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RECAP
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BOX SCORE
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GAME LOG
NEW YORK (AP) -- Sooner or later, the Yankees kept saying to
themselves, their scoreless streak had to end.
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GAME 2 AT A GLANCE
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Every game a hero
Orlando Hernandez is a good pitcher during the regular season. Come October, he's a pitching god. El Duque is now 7-0 lifetime in eight October starts, with an ERA of 1.21. Hernandez allowed six hits and fanned eight in eight innings to improve to 2-0 this postseason.
Key play
After the Yankees tied the game in the eighth on David Justice's double and Bernie Williams' RBI single, Tino Martinez hit a liner to left fielder Al Martin ... who dropped the ball as he stumbled forward. The fairly routine play was inexplicably ruled a hit. It put two runners on with no outs and opened the floodgates for the rest of the inning.
Key number
Over the previous 13 games going back to the regular season, the Yankees had hit just .240 (105-for-438) and had scored 34 runs in 13 games (2.6 per game). After hitting .400 in Game 2 (14-for-35), the Yankees are now hitting .260 in seven postseason games. But 13 of their 26 runs have come in just two innings.
ESPN analysis
El Duque went out there and didn't seem to be bothered by chances that the Yankee offense squandered. There were two or three innings where they could have generated runs and came up empty instead. He looked like he was concerned with pitching his game. It's easy for pitchers to get in a rut worrying about when their team is going to score some runs for them. El Duque just went out and held them until his team came through with the big inning.
-- Brian McRae
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This wasn't any old team, this was the two-time World Series
champions, the franchise of the previous century.
And they couldn't even manage a run.
Bernie Williams finally ended the slump with an RBI single, and it sparked a seven-run eighth inning as New York rallied past the
Seattle Mariners 7-1 on Wednesday to tie the AL championship series
at one game apiece.
"Down 2-0 going into Seattle would've been devastating," Chuck Knoblauch said. "And right now, we're riding a high."
Orlando Hernandez was brilliant, as usual in the postseason, this time pitching on his birthday. He allowed one run and six hits in eight innings on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, improving to 7-0 with a 1.22 ERA in postseason play.
But as twilight turned to dusk, it seemed like the Yankees' hopes for a third straight World Series title were fading away.
"We know we're better," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "I
think that's what frustrates everybody."
After Williams singled in the tying run off Arthur Rhodes, stopping the Yankees' scoreless streak at 21 innings, weeks of pent-up offense poured out of their bats: singles, doubles and even a home run.
When it was done 41 minutes after it began, New York had a
seven-run, eight-hit inning. The pressure lifted off Yankee Stadium
like a weather front. Players, fans and even team executives
exhaled.
"I just sense we relieved a lot of pressure today," Torre
said. "We understand there's pressure involved. As I say, we were
very uptight."
The series resumes Friday at Safeco Field, with Andy Pettitte
pitching for New York against Aaron Sele. Seattle was six Yankees
outs from going home with a 2-0 lead.
"We didn't make very good pitches and they swung the bats,"
Mariners manager Lou Piniella said. "We accomplished what we
wanted here, we split with them in New York, and now we go to our
home ballpark. It's a shame, because we had seven good innings of
baseball, and in the eighth they exploded on us."
Seattle went ahead in the third when Mike Cameron walked with two outs, stole second and came home on Stan Javier's single. That was all the Mariners managed off El Duque, who says he turned 31 but whose birth certificate shows he's 35.
"He threw the best game I ever caught today," said Jorge Posada, who also was behind the plate for David Wells' perfect game
two years ago.
But New York's offense was sputtering. The Yankees were
12-for-58 (.207) against the Mariners in the first 16 innings of
the series, 53-for-226 (.236) in the postseason.
|  | | Bernie Williams, center, is congratulated after scoring the Yankees' second run. |
Yankees batters were like pressure cookers, Paul O'Neill, dropped to seventh in the batting order for the first time since
April 1997, had to be pulled away from first-base umpire Wally Bell
after being called out in the sixth inning, throwing his helmet
with more force than he's hit the ball in six weeks.
"There's nothing worse than struggling and they're booing
you," O'Neill said.
Justice jumped in disbelief when umpires rules he didn't check his swing on a 1-1 pitch leading off the eighth.
"Guys are jumping up and spinning around," Torre said. "We
don't normally react like that. I think a lot of it was the tension
of the situation, and the thought of going on the road 0-2."
And then it happened.
The Yankees went 8-for-8 to start the inning, the crowd of
55,317 rocking Yankee Stadium with every hit. The eight were an
ALCS record and the most in an inning for the Yankees since June 29
at Detroit.
Seattle's bullpen, which had pitched 15 scoreless innings in the
postseason when Rhodes took the mound at the start of the inning,
got blown apart, wasting six shutout innings by starter John
Halama, a kid from Brooklyn who left 14 tickets for family and
friends.
After the controversial call, Justice took a ball, then sent a drive to left-center that hit a foot from the top of the wall.
At that point, the Yankees were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring
position and 0-for-13 in the series. The 21-inning scoreless streak
had tied the team postseason record, set against the New York
Giants in the 1921 and 1922 World Series.
Up came Williams, who with the bases loaded and no outs in the
first hit the ball 6 inches in front of the plate, with catcher Dan
Wilson turning it into an easy 2-3 double play.
Williams fouled off a 3-1 pitch, then fouled off two more, just hanging on. Finally, he slapped a single to center off Rhodes that drove in Justice.
"I was struggling through the whole game," Williams said. "This guy was throwing it 94, 95 miles an hour. There was no way I could be thinking too much in that at-bat."
Tino Martinez followed with a sinking liner to left that bounced off the glove of a diving Al Martin for a single that allowed
Williams to take second.
Posada then hit a smash that rolled off the glove of a diving Mark McLemore in the hole between first and second, bounding into left field as Williams scored. It was the first time in 15 games
since Sept. 23 at Detroit that four straight Yankees got hits.
O'Neill's sacrifice fly made it 3-1, and Jose Mesa came in and
allowed a single to Luis Sojo, putting runners on first and third.
Posada was thrown out at third, apparently as Jose Vizcaino
missed a bunt sign, but Vizcaino then doubled in Sojo and Knoblauch
singled home Vizcaino for a 5-1 lead.
Derek Jeter followed with a two-run homer into the right-field
seats, just the second homer for the Yankees in their last 88
innings -- a streak dating back to the regular season.
Mariano Rivera got the final three outs, and the Yankees headed West, feeling a little reborn.
"If we played the way we played yesterday and today," Posada said, "we're going to be all right."
Game notes
Halama, like Seattle's Game 1 starter Freddy Garcia, was acquired two years ago from Houston in the Randy Johnson trade. ... The only time the Yankees have been shut out twice in one postseason series was in 1957, when Milwaukee's Lew Burdette pitched shutouts in Games 5 and 7 of the World Series. ... New York is 9-0 when Hernandez pitches in postseason, 8-0 when he starts. He says he turned 31 but his birth certificate says he is 35. ... Jean
Stottlemyre, wife of Yankees pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, threw
out the ceremonial first pitch. Mel Stottlemyre left the team Sept.
11 for a stem-cell transplant to treat multiple myeloma.
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ALSO SEE
Baseball Scoreboard
Seattle Clubhouse
NY Yankees Clubhouse
Yankees wake up just in time
Mariners' pen just falls apart
ALCS notebook: O'Neill moved down
Halama doesn't talk the talk
RECAPS
NY Yankees 7
Seattle 1
NY Mets 6
St. Louis 2
AUDIO/VIDEO
 Yankees players and coaches answer questions after their Game 2 win.
RealVideo: | 28.8
 David Justice talks with ESPN's Mark Schwarz.
wav: 855 k
RealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6
John Halama talks with ESPN's Mark Schwarz.
wav: 898 k
RealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6
Lou Piniella is happy to be going home with one victory.
wav: 61 k
RealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6
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