Dead silence in Mariner locker room after Game 4 loss

  • Larry Henry / Sports Columnist
  • Sunday, October 21, 2001 9:00pm
  • Sports

NEW YORK – This game was a classic.

Not for its pristine beauty.

For its oddness.

One pitcher had a no-hitter, the other yielded a mere single. Yet both were gone after five innings.

A dozen batters had walked by then, but none had scored. One hundred and eighty-six pitches had been thrown, requiring two hours. They should have used an hour glass to measure time instead of a clock.

When the clock struck 10:58, three innings later, many in the crowd of 56,375 headed for home. School night and all. Have to get the kids to bed.

The kids went kicking and screaming into the night. “But dad, nobody’s scored,” they wailed.

Dad went kicking and screaming into the night. “You think I wanna go home?” he howled.

Four minutes after 11, or about the time they got to the car and turned on the radio, they were still crying.

For at that moment, a ball sailed high into the warm night air and when it came down, it dropped behind the left-field fence in Yankee Stadium.

And the game was no longer scoreless. The Seattle Mariners had a 1-0 lead and Bret Boone was the strongest candidate for mayor of Seattle.

One-half inning later, in the bottom of the eighth, dad and the kids were honking the horn and singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

For at that moment, Bernie Williams became the favorite to replace Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York. He hit a ball that soared toward the tantalizingly close right-field seats. Ichiro Suzuki went back. And back. And back.

He put his shoulder to the wall, as if he were trying to punch a hole in it. That’s the only way he would have caught the ball. For like Boone’s ball, Williams’ soared over the fence and the score was tied at one.

Ever felt a ballpark shake? Yankee Stadium literally shook, like a 7 on the Richter scale.

But the mother of all trembles was yet to come. When it did, a two-run, ninth-inning homer off the bat of Alfonso Soriano, the Yankees were one win away from playing in their fifth World Series in six years. And the Mariners were one loss removed from yet another keenly disappointing season.

If it were OK for big-league ballplayers to cry, the Mariners’ clubhouse would have been knee-deep in tears. Instead of tears, there were empty faces. And funereal silence.

Suzuki sat on a couch in the back of the room, drinking from a paper cup. John Halama sat at the other end of the couch, staring into space. Mike Cameron sat on a chair, gazing into his locker. Everyone else had scattered to wherever ballplayers scatter in a small clubhouse in the lower depths of an old stadium after a devastating loss.

The Mariners needed some time to get over this one. They have been a team that has been able to put losses behind it, but this one wouldn’t be forgotten easily. This one might last the whole winter through.

How do you come back from a game that was right there, right there in your grasp, only six outs away? Maybe you don’t. Maybe it is such a gut-punch, the pain so severe, that you never get your wind back, that you never straighten up. Maybe it’s just too much.

“There’s still one more day to put a win on the board and to carry this out a little bit better,” said Cameron, who now sat on the back of his chair, his feet on the seat.

Then he said the obvious: “This is a tough loss.”

Easily the toughest of the season. For it puts the M’s on the verge of elimination in what to now has been an unimaginable season.

Now they must win tonight or go home. And not the way manager Lou Piniella had promised they would go home. There will be no Game 6 in Seattle if they can’t get it done in Game 5 tonight. And if that happens, if they do lose, the 116 victories will add up to a big zero. Another burnout in the postseason. Another year without a World Series championship to celebrate. Another offseason of deep disappointment.

A familiar spot for the M’s. “Unfortunately, yes,” said Mark McLemore.

They have come back before. They did it in the American League Division Series. But they did not trail 3-1 to the three-time defending World Series champions in their own ballpark.

These Yankees know how to put teams away. They took their time about putting the M’s away on an almost balmy October night in the South Bronx.

Paul Abbott did all he could to square the series at 2. He put his heart into every pitch and dueled the man who will probably win the Cy Young Award to a scoreless draw after five innings. And then they both departed, Abbott despite having a no-hitter, Clemens despite having a one-hitter.

Each had thrown a lot of pitches, Abbott 97, Clemens 89. Of their 186 pitches, they collectively had found the strike zone only 102 times.

Piniella had a plan to beat Clemens: He wanted his batters to show patience at the plate.

Clemens hadn’t made it through the fifth inning in two postseason starts. He had quit one with an aching hamstring.

Maybe, Piniella reasoned, if the M’s could make him throw a lot of pitches in the early innings, the hamstring would feel the effects and he would have to come out.

“I didn’t think he drove off the mound as much in the fifth inning,” said Yankee manager Joe Torre. “That’s why we had (Ramiro) Mendoza throwing from the start of the fifth inning, just in case we needed to get him in in the fifth. He gave us all I could ask for … that was five innings we didn’t have to ask for.”

Abbott gave all he had. He hadn’t pitched since Oct. 13 and then it was in relief. Besides, he had thrown about the same number of pitches he had used in his last several starts.

Abbott didn’t give a dazzling performance, issuing eight walks. But he did give the M’s a chance to win, which is all they could ask for.

If only they could have done it.

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