Desert Schilling Effect

By MIKE DiGIOVANNA

Oct. 28, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PHOENIX —

It was as if someone tossed the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks into a Cuisinart, chose the puree setting and flipped the switch for about three hours Saturday night.

The Yankees, the team with all that October tradition and 26 championships, came out like a shaky expansion team, and the Diamondbacks, the fourth-year franchise playing their first World Series game, had the look and sound of the Yankees, right down to a Bank One Ballpark crowd of 49,646 chanting “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!”

But those chants were for Arizona right fielder Reggie Sanders, not former Yankee great Reggie Jackson, and this night belonged not to New York but to the Diamondbacks, who played a near-perfect game to whip the mistake-prone Yankees, 9-1, in Game 1 of the World Series.

Arizona right-hander Curt Schilling gave up one run on three hits in seven innings, striking out eight and walking one, to improve his postseason record to 4-0 and his earned run average to 0.79.

Playoff hero Craig Counsell hit a key game-tying home run in the first inning, Luis Gonzalez’s two-run homer highlighted a four-run third, and Mark Grace’s two-run double capped a two-out, four-run rally in the fourth.

Yankee starter Mike Mussina struggled with his command and was knocked out after three innings, and New York committed two costly errors that paved the way for five unearned runs. As if the night wasn’t ugly enough, the Yankees have this to ponder:

They must face nasty Arizona left-hander Randy Johnson in Game 2 tonight, and the Diamondbacks’ early eight-run cushion enabled Manager Bob Brenly to pull Schilling after only 102 pitches, putting the Diamondbacks ace in line for a possible Game 4 start on three days rest.

Brenly planned to go with a four-man rotation of Schilling, Johnson, Brian Anderson and Miguel Batista, but when asked whether Schilling would be his Game 4 starter, he said, “He might.” That drew some laughs.

“I don’t mean to be a smart aleck because our plan has been to use Schilling, Johnson, Anderson and Batista,” Brenly said. “But I’ve said all along we’re willing to make adjustments, and the fact we were able to keep his pitch count down will certainly make it a lot easier to bring him back on short rest.”

The three-time defending champion Yankees, meanwhile, must bounce back from their most lopsided World Series loss since a 12-1 defeat at the hands of the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the 1996 World Series and only their second loss in their last 18 World Series games.

The Yankees also lost Game 2 of the 1996 World Series but came back with four consecutive victories to defeat the Braves. They trailed Oakland, two games to none, in the best-of-five American League division series earlier this month and won three straight.

“We’re not going to panic,” reliever Mike Stanton said. “It still only counts as one loss, and sometimes it’s easier to lose a game like this rather than 1-0, because then there’d be a lot of ‘what-ifs.’ We didn’t do several things right, but we know there’s a lot of series left.”

So do the Diamondbacks, who may be World Series rookies but have been around long enough to know that you don’t get complacent against the Yankees, even with one of baseball’s most dominating pitchers going in Game 2.

“We learned our lesson in the Cardinals [division] series,” Grace said. “Schilling won, 1-0, in Game 1 and the Cardinals beat Randy, 4-1, in Game 2. You can’t think we’re going to be up, 2-0, just because Randy is pitching. Those guys are way too good, way too smart, way too talented and way too experienced for us to be overconfident. They’re the greatest team of our era.”

Saturday night, they were simply a team of errors, the first one coming when Manager Joe Torre, unable to use the designated hitter in the National League park, chose to start David Justice in right field instead of veteran Paul O’Neill because Justice O’Neill had a .357 lifetime average against Schilling.

Justice struck out all three times he faced Schilling, and he dropped Steve Finley’s fly ball on the warning track in right-center field in the third inning. Another Torre decision, to intentionally walk Sanders to face Finley in the fourth, backfired when Finley rifled a run-scoring single to right-center off reliever Randy Choate.

“A lot of my moves worked,” Torre said, “but for the other team.”

The game began with such promise for the Yankees when Bernie Williams hit a two-out RBI double in the top of the first. But Counsell, the surprise most valuable player of the National League championship series, smacked a 2-1 Mussina fastball over the wall in right to tie it, 1-1, in the bottom of the first.

“I think that was absolutely the turning point of the game,” Brenly said. “We all know how the Yankees like to get the lead, shorten the game and turn it over to their bullpen. To tie the game up, I think that was a huge momentum shift.”

Counsell played little ball in the third, bunting Tony Womack to second after Womack was hit by a pitch. Mussina tried to get a 1-2 fastball inside to Gonzalez, but the ball tailed back toward the plate, and Gonzalez dropped the bat-head on it, driving it into the right-field seats for a two-run homer and a 3-1 lead.

Sanders singled to center, and Finley drove a ball to deep right-center. Justice got to the warning track in time, but the ball clanked off his glove for an error, putting runners on second and third. Matt Williams’ sacrifice fly made it 4-1, and Damian Miller’s double made it 5-1.

Choate replaced Mussina to start the fourth and retired the first two batters, but Gonzalez smacked an opposite-field double to left. After an intentional walk to Sanders, Finley’s RBI single made it 6-1.

Yankee third baseman Scott Brosius failed to backhand Williams’ chopper, letting one run score, and Grace, the 37-year-old first baseman playing in his first World Series game, gapped a two-run double to right-center for a 9-1 lead.

The Diamondback defense, on the other hand, featured superb diving stops by Womack and Counsell.

“You give a team four outs in an inning,” Grace said, “you’re asking for trouble.”

The Yankees asked for it Saturday night. And now they’re in a heap of it.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

THE SERIES

Best of seven; *-if necessary

GAME 1

Arizona 9,

New York 1

Diamondbacks lead series, 1-0

GAME 2

Today