It’s Over Before It’s Over for Seattle

The Seattle Mariners exchanged hugs and slapped one another on the back, and a sellout crowd of 45,459 in Safeco Field rose to its feet Wednesday night to celebrate the franchise’s third American League West championship. Then the Mariners went out and played the final five innings of a 5-0 victory over the Angels.

Their timing wasn’t perfect--what better way to clinch a division title than to get that final out in the ninth for the win and form a giant scrum around the mound?--but that hardly detracted from the Mariners’ achievement in their near-perfect season.

What had been a forgone conclusion since June 1 became official with Texas’ 10-4 victory over Oakland, a game that ended two hours before the Mariner-Angel game and mathematically eliminated the A’s from the division race. Seattle, which led the division by 17 games in early June and is on pace to break the New York Yankees’ AL record of 114 wins, set in 1998, clinched the best record in baseball and home-field advantage throughout the AL playoffs.

And for good measure, the Mariners went on to shut out the Angels. Seattle left-hander Jamie Moyer (18-5) gave up only three hits in six innings to improve to 9-0 with a 1.38 earned-run average in his last 12 starts, and Edgar Martinez highlighted a three-run fifth with a two-run home run.

The Mariners, who have won seven in a row and 12 of their last 13, will advance to the postseason for the fourth time, following division titles in 1995 and ’97 and a wild-card berth in 2000. Each of those playoff berths were clinched on days Seattle beat the Angels.

Those victories, including Seattle’s win over the Angels in a one-game playoff to determine the 1995 West title, were marked by wild, on-field parties and champagne-soaked clubhouses.

In light of last week’s terrorist attacks, Wednesday night’s celebration was muted, with Mariner players, coaches and clubhouse personnel, one carrying an American flag, walking out of the dugout to high-five and hug those on the field after closer Kazuhiro Sasaki got Jose Nieves to pop to second base for the final out.

Several minutes later, the Mariners kneeled around the mound and, along with their packed stadium, observed a sustained moment of silence in honor of those killed in the terrorist acts.

Then infielder Mark McLemore took the flag and led the Mariners on a slow march around the basepaths, ending at home plate with an emotional team-wide salute to the fans.

“I’ve never been prouder as an American than I was tonight,” McLemore said. “Having that flag in my hand, it was definitely the highest moment of my career. This surpasses everything. It wasn’t choreographed, it just happened. Everybody in here is trying to understand the significance [of last week’s events]. I think we handled it with taste and dignity.”

The team had a brief champagne toast, but the mood in the clubhouse was subdued.

“We wanted to remember the people that suffered; we didn’t want our win to overshadow any of that,” Seattle Manager Lou Piniella said. “At the same time, we wanted to salute our fans because they’ve been a big part of the success we’ve had.”

The Mariners lead the league in batting, pitching, fielding and on-base percentage, and they rank second in runs and stolen bases, but the true measure of their greatness may be this: The A’s could win 100 games and still finish 17-20 games behind the Mariners.

‘That’s remarkable,” said second baseman Bret Boone, whose .327-hitting, 29-homer, 129-RBI season will put him in the running for most-valuable-player honors. We have 106 wins and still have 16 games to play. That’s spectacular. What an accomplishment. We feel we’re going to win every night we take the field, no matter who we’re playing.”

Another amazing fact: The Mariners, who at 106-40 are a gaudy 66 games over .500, have not lost three games in a row all season.

“I’ve never seen a team like this,” Boone said. “We don’t have a weakness. It’s a veteran team that knows how to play the game and doesn’t make [many] mistakes. It’s a resilient team that doesn’t think about what happened the day before. A good example was the [Aug. 5] game in Cleveland when we blew a 12-run lead and lost. The next day, we came out and beat them.”