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EVENTS
CENTERS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
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Getting the boot Mariners fumble away their chance at immortality
Updated: Tuesday October 23, 2001 3:09 AM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com NEW YORK -- You can't give the New York Yankees a break. Ever. You certainly can't give them three or four or five. Or six. Errors, generally speaking, are a bad idea. Walking in runs ... also bad. Wild pitches ... a no-no. When a ball is hit into the outfield, it's a good idea to catch it. And, whatever you do, don't throw a pitch over the plate to Bernie Williams. Or David Justice. Or Paul O'Neill. Or Tino Martinez. Just don't give any Yankees hitter a real fat pitch, OK? Sheesh. You think the Seattle Mariners would have known that long before Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on Monday night. Long before a dispiriting 12-3 loss that bounced them from the postseason and sent the Yankees to their fourth straight World Series. "We just didn't play well enough," Mariners second baseman Bret Boone said in the understatement of a very overstated night. "We didn't play very good the whole series." The Mariners, who tied a major-league record with 116 regular-season wins, looked like a team that had lost 116. From the fourth inning on, starting with an error by third baseman David Bell that sparked a four-run Yankees inning, the Mariners looked completely overwhelmed. It was a stunning collapse from a veteran team that has prided itself all season on its steady play. Steady they were not Monday. "We came up short," said the Mariners' Mark McLemore. "We didn't play the way we were supposed to play." Bell's error, on a high hopper off the bat of Yankees third baseman Scott Brosius, started things in the fourth inning. Derek Jeter followed an out later with a run-scoring fly ball to center. Justice doubled down the right-field line with two outs to drive in two runs. Williams slammed a two-out homer to left-center -- his third homer of the ALCS -- for a 4-0 Yankees lead. That was only the start. O'Neill hit a solo homer in the fourth. And in the sixth, the Mariners really started stinking things up. Joel Piniero threw a wild pitch, pushing across a Yankees run. Chuck Knoblauch's hit fell easily between right fielder Jay Buhner and a retreating Boone. Piniero walked Derek Jeter with the bases loaded, giving the Yanks another run. By the time the inning ended, four more runs were in. The Yankees already were putting the plastic up in the clubhouse and making travel plans to Phoenix for Game 1 of the World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday. And that was before Martinez's three-run homer in the eighth finished things. Ooooh, it was ugly. The Yankees sent seven men to the plate in the fourth, 10 in the sixth. "I don't know if there's that much difference than if we lost 2-1," reliever Jeff Nelson said. "We didn't play all that good of a series. We just had a tough series." The Mariners have no one to blame but themselves.
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