Mariners, Yankees Make Their Pitch

Put those shovels back in the shed. The Seattle Mariners are not ready to be buried just yet.

Facing playoff elimination before a record Camden Yards crowd of 49,137, Mariner left-hander Jeff Fassero came through with “the biggest game I’ve pitched in my life,” leading Seattle to a 4-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday in Game 3 of the American League division series.

Fassero gave up one run and three hits in eight innings, retiring 18 in a row from the third through eighth, Jay Buhner and Paul Sorrento homered in the ninth, and Mariner closer--in title, at least--Heathcliff Slocumb survived a ninth-inning scare, getting Harold Baines to pop out with a runner on second to end the game.

The Orioles still lead the best-of-five series, two games to one, but the Mariners have their best pitcher, Randy Johnson, set to start Game 4 today against Baltimore ace Mike Mussina, who shut down Seattle in Game 1.

“Mussina is tough--this is going to be World War II,” Seattle shortstop Alex Rodriguez said. “We’re playing to stay alive, so all the pressure is on them. They have to put the final nail in the coffin. They’ve got the champagne on ice. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

Another Seattle win and that champagne may be flat by Monday. But to accomplish that, Johnson must do what he has not done all season--beat Baltimore.

He may be the Big Unit to everyone else, but Johnson has been no threat to the Orioles: the left-hander is 0-3 with a 6.38 earned-run average against Baltimore this season, and 3-8 with a 4.92 ERA in his career. Mussina is 9-1 against Seatte.

“Randy Johnson is the best,” Rodriguez said. “If we don’t win [today] I’ll go back to Miami, lay in my pool and know we lost with the best.”

The Mariners have been in this position before. They lost the first two games of the 1995 division series to New York before storming back to win the next three at home. But no team has won three in a row on the road to overcome a 2-0 deficit in a five-game series.

“You know the makeup of these guys,” Buhner said. “We’ve been able to bounce back and battle all year. We had to win [Saturday] and we did. We have to win [today], and I like our chances with Randy Johnson on the mound. I wasn’t looking forward to going home. We’ve come too far and been through too much for this to end.”

Fassero made sure it didn’t, responding to the pressure of his first playoff start--”I had butterflies,” he acknowledged--with what Manager Lou Piniella described as an “outstanding, gutsy performance.”

Outstanding because for five innings he silenced an Oriole team that outscored Seattle, 18-6, in the first two games. Gutsy because he threw a season-high 136 pitches, coming out of the game only after walking Geronimo Berroa leading off the ninth. And gutsy because he pitched--and fielded--his way through trouble in the first and third innings.

Baltimore loaded the bases with two out in the first, and B.J. Surhoff, who hit .588 with 20 RBIs in bases-loaded situations this season, hit a grounder up the middle that Fassero stopped with his foot but couldn’t find.

Fassero looked up. Nothing. He spun around in front of the mound. Still nothing. Then he looked down, and there was the ball, right at his feet. The left-hander picked it up and fired to first just in time to get Surhoff, and everyone in the stadium exhaled.

“My first instinct was to look up,” Fassero said. “Then I ran out of places to look, so I looked down.”

Brady Anderson singled to open the third and took third on Roberto Alomar’s double, creating a plum opportunity for the heart of the Baltimore order.

But Fassero struck out Berroa, fielded Rafael Palmeiro’s comebacker and started a rundown in which Anderson was thrown out between third and home, and struck out Cal Ripken on a nasty splitter.

“He got us out of some early jams, and then he carried us--that was something we needed,” Sorrento said. “Obviously, Jeff was the story.”

The emerging Mariner offense was a subplot. Rich Amaral, inserted in the leadoff spot against Oriole starter Jimmy Key because of his .440 (11 for 25) average against the left-hander, singled and scored twice, on Roberto Kelly’s double in the third and Ken Griffey’s single in the fifth.

Buhner and Sorrento then blasted homers off reliever Terry Mathews to give Seattle a 4-0 lead in the ninth, and those runs proved critical after Jeffrey Hammonds’ two-run double off Slocumb in the bottom of the ninth.

But the erratic Slocumb retired Baines, and the Mariners lived to see another day.

“Anything can happen now,” Buhner said. “We have nothing to lose.”