Moyer is M’s playoff rock

By Kirby Arnold

Herald Writer

NEW YORK – With no offense to the Seattle Mariners’ hitters, Jamie Moyer couldn’t bear to watch.

The fifth inning rolled around, the New York Yankees led 2-0 and the Mariners were hitting the ball like they had all postseason – not very well.

So Moyer left the bench and ducked into the visitor’s clubhouse at Yankee Stadium.

“It’s a little game I play sometimes,” Moyer said.

The Mariners scored twice in that inning, on their way to a record-setting outburst that gave them a 14-3 victory in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.

“I felt like we got to the fifth inning and we had not scored any runs, had not had many hits, so I felt if I went inside it might change our luck.”

The Mariners set or tied three ALCS offensive records, although they needed only four of the runs to back Moyer’s pitching. He held the Yankees to four hits in seven innings, yielding only a two-run homer by Bernie Williams in the first inning.

Moyer got better as the game progressed. After Williams’ homer, he retired 13 straight Yankees and didn’t allow another hit until the sixth.

“I felt like once I got to the fourth inning I got a second wind,” Moyer said. “What that is, I have no idea. I just tried to focus on making good pitches.”

What he wouldn’t allow himself to focus on was the Mariners’ offensive struggles in the first four innings, or their hitting successes the rest of the game.

“Even when we score runs at times, I feel like I try not to get caught up in the celebration or the guys talking in the dugout,” Moyer said. “I fell like I really need to stay focused on what my task is, and that’s to go out and pitch and be effective.

“My feeling is that after the game, I can shake hands and congratulate people and things like that. But if I can stay focused on what I need to do, that’s my responsibility.”

Hey, whatever works.

“He gave us seven great innings of baseball,” manager Lou Piniella said. “He’s been pitching that way the whole second half of the season. It’s been fun to watch him, the way he changes speeds and pitches to both sides of the plate.”

Piniella just hopes he gets at least one more chance to watch Moyer pitch.

If the Mariners can keep the series, he’s scheduled to pitch the deciding Game 7 in Seattle.

Land of runs: Saturday’s 14-run spree was the Mariners’ biggest of the season in seven games at Yankee Stadium, but it continued a year of offensive success in New York.

In six regular-season games here, they scored 38 runs. That includes a shutout pitched by Mike Mussina on Aug. 17.

In their last two games at the stadium, the Mariners have scored 24 runs.

Battle of leading men: The Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki won the battle of leadoff hitters Saturday, going 1-for-3 with two runs scored. The Yankees’ Chuck Knoblauch was 0-for-3 and hit into a double play in the sixth inning.

Suzuki, who walked only 30 times in the regular season, walked twice Saturday. One was intentional as the Yankees loaded the bases in the sixth, hoping Mark McLemore would hit into a double play.

Don’t look for Suzuki to start a walking spree, however.

“I don’t think about trying to walk,” he said. “Everybody who is a hitter wants to hit from the first pitch.”

Empty feeling: Not long after the Mariners broke the game open with seven runs in the sixth inning, the crowd at Yankee Stadium had seen enough.

They began flooding toward the exits and, when Shane Spencer’s fly ball settled into Mike Cameron’s glove for the final out of the game, only about 15,000 of the announced crowd of 56,517 remained.

Numbers game: The Yankees may lead the series 2-1, but they’re clutching some rather unimpressive numbers in their home ballpark.

The Mariners’ victory Saturday gave them a 7-3 record at Yankee Stadium this year. The Yankees’ home record in the postseason is 1-3.

Just making sure: An hour before the first pitch Saturday, Mariners general manager Pat Gillick performed a chore that has become a routine at visiting ballparks.

He watched intently as officials of Major League Baseball checked the Yankee Stadium pitcher’s mound. At one point, Gillick dropped to a knee as he and team president Chuck Armstrong studied a carpenter’s level that showed the slope of the mound.

Apparently satisfied with that outcome, Gillick had more for them to check. He had the grounds crew measure the distance from the pitching rubber to the back tip of home plate. It was, as it should be, 60 feet 6 inches.

And your name is? Security at Yankee Stadium was so tight that you couldn’t get in without a picture ID, even if your name was Stan Javier.

Javier appeared at a gate to the stadium about three hours before Saturday’s game but he wasn’t allowed through until he showed an ID, and that wasn’t good enough for a while.

A security man double-checked the names on a printed list and, after a few minutes, let Javier through. Not bothered by the experience, he smiled and waved at a couple of Seattle writers who witnessed his ordeal.

Nobody who entered the stadium was exempt from a thorough search. Even when the Mariners’ team bus arrived at the ballpark, officials checked every bag and briefcase.

Bill and George: The who’s-who crowd in Yankee owner George Steinbrenner’s box included former president Bill Clinton, who now makes his office in New York. Also in the box was baseball commissioner Bud Selig.

Where’s Carlos? Shortstop Carlos Guillen has been noticeably absent from the Mariners’ lineup since he started Game 1 of the ALCS last Wednesday.

Guillen played eight innings of that game, his first since being diagnosed with tuberculosis on Sept. 28, and hadn’t played again until he appeared as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning and finished Saturday’s game at shortstop.

Some had speculated that Guillen may not have been well enough to play after Game 1, especially when he wasn’t used as a pinch-hitter late in Game 2 on Thursday.

“He looks fine to me,” trainer Rick Griffin said. “If he’s not fine he wouldn’t have been out here Friday.”

Guillen was one of four Mariners who worked out at Yankee Stadium Friday afternoon, just hours after the team arrived following an all-night flight from Seattle.

Sweet Lou: Mariners manager Lou Piniella spent 16 years with the Yankees as a player, coach, manager and in the front office.

So when he boldly pledged that his team would bring this series back to Seattle despite an 0-2 deficit, Piniella knew what kind of reaction that would get in New York – even if he won’t admit it.

Piniella and his comments have been back-page fodder for the city’s tabloids the last two days.

“I didn’t think I would create that much of a stir,” Piniella said. “I mean that sincerely. I guess when you are a New Yorker, you can say those things. This city has got that feistiness about it, and it is good. But, boy, when somebody else says it, it creates a commotion.”

He couldn’t possibly have expected anything different.

“Well, I think it’s entertaining in a way, isn’t it?” Piniella said. “So let’s view it that way.”

Clemens, the campaigner: Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens has an effective changeup but doesn’t use it much. “I call it my presidential pitch,” said the 39-year-old right-hander. “When I need four more years, I’ll break it out.”

Torre’s perspective: Yankee manager Joe Torre puts Ichiro Suzuki in some pretty prestigious company. “It’s like trying to pitch to Yogi Berra; how do you pitch to Yogi? You throw the ball in the dirt, he’s going to hit it, and if you throw the ball over his head he’s going to hit it.”

Torre is obviously a great manager, but he admits he gets a lot of help. “I’m very fortunate to have (bench coach) Don Zimmer. I don’t make light of that. He’s managed. He’s got the gambler’s mentality, and it really helps me bouncing things off him and (pitching coach) Mel Stottlemyre, both.”

Torre is as puzzled as anyone else over the home-field “disadvantage” the Mariners and Yankees have against one another. The M’s were 5-1 in Yankee Stadium heading into Saturday’s game and the Yankees were 4-1 at Safeco Field. “I can’t figure it out,” Torre said. “Certainly we are supposed to have the advantage and vice versa. But when you get in the postseason, the teams are so good and we both have good closers and … being on the road isn’t that intimidating because you have somebody who can close the deal.”