Saturday, October 05, 2002
Athletics 6, Twins 3
By DAVE CAMPBELL
AP Sports Writer
MINNEAPOLIS — Oakland had no fear of Minnesota and its noisy fans, and the Athletics needed just two batters to take away the Twins' biggest advantage.
The A's hushed the noisy Metrodome — hitting home runs, both in and out of the park — and took a 2-1 lead Friday in their AL division series.
Ray Durham led off the game with a sinking liner that let him circle the bases and Scott Hatteberg followed with a drive over the right-field wall, sparking Oakland's 6-3 victory.
“There's no reason to be intimidated here — baseball is won between the lines,” said Terrence Long, who had one of four home runs off Twins starter Rick Reed.
Barry Zito struck out eight in six innings for the win, Ricardo Rincon pitched two scoreless innings in relief and Billy Koch closed for the save.
“Winning today was huge,” left fielder David Justice said. “Now we know at worst, if we lose tomorrow, we go home and play in front of our crowd again.”
Game 4 of the best-of-five series is Saturday, with Tim Hudson starting for the A's against Eric Milton.
Game 3 drew 55,932 — a Metrodome playoff record. Fans loudly cheered and twirled their Homer Hankies before the Twins' first home postseason game since the 1991 World Series.
Oakland turned down the volume in a hurry, though, and handed the Twins only their second loss in 13 postseason games at the ballpark.
The shots by Durham and Hatteberg marked the first time in postseason history a team has hit back-to-back homers to start a game.
“They gave us a lot of energy,” said Twins left fielder Jacque Jones. “But you can have 100,000 fans in the stands, and it won't matter because you play the game on the field.”
Torii Hunter had two of Minnesota's eight hits and capped a game-tying, two-run rally in the fifth with an RBI single. The All-Star center fielder, however, was the one who let Durham's liner skid under his glove.
“I wish I would've made that play, man,” Hunter said.
Said Zito: “That was huge. Very big for our morale.”
After that, Justice and his teammates were able to keep the fans from being a factor.
“In '91 it was much louder,” said Justice, whose Atlanta team lost Game 7 to Minnesota in the 1991 World Series. “I've played in a lot of loud arenas before, and I wasn't nervous.”
The crowd was at its loudest in the fifth after Corey Koskie's RBI triple and Hunter's two-out single tied it.
But Jermaine Dye's leadoff homer in the top of the sixth made it 4-3 Oakland, and the A's bumped their lead back to three in the seventh with an RBI double by pinch-hitter Randy Velarde against Johan Santana and a sacrifice fly by Miguel Tejada off Mike Jackson.
Zito (1-0), whose AL-high 23 victories made him a leading Cy Young candidate, was 8-0 with a 2.04 ERA in his final 10 regular-season starts.
He didn't have his best stuff — giving up five hits, three runs and four walks — but his teammates provided plenty of offense. Effectively using a high-and-away fastball against lefties, Zito squandered a 3-0 lead but was able to work his way out of several jams.
“I'm very lucky,” said Oakland manager Art Howe. “I have three of them who do this on a regular basis.”
Zito struck out two in a 1-2-3 sixth after Dye's homer chased Reed.
“I'm going to take full responsibility for this loss,” Reed said. “What upsets me the most is that we fought back and tied it up, and I went out there and gave it right back to them.”
Reed (0-1), one of only two Twins pitchers with prior postseason experience, threw 100 pitches and surrendered six hits, four runs and two walks while striking out eight.
Zito started with three hitless innings, but the Twins slowly chipped away — taking nearly every at-bat deep into the count.
Oakland escaped unscathed from a shaky second, an inning where the A's seemed to get rattled by the noise and the baseball-colored ceiling that makes it so tough to track balls in the air.
Hunter hit an easy one-out popup between first and second, but Mark Ellis and Hatteberg collided and let the ball drop for an error on Hatteberg.
Hunter moved up on Zito's wild pitch that slipped out of his hand and landed about 20 feet in front of the mound. Two walks loaded the bases with two outs, but after a conversation with pitching coach Rick Peterson, Zito struck out Luis Rivas to end it.
“I don't take things like that to heart,” Zito said of his infielders' miscue. “You let that affect you, you're not going to last very long.”
Zito's teammates are used to seeing a good battle from him.
“He kept us in the game,” Long said. “That's what our starting pitchers do ... even when they don't have their best stuff.”
The Twins refused to pout, though, knowing there's still a chance.
“I've never been a part of a team with the 25 dumbest guys in the world,” Doug Mientkiewicz said. “Some of us don't have the brain capacity to get down.”
Said Hunter: “No sense of desperation. We've got to be relaxed and whatever happens tomorrow happens.”
Notes: Former manager Tom Kelly, who guided the Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991 and retired after last season, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to his replacement, Ron Gardenhire. ... Durham's inside-the-park homer was the first in the eight-year history of the AL division series and the first by Oakland in the playoffs. ... The Twins left nine runners on — five by Rivas. ... The four homers Reed gave up set a division series record.
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Athletics 6, Twins 3
