Herald staff, news services
NEW YORK – There’s no brash talk or bravado coming from the New York Yankees after taking a 2-0 lead in the AL Championship Series against the Seattle Mariners.
The three-time defending World Series champions know as well as anybody how tenuous a hold that can be.
“We are just coming off a series first-hand where we’ve seen that 0-2 doesn’t mean the series is over,” Yankees third baseman Scott Brosius said Friday. “Certainly, in a best-of-seven, we know there are two more wins to get. There is not a mood of overconfidence.”
The Yankees have come a long way in the past week, from arriving in the Bay Area down 2-0 to Oakland in the first-round last Friday to their position now – two wins away from a fourth straight AL pennant.
The Yankees will try today to go up 3-0 – a deficit that has never been overcome in baseball history.
“The only thing you don’t want to do is assume you’re going to win because you have a lead,” New York manager Joe Torre said. “We were down two games in a five-game series and all of a sudden here we are. So there are a lot of reminders.”
Road sweet road: Home-field advantage hasn’t meant much when Seattle and New York have played this year.
The Mariners have won five of six at Yankee Stadium, but lost four of five at Safeco Field. They look forward to playing in New York this weekend.
“I really enjoy coming to Yankee Stadium,” said pitcher Jamie Moyer, who will start for Seattle today. “I try to look at the history that’s taken place here. All of the great players that have played here, all of the great games that have been played here, and I look at it as a privilege and an honor to be able to take the mound and pitch in Yankee Stadium.”
Attack-site visit: As soon as the Mariners arrived here on Friday, some of them went to lower Manhattan to visit the site of World Trade Center.
“Some of the guys went down earlier and they started telling me about it,” Mike Cameron said during a midafternoon news conference at Yankee Stadium.
“When we were coming over this morning, the sun was coming up. I just got a little burning sensation in my stomach or my heart, so to speak. I don’t know how I’ll feel if I went down there. I’m going to try to go down there, but I just heard some stories and already they got me a little revved up.”
Mariners manager Lou Piniella said Thursday his team planned to meet some of the rescue and relief workers.
“I plan to go down,” Mark McLemore said. “My wife is coming into town tomorrow, so I want her to be with me. We will go down together and visit. I think we have a visit planned to one of the fire stations for Sunday morning. I think it’s something we all need to do and I’m sure everybody will at some point.”
A matter of perspective: Cameron was asked Thursday night what bothered him most about the Game 2 loss, the shoestring catch in center field that was ruled a trap or his eighth-inning strikeout against Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.
Cameron, relaxed in a chair at his locker while surrounded by reporters, said neither bothered him.
“Hey, I’m not going to let this game kill me,” he said.
Besides, he’s not the only player who has struck out against Rivera.
“When you’re facing Rivera, you’re only going to get maybe one pitch to hit,” Cameron said. “You’ve got to go into a little battle with him.
“Facing a guy like that, man, what can you do? The guy’s throwing 95 miles an hour and it’s cutting in on you and sometimes it’s cutting back. You’ve got to take your chances.”
Where’s the mistake? New York pitchers Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina held the Mariners to four runs and 10 hits in the first two games of the ALCS and never made a mistake that cost them.
“They give you different looks and they don’t make many mistakes,” Mariners designated hitter Edgar Martinez said. “The times when you get a chance, you have to take advantage of the mistakes they make. But they don’t make many.
The Yankee pitchers aren’t perfect, manager Joe Torre says.
“If pitchers threw the ball where they wanted every single pitch, nobody would ever get a hit, maybe except (Ichiro) Suzuki,” Torre said. “But it’s a matter of being able to execute and we have been able to do that pretty well in the first two games.”
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