a perfect throw to get me. I took a chance and it paid off.”

The Yankees are now 12-4 against the Orioles this season, but 10 of the 16 games between the teams have been decided in the seventh inning or later. The Yankees have won seven of those games, including two in the championship series.

“There’s something eerie about the way we’ve been able to snatch some of these games,” Yankee pitcher David Cone said. “You hope a game like this has a carry-over effect.”

Yankee Manager Joe Torre is getting used to such late-game heroics, but the eighth inning Friday even had him shaking his head.

“I always expect an inning like that,” Torre joked. “A lot of times it doesn’t happen. . . . This is a remarkable run we have going. We’ve played a ton of one-run and two-run games, and I think we’ve gotten used to doing it. Close games don’t bother us.”

Still, Jeter, whose two-run homer off Mussina in the eighth inning gave the Yankees a 4-2 victory over Baltimore on July 11, wouldn’t mind a little change of pace.

“It would be nice to just have one blowout, one easy game,” Jeter said. “But I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

* HE’S THE KEY: Yankee pitcher Jimmy Key proved again that he is the craftsman’s craftsman. C8

* PROTEST DENIED: American League president Gene Budig denied the Orioles’ protest of Game 1. C8

* CARDINAL ICON: Whitey Herzog is still revered in St. Louis, but he has kept a low profile this season. C9