By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
NEW YORK – Lou Piniella was right about one thing.
It’s not so much the mystique that drives the New York Yankees as it is their ability to execute when it matters most.
The Yankees again showed the Seattle Mariners how different the game is in October than it is the other six months of the season, clubbing them 12-3 Monday night to earn their fourth straight trip to the World Series.
The Game 5 victory clinched the best-of-seven American League Championship Series 4-1 and continued a phenomenal run of postseason success by the Yankees. It was their 40th victory in their past 51 postseason games.
The Mariners, who tied the major league record with 116 regular-season victories, fell to the Yankees in the ALCS for the second straight year.
“To not get to the World series is a little disappointing,” Mariners second baseman Bret Boone said. “But at the same time, nobody can take away what we did this season. It’s a little bittersweet not getting to the big dance, but that’s why this game is so awesome.”
Piniella was just as disappointed, but not surprised at the Yankees’ dominance.
“You are playing the best teams in all of baseball at the end and the further you go, the better the teams get,” Piniella said. “The amazing thing about baseball is that no matter how many games you win, unless you win a World Series, you’re going to feel disappointment.”
The lack of a consistent offense was the biggest reason the Mariners, who led the American League in team batting average, failed in the ALCS. They finished the series with a .211 average and two of their top hitters struggled – Ichiro Suzuki with a .222 series average and Edgar Martinez at .150.
“We felt from an offensive standpoint that we had to hit their starting pitching,” Piniella said. “Outside the third game (a 14-3 victory), we really didn’t do much with it.”
The surest signs that it just wasn’t meant for the Mariners came on the hard-luck outs made by Martinez.
The designated hitter hit a sinking line drive with two outs in the first inning that Yankees left fielder Chuck Knoblauch caught with a stumbling grab at his shoetops; a rope directly to first baseman Tino Martinez that became a double play; and finally a line drive that third baseman Scott Brosius snared with a long lunge to his left.
The offense had gone sour again, and by the time Piniella made a pitching change with the score 5-0 in the sixth inning, the rowdy Yankee Stadium crowd had a chant for him: “No Game 6! No Game 6!”
It was Piniella, after losing the first two games of the series at home last week, who promised that the Mariners would bring it back to Seattle for Game 6. When the Mariners arrived in New York on Friday, the questioning focused on Piniella’s view of the Yankee mystique that seems to come into play this time of year.
There’s no mystique, he would say, just a collection of good players who don’t make mistakes in the postseason
There was no better example than Monday, when the Yankees turned every miscue by Mariners starting pitcher Aaron Sele, and one by his defense, into a big early lead.
Sele cruised through the first two innings and seemed to have the third off to a good start when Brosius hit a sharp two-hopper to third baseman David Bell. The second hop ate up Bell for an error, and Sele never fully recovered.
Alfonso Soriano, whose ninth-inning home run on Sunday beat the Mariners in Game 4, singled up the middle. Knoblauch dropped a sacrifice bunt that put runners on second and third with one out and Derek Jeter lifted a sacrifice fly to center for a 1-0 Yankees lead.
Then they broke it open.
Sele threw a hanging curveball, bellybutton high and over the middle of the plate, that David Justice stung into the right-field corner for a double that drove home Soriano.
Bernie Williams, whose eighth-inning homer tied Sunday’s game, worked Sele into a full count and got a pitch in his power zone, on the outside half of the plate, belt high. Williams drove it to the deepest part of the ballpark – left-center field – for a two-run homer that was his third of the series. It was Williams’ 16th career postseason homer, moving him past Babe Ruth into fourth place on baseball’s all-time list.
Sele, now 0-6 in his career in postseason games, never came out for the fifth inning. John Halama pitched a 1-2-3 fifth but was battered in the sixth when the Yankees got three straight hits off him to load the bases, then shook up reliever Joel Pineiro for two walks and two singles to score four runs for a 9-0 lead.
Bell drove home two runs and Ichiro Suzuki one in the seventh when the Mariners finally chased New York starter Andy Pettitte from the game. The Yankees then brought in their finishing kick of relief pitchers Mario Mendoza, Mike Stanton and Mariano Rivera to shut the Mariners down the rest of the way.
After Tino Martinez hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning off Jose Paniagua, the outcome was more obvious than ever before. Mystique or not, the Yankees were back in the World Series.
And even Piniella, who spent much of his career here as a player and manager, felt good for a city that has grieved since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“About the eighth inning, when the fans were really reveling in the stands, the one thought that came to my mind was that boy, this city suffered a lot and tonight they let out a lot of emotions,” Piniella said. “I felt good for them in that way. That’s a strange thought to come from a manager who is getting his ass kicked.”
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