Re: We all hear the bad beat stories. How about your best win?
Indians' comeback one for the history books
Indians become third team in history to win after down by a dozen
Monday, August 6, 2001
By JOHN HICKEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Indians spent the better part of the past three days getting a lesson in how many ways the Mariners can hurt a team.
The Mariners got a lesson last night in how important it is not to take the Indians -- or the inevitability of victory -- too lightly.
Seattle bolted to 12-0 and 14-2 leads, seemingly in complete control after 6 1/2 innings. After wins Friday and Saturday, the Mariners just had to wait for the requisite 27 outs to be filed to take Game 3 of the four-game series.
It didn't happen. History did happen.
Jolbert Cabrera singled off Jose Paniagua with one out in the bottom of the 11th inning, giving Cleveland a 15-14 victory and completing one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history. All but two of the Indians' runs came from the seventh inning on.
"It was a fluke, a freak thing," Bret Boone said.
Boone got most of the night off, then entered the game as a pinch hitter in the top of the 11th, striking out against eventual winning pitcher John Rocker.
"You never see a game like this," Boone said. "Never. No matter how good your offense is, you don't come back from 12 down. But they did it. It was ugly, but they got the job done."
The five runs that tied the game came with two outs against three of the Mariners' top relievers -- Norm Charlton, Jeff Nelson and Kazuhiro Sasaki, including Omar Vizquel's game-tying bases-loaded triple off Sasaki.
"I'll bet you money that doesn't happen again," said Charlton, who pitched the Mariners out of a jam in the eighth inning -- and into a jam in the ninth. "With the exception of Arthur (Rhodes), the relievers didn't throw well."
No team has ever come back from 13 runs down to win a game. Two teams had come back from 12 runs down, however. The Indians became the third team to scratch their names into the record books next to the 1911 Detroit Tigers and the 1925 Philadelphia A's.
"It's crazy," starting pitcher Aaron Sele said. "It's one of those games that gets away from you."
Manager Lou Piniella had another idea.
"What they did is almost impossible to do," Piniella said.
After considering it for a moment, he broke into a laugh. "But they did it. What can I say?"
Paniagua, the seventh pitcher used by Piniella as he went through his entire bullpen, got the first out of the 11th. Nothing went right for Paniagua from that point on. Kenny Lofton singled. Vizquel singled. And Cabrera, a late entry into the game playing only because the game was as good as over in the sixth inning, singled to left. Mark McLemore's throw to the plate couldn't outrun Lofton.
It was perhaps the worst performance of the year for the best bullpen in the majors. In 3 2/3 innings, John Halama, Charlton, Nelson, Sasaki, Rhodes and Paniagua allowed 15 hits and 10 runs.
To give those numbers some perspective, in games between July 6-Aug. 4, the bullpen gave up only eight runs total.
"No question it was uncharacteristic for us," Piniella said. "When there were two out (in the ninth, Seattle still leading by five), I thought we'd put it away."
But that's not the way it happened.
Three homers in the seventh and eighth innings helped the Indians get back in the game. But the greatest part of the comeback was yet to come.
Charlton got two outs, but also put two men on base. Nelson didn't get anyone out, walking Wil Cordero and giving up a full-count, bases-loaded single to Einar Diaz that scored the inning's first two runs.
That brought on Sasaki. If the Mariners thought that bringing in their closer was the answer, they were to learn quickly it was not. Lofton singled to left, reloading the bases. Enter Vizquel.
Only about one-quarter of the sellout crowd of 42,494 was on hand at Jacobs Field when Sasaki and Vizquel met.
The former Mariner had a terrific at-bat. Down 1-2 in the count, he took a pair of balls to run the count full, then fouled off two pitches to stay alive. The eighth pitch from Sasaki was one Vizquel could handle. He rifled it into the right-field corner. Charles Gipson had trouble digging the ball out, and by the time he got the throw back in, Vizquel was on third and the game was tied.
"To come up with five runs with two outs, it's just one of those things that happens," Piniella said. "What can I say?"
The Mariners haven't had a loss as crushing as this one all season. Who has, for that matter? The question now is how well the Mariners come back.
Boone, for one, has no doubt that, as ugly as this game looked, it's just one pimple on an otherwise unblemished face.
"It stinks, but what can you do?" Boone said. "It's over. And if we do what we've done all year, come back from tough losses, we'll be all right.
"When we walk in the clubhouse tomorrow, this one will be behind us."
INDIANS 15, MARINERS 14
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