Old Hat for O'Neill

By MIKE DiGIOVANNA

Oct. 18, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SEATTLE —

One of these decades, Paul O’Neill might be too old to play right field for the New York Yankees. Until then, until the creaky, supposedly over-the-hill O’Neill decides to hang up his scowl and stop hurling helmets and bats in frustration, the rest of baseball will have to deal with him.

That day can’t come soon enough for New York’s opponents, especially the Seattle Mariners, who fell victim to the ancient Yankee Wednesday when O’Neill hit a two-run home run in the fourth inning, the difference in New York’s 4-2 victory over Seattle in Game 1 of the American League championship series.

A Safeco Field crowd of 47,644 saw Yankee left-hander Andy Pettitte shut down leadoff batter Ichiro Suzuki and the rest of the Mariner offense, limiting Seattle to one run and three hits in eight innings to improve to 9-5 with a 3.96 earned-run average in 21 career playoff starts.

Yankee leadoff batter Chuck Knoblauch had three hits, including an RBI single in the second, Jorge Posada walked and scored in the second and legged out a key double to lead off the fourth, much-needed contributions on a day New York’s two through five batters, Derek Jeter, David Justice, Bernie Williams and Tino Martinez, combined for one hit in 16 at-bats.

But it was O’Neill, the 38-year-old who has contemplated retirement the last two years and might actually walk away from the game after this season, who struck the biggest blow, lining an Aaron Sele fastball into the right-field seats following Posada’s double to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead in the fourth.

“Paul could probably be effective in this game as long as he wants to be,” Yankee reliever Mike Stanton said. “He works as hard as anyone at hitting and staying in shape, and at 38, you have to do twice as much as you did at 28 to stay in the lineup every day because your body doesn’t react as well as it once did.”

O’Neill, who also singled in the sixth, has often been described as the backbone of a Yankee team that has won three straight and four of the last five World Series championships, but he hasn’t seemed as sturdy of late.

He broke a bone in his foot on Sept. 7, sat out 15 games and struggled to find his stroke in the division series, batting .091 (one for 11) against Oakland. Manager Joe Torre, who has an affinity for his veterans, even made the difficult decision to bench O’Neill in favor of right-handed-hitting Shane Spencer against A’s left-handers Barry Zito and Mark Mulder.

“Everybody wants to come out and play well every game in the playoffs, but it just doesn’t happen,” O’Neill said. “Throughout the course of the year, you go through a bad week, and, well, the next week you get them. But you do that in the playoffs, and they write about how bad you are.”

If O’Neill’s pride was hurt by the benching, it didn’t show. O’Neill didn’t complain. He simply did what he has done for the past 15 years when adversity hit; he worked his way through it.

“The one thing that drives Paul is he’s a perfectionist, but the thing is, you can never reach perfection,” Stanton said. “He’s never satisfied. He’ll go four for four and say he should have hit the ball harder. That drives him, and we can feed off that energy. Even though he’s been playing for 15 years, he’s still an intense and emotional guy.”

O’Neill is as blue collar as they come, and when he stepped to the plate in the fourth inning, his job wasn’t to hit a home run. Posada, who walked and later scored on Knoblauch’s RBI single off the glove of diving third baseman David Bell in the second inning, led off the fourth with a liner off the base of the right-field wall.

Posada rounded first and headed for second, a decision Torre said “scared the [heck] out of me,” because the cannon-armed Suzuki fielded the ball quickly and cleanly off the wall. Suzuki rifled a one-hop throw to second that beat Posada to the bag, but the Yankee catcher got his lead foot into the base with a nice hook slide before Seattle shortstop Carlos Guillen applied the tag.

Seattle Manager Lou Piniella stormed the field to argue umpire Gary Cederstrom’s call, but replays showed Posada was safe. O’Neill came to the plate with one goal: Hit a ball to the right side to advance Posada to third. He hit a 2-and-1 fastball to the right side all right; it went all the way over the wall for a home run and a 3-0 lead.

“We were supposed to throw him a nice sinker down and away there, but the ball just stayed up over the middle of the plate, and he hit it out,” Piniella said. “Paul is dangerous. He’s got all that post-season experience, and he’s had a heck of a career.”

The Mariners threatened in the fifth when Edgar Martinez singled and Mike Cameron doubled, putting runners on second and third with none out. John Olerud’s groundout scored Martinez and moved Cameron to third, but Pettitte struck out Jay Buhner looking and Dan Wilson swinging to end the inning and preserve a 3-1 lead.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

AL PLAYOFFS

Championship series; Best of seven

NEW YORK vs. SEATTLE

New York leads series, 1-0

Game 1

New York 4, Seattle 2

Game 2--Today

at Seattle, 5:15 p.m., Ch. 11

Starters--Yankee RH Mike Mussina vs. Mariner RH Freddy Garcia

FOR OPENERS

How the Yankees have fared in the first games of the ALCS recently, with winning or losing pitcher: