Orioles a Team of Unity : A High-Five for Orioles vs. Johnson

You may draw to an inside straight in Las Vegas once. But, if you do it five times in a row, they chuck you out the door because you must be cheating. If you hit the lottery five days in succession, they investigate to see if your brother is on the commission. If you buy options on a stock the day before the company’s bought out, you might be lucky. But do it five times and they send you to jail for insider trading.

Now, what will baseball do to the Baltimore Orioles? Ban them from the American League Championship Series? No can do. The Orioles filled a straight, hit the lottery and beat the market all in one afternoon with a 3-1 win over the Seattle Mariners at Oriole Park at Camden Yards Sunday. The Orioles won all five games that baseball’s most dominant pitcher, Randy Johnson, started against them this season, and this afternoon beat him for the second time in a week in the playoffs.

Baltimore will now advance to the ALCS for the second straight season, beginning here on Wednesday against the New York Yankees or Cleveland Indians, after eliminating the Mariners in four games in their best-of-five first-round playoff series. Last year, the Yankees eliminated the Orioles in the ALCS en route to winning the World Series.

Orioles fans came to Camden Yards Sunday to bury Johnson, the fireballing left-hander. They got their wish. But then they stayed to praise Orioles right-hander Mike Mussina, as well. Now, next to 1997 in baseball lore, there will always be an annotation in millions of minds: the year Mussina owned The Big Unit, which is Johnson’s nickname because of his 6-foot-10 frame.

Orioles pitching dominated homerless Ken Griffey Jr. and the rest of a Mariners lineup that hit more home runs this season than any club ever. What probably will be remembered longer is the Orioles accomplished a feat so improbable that nobody in baseball had bothered to conceive it: beat the Mariners 5 for 5 with the legendary Big Unit on the mound.

In four of those games, including two this week, the 6-2 Mussina stood taller than Johnson. On Tuesday in Seattle, he allowed just two runs on five hits while striking out nine. This time, pitching on just three days’ rest instead of his customary four, he was better. In seven innings, he allowed one run and just two hits--none after the second inning--while striking out seven batters. He retired 17 of the last 19 men he faced before two relief pitchers, Armando Benitez and Randy Myers, completed the victory without allowing a hit.

Johnson finished the regular season with a 20-4 won-lost record, with two of those losses coming against the Orioles. He pitched a third time against them during the season that Baltimore also won, but in which he was not involved in the final decision. Mussina, the Orioles’ best pitcher, who was 15-8 during the regular season, started two of those games against Johnson. He got the victory in one of them.

Johnson’s main problem, according to Mariners Manager Lou Piniella, was that “Randy matched up with Mussina and he (Mussina) just pitched outstandingly. The more I see Mussina, the more impressed I am. Just give him all the credit. I tip my hat. On three days’ rest? Tremendous. Basically, he was unscathed.”

All afternoon and evening, the sellout crowd of 48,766 assumed the role of picadors with Johnson enacting the role of injured but gallant bull. As home runs by Jeff Reboulet in the first inning and Geronimo Berroa in the fifth inning flew into the left field bleachers off the fearsome Seattle southpaw with the 100 mph fastball, the crowd derisively chanted “Ran-dy, Ran-dy.” Then, as Mussina struck out the top of the Mariners batting order in one inning, then struck out No. 4 hitter Edgar Martinez to end another inning, the throng bellowed--deep and rhythmically like a human drum--”Mooooose, Mooooose.” “Moose” is Mussina’s nickname.

The more you know about baseball and appreciate its history, the more preposterous the events of the past week seem. Over the past three seasons, Johnson has compiled an incredible 43-6 regular season record--the equal in winning percentage over such a span of any pitcher ever, including all-time greats Walter Johnson and Sandy Koufax. Johnson’s reign has not been as long as theirs, though he’s been masterful the past five seasons. However, no man has even been more unbeatable in his prime.

But the Orioles--while benching four of their best players, all left-handed batters, in favor of right-handed hitters--beat him.

This was actually Johnson’s best performance against the Orioles. In his other starts, he allowed four, five, five and five runs and was removed far earlier than normal on three occasions. This time, he battled through eight innings and struck out 13 Orioles. But he survived only by completely reversing his style of pitching--an enormous concession.

“Nobody usually looks for anything but a fastball from Johnson,” said Berroa. “But (coach) Carlos Bernhardt told me, ‘He’s started pitching “backwards.” Look for a slider early in the count.’ ” That led to Berroa’s fifth-inning homer and the final 3-1 score.

In the Orioles’ clubhouse, “Can’t Nobody Hold Us Down,” blasted from a boom box. But the Oriole who was most vindicated was Mussina. Last season, he had a bad September start against the eventual World Series champion Yankees and two mediocre performances in the playoffs. In the insular world of baseball, the slightest provocation can start the nastiest talk.

“I thought it was funny last year that there were comments about Mike never having pitched a big game,” said Davey Johnson, who noted how few such opportunities Mussina had been provided. “I think everybody can put to rest that Mike can’t pitch in a big game.”