M’s get 100th victory
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, September 5, 2001
By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
SEATTLE – The Seattle Mariners went back to playing their game.
They beat out infield hits, stole bases, forced bad throws on bunts and rediscovered the gaps Wednesday at Safeco Field.
The Mariners’ 100th victory of the season – a 12-6 triumph over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays – made it easy to see how they piled up the previous 99.
“It’s a tribute to our players,” manager Lou Piniella said. “They’ve played hard all year, they play with a purpose and they play to win. We’ve had a big (division) lead all season but there’s been no complacency.”
Then Piniella turned sentimental about the achievement, to the point of getting emotional.
“I’ve been in baseball since 1969 and I’ve only played on two teams that won 100 games,” he said. “I didn’t think I would get emotional about it, but I have.”
To win No. 100, it took an ingredient that’s been absent lately: offense.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
The Mariners rescued pitcher Aaron Sele from his worst start of the season by pounding six Tampa Bay pitchers for 13 hits.
The Mariners scored three runs in the third inning to cut into a 4-0 deficit, four in the fifth to take a 7-6 lead and five in the sixth to silence all the talk about the offensive holes on this team finally being exposed.
“This team has been offensing all year,” Bret Boone said. “You’re not going to hit from start to finish.”
It had been a rough two weeks for the hitters, who averaged 3.6 runs in the dozen games since they scored 16 against Detroit on Aug. 22.
“We hadn’t been swinging the bats well,” Piniella said. “Last night I noticed we started hitting some balls right at people. That was a good sign.”
So was a slight adjustment to the batting order. Piniella moved Boone up two places to No. 3 and slid Edgar Martinez down one spot to fourth.
It woke up everybody.
Boone drove in two runs with a single in the third inning and scored twice after drawing walks in the fifth and sixth.
Martinez doubled twice, including a bases-loaded jolt down the left-field line in the sixth inning that drove in three runs after the Rays intentionally walked Boone.
John Olerud went 2-for-4, drove in three runs and scored twice, both on romps from first base on Mike Cameron’s double in the fifth inning and Jay Buhner’s double in the sixth.
Ichiro Suzuki, just 2-for-10 in the first two games of the homestand, went 1-for-3, drew a walk, forced an error on a sacrifice bunt and scored three times. Suzuki’s base hit in the fifth inning was his 167th single this season, matching the American League rookie record set by Harvey Kuenn of the Tigers in 1953.
Suzuki has 212 hits and needs 21 to tie the league’s single-season record for a rookie, set by Joe Jackson of Cleveland in 1911.
Buhner, the man supposedly slowed by his surgically repaired left foot, beat out his second straight infield dribbler in the fifth inning. In the sixth, he got his first RBI of the season with a double to the wall. Buhner entered the game in the fifth inning after Al Martin strained his left elbow while making a throw
Wednesday’s outburst got Sele off the slippery side of a 3 1/3-inning banana peel. He allowed nine hits and six runs, and was pulled after Brent Abernathy’s RBI single in the fourth gave the Devil Rays a 6-3 lead.
“Most of their hits were off curveballs that were up in the zone,” Sele said. “It was big and it didn’t have its bite.”
Left-hander John Halama took over and continued to be the maestro of long relief.
Halama retired seven of the next nine hitters in a 2 1/3-inning effort that kept him scoreless in his last 17 1/3innings. It also gave Halama a 10-6 record and the Mariners a fifth pitcher with double-digit victories.
Arthur Rhodes worked the next 1 2/3innings, Ryan Franklin got the last five outs and the Mariners wrapped up a victory that yanked them from an exclusive club.
Entering the game, there were nine major league franchises that had never won 100 in a season. Now the Angels, Devil Rays, Rangers, Blue Jays, Astros, Brewers, Expos and Padres will carry on without the Mariners.
