GAME 3
A’s 6
Twins 3
MINNEAPOLIS – The A’s have the Twins where they want them, just like they had the Yankees last year and the year before and, according to Barry Zito, couldn’t see the possibility of those series slipping away until they did.
The trick, as the lefthander says, in “learning your lesson about sealing the deal” is to discount nobody, believe all things are possible.
A team hardened by two devastating defeats wouldn’t come to an indoor baseball stadium where you can’t hear with eyes anything but wide open. And what the A’s, on their way to a 6-3 victory and 2-1 series lead saw yesterday when Torii Hunter broke in on Ray Durham’s game-opening line drive was more eye-opening than a Bloody Mary and almost as intoxicating.
Accustomed to seeing Hunter take away doubles, the A’s, who bashed a post-seaon record-tying four homers, did a double take. Breaking a little late in a failed attempt at a shoestring catch, the best center fielder in the American League was beginning the run of shame after a ball rolling to the wall.
“I just couldn’t believe it got by Torii,” said the A’s Eric Chavez.
Durham was so astonished watching out of the corner of his eye, he almost missed first base, barely catching the corner of it before turning on the turbo.
“I thought for sure [coach Ron Washington] would stop me at third,” said Durham, “But he was waving and I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ “
Durham slid awkwardly, but safely, home. And when two pitches later, Scott Hatteberg homered off the facade of the football pressbox, are you kidding me, the A’s had a 2-0 lead on the first back-to-back homers to start a game in post-season history.
That’s longer than the A’s have waited to take the next step, even longer than nine innings can seem sitting on a lead in the Dome. Sure enough, the Twins rallied to tie, 3-3, in the fifth, but their second start of the day lasted no longer than the first. Three pitches into the sixth, Reed got too much of the plate on an 0-2 to Jermaine Dye, who promptly gagged 55,932 screaming meemies once more with a drive five rows up into the left-field stands.
Randy Velarde keyed two seventh-inning insurance runs with a pinch-hit double off reliever Johan Santana and what was reputed to be the inferior bullpen pitched three innings in scoreless relief of a substandard, but game, Zito. The A’s thus wrested back home-field advantage in a place where the Twins had won 11 of 12 games in runs to 1987 and 1991 World Series titles.
“It was wasn’t nearly as loud as 1991,” said David Justice, then a losing Brave, but that was because Oakland shrugged off second baseman Mark Ellis knocking a pop-up out of Hatteberg’s glove and Hatteberg embarrassing misjudging a foul pop up to quietly go about the business of making the Twins’ supposed post-season invulnerability here just a bunch of noise.
“We were just hoping sanity would start to prevail and some normalcy would take place,” said manager Art Howe. “Barry did a great job of minimizing the damage.”
Zito was battling a head cold and, walking four, had some trouble locating his breaking pitches. But twice the 23-game winner got out of two-on jams by getting Luis Rivas, once on a strikeout, once on a double play.
Corey Koskie’s triple off the base of the left-field wall and Hunter’s single drew Minnesota into a hard-earned tie, but Reed, who also gave up a third-inning home run to Terrence Long to tie an ignominious playoff record with four, made too many mistakes and the A’s, with a fast start yesterday and an early one today, went back to the hotel calmly vowing not to make the same one they did against the Yankees.