By Larry LaRue
The News Tribune
ANAHEIM, Calif. – After piling up a season-high 21 hits, the Seattle Mariners should have been happier.
Winning their 112th game of the year – beating the Angels, 14-5 – wasn’t enough to off-set the sense that this final week of the regular season hasn’t been kind to them.
News of surgery for Carlos Guillen came in before they pounded Anaheim, and a team still awaiting a roster-full of tuberculosis tests already had players on edge. Then Mike Cameron went down hard Tuesday, bruising himself and banging up his wrist badly enough that he had to leave the game.
And Edgar Martinez, the poster-boy for self control, took offense at being hit by a pitch and charged the mound in the sixth inning.
Figure the going rate is a five-game suspension. Figure Martinez probably won’t serve his time until the beginning of next year.
“I’ve been here since ‘92 and in all my years, I’ve never seen Edgar so mad,” manager Lou Piniella said. “The main thing is, everybody’s OK.”
Victories might pile up this week, but they are largely meaningless.
Seattle was guaranteed a postseason berth weeks ago. What has them nervous is getting to next week in some semblence of good health.
“It’s getting weird,” Mark McLemore said.
His teammates weren’t disagreeing.
After dominating the American League all season, the Mariners are piling up minor injuries that could create major problems. Guillen will likely miss the first round of the playoffs – at least – and third baseman David Bell is no lock to come back quickly from a rib cage strain.
McLemore has a strained hamstring and probably won’t play tonight. Cameron felt lucky to come away no more than sore, and he might miss tonight’s game.
As for Martinez, no one needed to be reminded that he was lucky the fastball that shot off his upper left arm and off his helmet didn’t do more than enrage him.
“He was gone,” Bret Boone said of his teammate. “I’ve seen him mad before, but never like that.”
“He’s so strong that whenever he’d turn one way, that whole pile of players turned with him,” Charles Gipson said of the group of teammates trying to restrain Martinez after he was hit by the pitch.
And while the Seattle offense beat up an Angels team that seems to have begun thinking about the off-season, right-hander Paul Abbott’s 17th victory of the year wasn’t quite as fine as he’d have liked.
The No. 4 starter heading into the post-season, Abbott couldn’t hold the strike zone, walking six batters in five rocky innings. Touched for only three runs, he was shaky – and was a marvelous defensive play away from major problems.
In the fifth inning, the Angels loaded the bases on two walks and a single. A big Abbott curve caught Troy Glaus looking, and Scott Spiezio popped out.
Tim Salmon, however, wasn’t fooled – he hit a bolt to center field that Cameron ran down and kept in the park with a catch made with his glove fully extended beyond the wall.
Considering it was his three-run home run in the fourth inning that broke a 3-3 tie, Cameron’s offense and defense was a seven-run differential.
Still, the Mariners and their fans have seen most everything over the last decade or so, from great catches to injuries to ejections to playoffs – and not once had anyone seen Martinez charge the mound.
Angels right hander Lou Pote threw a fastball in with two on and one out, and the pitch hit Martinez right about the elbow, then glanced up into his helmet. Down he went, and when he jumped up he was moving.
“That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen him move,” general manager Pat Gillick said.
Martinez never quite got to Pote, but even after he’d been ejected, he prowled the Seattle dugout angrily for a few minutes.
Along about the eighth inning, rookie Joel Pineiro let go a 92 mph fastball that put third baseman Troy Glaus down, hit by a pitch. Pineiro was ejected. Glaus took his base.
No one charged.
Without Guillen, Bell, McLemore or Ichiro Suzuki in the lineup, the Mariners started hitting early and never stopped. Filling in for Suzuki, Javier had four hits as the leadoff hitter – two of them in the sixth inning.
Charles Gipson, starting at shortstop, had a career-high matching three hits, an RBI and finished the game in center field for Cameron. Dan Wilson had three hits and four RBI.
“That’s the best we’ve hit the ball all month,” Piniella said. “We’re looking toward next week, but we still want to win games.”
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