By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
NEW YORK – Seattle Mariners pitchers knew danger when it stared back at them from the batter’s box.
Few players in history have hit more home runs in the postseason than Bernie Williams, and on a night when any ball hit in the air had a chance to go out, the Mariners pitched like they weren’t going to let him beat them.
They walked him twice early in the game. And then, when the Mariners challenged him, Williams helped launch a comeback that gave the New York Yankees a 3-1 victory in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.
Just moments after Bret Boone’s home run gave the Mariners a 1-0 lead and every appearance of tying the series, Williams and the Yankees stole it all back.
He popped a wind-aided home run over the right-field fence to tie the score 1-1 in the bottom of the eighth and the Yankees won the game on Alfonso Soriano’s two-run homer in the ninth.
In the time it took two Yankees to swing their bats, New York grabbed firm command of the series after it seemed the Mariners had gained all the momentum.
The Yankees lead the best-of-seven series 3-1 and need one victory to advance to the World Series. The Mariners must win three straight to avoid elimination, beginning tonight in Game 5 at Yankee Stadium.
Aaron Sele, 0-5 in his postseason career, will pitch for the Mariners tonight against Andy Pettitte.
How they approach Williams might be as important to tonight’s game as it was Sunday.
Early in the game, Mariners starter Paul Abbott gave him little to hit after he fell behind in the count. Abbott walked Williams twice, then escaped those innings without allowing a run.
Then, in the eighth after Boone had given the Mariners a lead, reliever Arthur Rhodes fell into a full count against Williams and threw his best pitch: his fastball.
It wound up over the plate and, about three second later, in the seats.
A poor pitching approach after it was obvious Abbott was being careful against Williams? Pitching coach Bryan Price didn’t see it that way.
“Arthur’s got a 95 mph fastball and you teach him not to throw it? That’s a crime,” Price said. “He put the bat on the ball and he got it up in the air. They’ve got good hitters up and down the lineup, so we’re really not pitching around anybody. We respect them all, but we go after them all. We don’t pitch around one to get to the next. There was no intent to pitch around Bernie at all.”
Nor was there any intent to yield to Soriano in the ninth.
Kazuhiro Sasaki got another fastball up and Soriano, a rookie who is batting .385 in the series, launched it.
“He got it up, and that was the right place to hit a fly ball,” Price said.
Sasaki never appeared to explain his pitch. Rhodes did.
“Soriano got it up in the wind,” Rhodes said. “You can’t do anything about that.”
Center fielder Mike Cameron climbed high on the fence but couldn’t get to the ball.
“I just ran out of land,” he said. “For a minute, I thought I had a play on it.”
With a strong wind swirling around Yankee Stadium, starting pitchers Paul Abbott and Roger Clemens struggled on the mound but, amazingly, kept hitters on both sides quiet.
Abbott pitched a no-hitter through five innings but, with 97 pitches and eight walks, he was finished. So was Clemens, who gave up only John Olerud’s fourth-inning single despite struggling with his control.
Abbott and Clemens combined for 12 walks, and when Yankees reliever Ramiro Mendoza walked Tom Lampkin in the seventh inning, it was the 15th walk of the game to break a 27-year-old record in a League Championship Series game. Oakland and Baltimore walked 14 on Oct. 9, 1974.
Mariners relievers Norm Charlton and Jeff Nelson danced carefully with the Yankees in the sixth and seventh innings, and Yankees reliever Mendoza did the same with the Mariners until Boone came to bat with two outs in the eighth.
Boone hit a towering fly to left field that dropped beyond the fence. With baseball’s best finishing kick – Rhodes and Sasaki – prepared to finish the game, the Mariners seemed on their way to a dramatic victory.
Rhodes tried to challenge Williams with a fastball and he put a swing on it that may have changed the series. It was Williams’ 15th career postseason home run, moving him into fourth place on the all-time list. He trails Reggie Jackson and Mickey Mantle, who have 18, Jim Thome with 17 and is tied with Babe Ruth.
Now the question is whether the Mariners, who have preached their one-at-a-time approach all season, can pull off a miracle finish of their own in the series.
Teams that won Game 4 have gone on to win the ALCS 18 times in the previous 24 series.
“This might have sucked the life out of us for the rest of the evening,” Boone said. “But tomorrow we’ll be back. It’s down to one game now. We don’t win, we go home.”
The goal now is clear. Win today and send the series back to Seattle for Game 6 on Wednesday, when the Mariners would send Freddy Garcia to the mound.
“We don’t want to go back home without the Yankees coming with us,” Cameron said. “We’ve got to find a way to win a ballgame.”
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