M’S Emerge From Gloom Despite Three Ejections, Seattle Has Enough To Rally And Win 6-4

Listen carefully today - even across the width of a continent - and the sound is faint but unmistakable.

The heart of the Seattle Mariners is beating.

No, they don’t look particularly healthy, but they are alive. Alive in the race for a postseason that days ago looked impossibly out of reach.

Before the Mariners rallied in the eighth inning to defeat the hottest team in baseball, 6-4, the Boston Red Sox weren’t merely winning Friday.

Tom Gordon had a no-hitter through six innings, a 4-0 lead and was riding the tidal wave of momentum that had seen Boston win 17 of its last 22 games.

How grim did it look? Before the Mariners collected a hit, Edgar Martinez, Joey Cora and manager Lou Piniella had each been ejected in separate arguments with plate umpire Ted Barrett - Martinez and Cora for the first time in their careers.

“By the time I was sitting back in the clubhouse, it didn’t look too good,” Piniella said. “I guess it didn’t hurt that I got thrown.”

In a game delayed nearly 2 hours by a downpour, the Red Sox were on cruise control when the Mariners supplied their eighth-inning thunder and lightning.

Ken Griffey Jr. tied it at 4 with his 39th home run. Dan Wilson put the Mariners ahead with a two-run single.

Stunned by the swiftness of that eighth-inning turnaround, a Fenway Park crowd of 33,079 watched reliever Bobby Ayala blow down the last six Red Sox batters.

Improbable?

“It’s the biggest game of the year,” Wilson said, “until our next game. This time of year, they just get more and more important.”

Their 66th win of the season - their 34th come-from-behind victory - closed them to 1-1/2 games of the wild-card-race-leading Chicago White Sox, and trimmed the division-leading Texas Rangers’ lead to seven games.

“We ain’t dead,” Griffey said. “We didn’t look too good there in the sixth inning, but you got to play nine innings. We looked a whole lot better once Mr. Gordon departed.”

Though he was brilliant through six, Gordon threw too many pitches to get much deeper into the game. When Jay Buhner and Paul Sorrento opened the seventh with back-to-back doubles, the Mariners came away with one run.

In the eighth, they stole the game.

Jeff Manto drew a leadoff walk, and after watching his starter throw four balls to a man hitting .154 for the Mariners, Kevin Kennedy went to his bullpen.

In the span of moments, Alex Rodriguez singled and Kennedy - with no left-handed pitcher ready - let the right-handed Mark Brandenburg face Junior.

“I was looking home run, but I was looking to hit it to left field because I didn’t think they’d pitch me inside,” Griffey said. “They did.”

And Junior launched it into the right-field corner, tying his single-season career best with 109 RBIs.

Buhner singled again, and against reliever Rich Garces, Wilson fouled off four consecutive two-strike pitches and lined a two-out, two-run single up the middle.