By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer
NEW YORK – Nobody admires watching his own home runs sail into the seats more than Bret Boone.
But the fifth inning was no time for a long-ball lover like Boone to be thinking about a slow trot around the bases. Not when the New York Yankees led by two runs and the Seattle Mariners seemed destined never to get another meaningful hit this year.
So Boone shortened up his swing, shattered his bat and dumped a flare into left field that helped turn around a game, a horrid hitting pattern by his team and, the Mariners hope, their playoff series with the New York Yankees.
Two runs scored on the play, and it kicked open a door that led to a 14-3 victory over the Yankees in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.
“I’ll take a million of them just like that one,” Boone said. “He jammed me and it just found a hole. But you know what? Sometimes it’s little things that get you going.”
Indeed, a few little things turned into the biggest night of offense in ALCS history.
Boone’s bloop tied the score in the fifth and Dan Wilson’s bunt forced a throwing error that kicked open the door to a seven-run sixth inning.
The Mariners still trail the best-of-seven series 2-1, but enter today’s game with a newfound confidence in their offense and a chance to even the series.
“We had two games when the offense struggled,” designated hitter Edgar Martinez said. “But when you score a lot of runs like this, it helps with your confidence.”
The Mariners scored in record-setting fashion.
Their 14 runs broke the ALCS single-game record of 13 by the Boston Red Sox in 1999. The seven runs in the sixth tied an ALCS record and Boone’s five runs batted in matched the ALCS record for RBI in a game.
It couldn’t have come at a more important time for the Mariners.
They had fallen into an 0-for-12 skid with runners in scoring position, soon to be 0-for-13 if Boone didn’t do something with David Bell on third base and Ichiro Suzuki on second and Mark McLemore on first with two outs in the fifth. Boone got ahead in the count against Yankees starter Orlando Hernandez, then saw a fastball he thought he could handle.
The pitch ran in on Boone’s hands and he got just enough wood on the ball to flop it into shallow left field. Chuck Knoblauch made a diving effort but dropped the ball, allowing both Bell and Suzuki to score.
“When that ball fell, all I was thinking is that it was 2-2,” Boone said. “I didn’t care that it was my hit or someone else’s hit. I cared that it was the hit that made it 2-2.”
In the sixth, the Mariners broke it open.
John Olerud, hitless in the series, pulled a home run high off the foul pole down the right-field line to give the Mariners a 3-2 lead.
Stan Javier then singled and the Mariners got into their make-things-happen mode.
Javier stole second, Mike Cameron worked a walk and Wilson, pinch-hitting for starting catcher Tom Lampkin, pushed a bunt up the third-base line that changed the game.
Relief pitcher Mike Stanton, freshly inserted into the game, tried to throw out Javier at third and instead threw the ball into foul territory. Javier scored, Cameron made it to third and Wilson to second.
With a base open and nobody out, the Yankees intentionally walked Suzuki with hopes that McLemore, also hitless in the series, would stay that way.
He didn’t.
McLemore lined a pitch from Stanton to the wall in left-center field, driving home all three runners with a triple and making it a 7-2 game.
Then Boone got a chance to do his home-run trot. He crushed a pitch from reliever Mark Wohlers over the center-field fence for his first postseason homer. The Mariners led 9-2.
The Mariners scored twice more in the seventh, once in the eighth and twice in the ninth, highlighted by Jay Buhner’s tape-measure home run into rare territory beyond the center field fence.
Buhner’s ball landed in a bleacher area that serves as the hitting background at Yankee Stadium, making him one of only two players to hit a ball that far in the storied ballpark in postseason play. Reggie Jackson homered there in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series.
The avalanche of offense allowed pitcher Jamie Moyer to settle into cruise control. He gave up a two-run homer to Bernie Williams in the first inning, then held the Yankees without a hit until Alfonso Soriano dumped a single to right field in the sixth.
By then Moyer had a seven-run lead, thanks to an offense that produced some big things after making the most of its “small ball” approach.
“Hitting is a funny thing,” manager Lou Piniella said. “When you start getting a little base hit here, a little base hit there, all of a sudden everybody starts getting confidence and starts swinging the bat. It’s very contagious.”
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