The Indians Don’t Leave Orioles a Tip

Marquis Grissom struck out four times and misplayed a critical ninth-inning fly ball, allowing the tying run to score, and Omar Vizquel botched a suicide squeeze play in the 12th. But don’t think for a minute that fate didn’t cast a warm smile on this Cleveland Indian pair Saturday.

Neither Grissom nor Vizquel should have had much reason to celebrate, but there they were in the 12th inning, whooping it up after Grissom scored on a controversial passed ball to lift the Indians to a dramatic 2-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles in Game 3 of the American League championship series.

A Jacobs Field crowd of 45,047, already drained from a 4-hour, 51-minute thriller that featured 33 strikeouts--15 by Oriole starter Mike Mussina--13 pitchers, a handful of superb defensive plays and a few botched plays, cheered in disbelief as Grissom crossed the plate with the winning run.

Vizquel, squaring to bunt as Grissom darted in from third, failed to make contact on a Randy Myers slider, but the ball popped out of Oriole catcher Lenny Webster’s glove and rolled a few feet away.

Webster, thinking Vizquel had fouled the pitch, made a token attempt to retrieve the ball, and Grissom scored standing up. The game ended with Baltimore Manager Davey Johnson arguing with home-plate umpire John Hirschbeck, and the favored Orioles trailing the best-of-seven series, two games to one.

“It looked to me like he fouled it off,” Johnson said. “I heard a ‘tick’ and the ball changed directions. Lenny didn’t even go after it because he thought it was foul. . . . Maybe it was wishful hearing on my part.”

Said Webster: “In defense of John [Hirschbeck], it was pretty loud and impossible for him to hear, but he definitely tipped it, and it went off my glove. I saw contact and I heard contact. I saw the replay, and it clearly shows he tipped it.”

Actually, it didn’t. Replays were inconclusive at best, showing no definitive ricochet when the ball passed Vizquel’s bat, and Hirschbeck, the same umpire Oriole second baseman Roberto Alomar spit on during an argument in 1996, was convinced he made the right call.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Hirschbeck said. “Crowd noise couldn’t have affected it.”

Vizquel was so convinced he didn’t make contact that he was “getting ready to kill myself because I missed it,” he said. “Then I saw Marquis cross the plate, and all of a sudden we were jumping.”

Grissom’s run put a happy ending on a nerve-racking evening for the Indians, who struck out 21 times, who would have won in regulation had they not butchered the ninth inning defensively, and who couldn’t score after putting runners on first and third with no outs in the 11th.

“For the first time in a month and a half, I had two big glasses of Alka-Seltzer, one in the fifth inning and one in the 11th,” Cleveland Manager Mike Hargrove said. “You couldn’t ask for a more intense game. We pitched out of some jams, and they did, too. There were a lot of very big defensive plays. It was a good game to watch.”

Except for the top of the ninth. Trailing, 1-0, Chris Hoiles opened with a single against Indian closer Jose Mesa, and Hoiles was replaced by pinch-runner Jeff Reboulet. Pinch-hitter Jeffrey Hammonds grounded to second baseman Tony Fernandez, who tried to tag Reboulet. But when Reboulet stopped and fell to the ground, Fernandez bypassed the tag, jumped over the runner and threw to first, thinking Jim Thome would be able to get Reboulet at second.

Reboulet got up, ran to second and veered slightly toward the infield--not enough to be ruled out of the basepath but enough to force Thome’s throw to hit him in the left arm and carom into shallow left field.

Anderson then lifted a fly ball to center, but Grissom lost it. He froze, put his arms out, and by the time he tracked the ball it was too late. The ball fell at least 40 feet behind Grissom for a gift double, allowing Reboulet to score the tying run.

“I felt like the worst person in the world after that,” said Grissom, the Game 2 hero because of his three-run homer in the eighth. “The way we battled, I felt I let the whole team down. I had to bounce back and really accept the fact that I lost the ball, that it wasn’t my fault. I had to drill that through my head the last four innings.”

Grissom would get a chance to redeem himself three innings later, but not before both teams squandered chances to win. The Orioles loaded the bases with two outs in the 11th, but seldom-used Indian reliever Al Morman struck out Rafael Palmeiro to end the inning.

Grissom drew a one-out walk in the 12th and took third on Fernandez’s single to right to set up the winning run. With a 2-1 count on Vizquel, Hargrove said the situation “screamed” for a squeeze play, which didn’t work . . . but wound up working out.

* ROSS NEWHAN: C15