Soriano Gives Answer in 9th

To a long and storied list of New York Yankee playoff heroes that includes Reggie Jackson, Chris Chambliss and Bernie Williams, add Alfonso Soriano, a 23-year-old rookie second baseman who sent a Yankee Stadium crowd of 56,375--and probably his entire hometown of San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic--into delirium Sunday night.

Soriano, whose only notable moments in the American League championship series were mental gaffes in Games 1 and 3, lofted a Kazuhiro Sasaki fastball into the right-field bleachers for a game-winning two-run home run to lift the Yankees to a dramatic, tension-filled 3-1 victory over the Seattle Mariners in Game 4.

Williams also came through with another clutch home run, answering Seattle second baseman Bret Boone’s solo homer in the top of the eighth with a solo shot off Mariner reliever Arthur Rhodes in the bottom of the eighth to tie the score, 1-1.

Soriano’s shot, the sixth walk-off home run in ALCS history and fourth by a Yankee, gave New York a commanding 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. The three-time defending World Series champion Yankees can close out the Mariners and earn a berth opposite of Arizona in the World Series with a Game 5 victory tonight.

“It wasn’t looking too good for us there for a minute, but Bernie came up huge, and so did Soriano,” Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter said. “We look at [tonight] as Game 7. We don’t want to go back to Seattle.”

With the score tied, 1-1, Scott Brosius reached on a one-out infield single in the ninth. Soriano laid off a split-fingered fastball on the first pitch and stroked Sasaki’s second pitch, a fastball on the outer half of the plate, to deep right-center.

Center fielder Mike Cameron, who has committed his share of felony thefts of baseballs above outfield walls, leaped high above the fence, “but it just wouldn’t come down for me,” he said. “They used the elements very well. The wind was going out to right-center. Anything hit that way had a chance to get out.”

Soriano’s approach in that last at-bat was a reflection of how far he has progressed this season. A top Yankee prospect for several years and the focus of much trade speculation in the past, Soriano finally got his chance to be a starter this season when Chuck Knoblauch was moved from second to left field.

Though he hit .268 and led AL rookies with 18 homers and 73 runs batted in, Soriano had a swing that Manager Joe Torre described as “wild,” and he struck out far too much--125 times.

“But he’s matured three or four years in this year alone,” Yankee reliever Mike Stanton said. “Early in the year, any time they put a little wrinkle on the ball, he’d make an out. But he laid off that first-pitch splitter, picked out a pitch he could drive, and he didn’t miss it.”

Soriano thought he had homered in the Yankees’ Game 1 victory, but his long liner bounced high off the left-field wall, and he was held to a single because he broke into a home-run trot out of the batter’s box, a mental mistake that drew the ire of Torre and several teammates.

In Saturday’s Game 3 loss to the Mariners, Soriano failed to cover second base on a grounder to Jeter with a runner on first. Though the mistake happened in the seventh inning, long after Seattle’s 14-3 victory was all but decided, Torre cringed to see such sloppy play from a team known for its playoff precision.

“But the great thing about the postseason is every night you have an opportunity to do good things, to be in the highlights, even if you’re 0 for 100,” Jeter said. “Who cares what you’ve done in the past? It would have been easy for Soriano to crawl into a shell, but he has a lot of confidence, and he doesn’t shy away from anything.”

Soriano also had a big hit in Game 5 of the division series, a two-run single that gave New York an early lead en route to a series-clinching win over Oakland, but it will be tough to top Sunday night’s blast.

“This was a very big moment, and it was very big to be a hero in a game like this,” said Soriano, who was mobbed by teammates at home plate. “As I was rounding the bases, I was thinking about my family in the Dominican Republic, who were watching the game because they could not be here with me.”

The Mariners must be thinking, what do we have to do to beat the Yankees in a close game?

Seattle got five innings of no-hit pitching from starter Paul Abbott, who survived eight walks to match Roger Clemens’ five shutout innings, and 12/3 innings of sharp relief from Jeff Nelson, the former Yankee who escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam by getting Brosius to ground into a double play to end the sixth.

Then the Mariners got the big hit they believed would tie the series when Boone, who was knocked on his back by a Clemens pitch in the third inning, hit a two-out towering fly ball off reliever Ramiro Mendoza that cleared the left-field wall by a few feet to give Seattle a 1-0 lead.

Rhodes replaced Nelson to start the bottom of the eighth and struck out nemesis David Justice on three pitches. Justice belted a three-run homer in the seventh inning to key the Yankees’ 9-7, ALCS-clinching 9-7 victory in Game 6 last season.

Seattle Manager Lou Piniella had to like the next matchup: Switch-hitter Williams batting from the right side against Rhodes. Of Williams’ 26 home runs this season, only nine came from the right side.

Williams, however, hit a 3-2 pitch over the wall in right for his 15th career postseason home run, tying him for fourth on baseball’s all-time list with Babe Ruth. What a letdown it was for the Mariners. They thought Saturday’s 15-hit outburst would ignite their offense, but they managed two hits Sunday night. “We’ve had some devastating blows, and this one is definitely devastating,” Cameron said. “But we’ve bounced back before.”