CHAPTER TEN

Turning Losers Into Winners

THE MARINERS BEGAN THE 1991 SEASON believing they finally would put together a winning record. Of course, the M’s and their fans had been thinking that for years, and they’d never won more than 78 games.

The talented young Mariners had experienced big-league growing pains in previous seasons, but there was little doubt that this core group of players was capable of winning.

Harold Reynolds was a young second baseman whose speed gave the Mariners a quality leadoff hitter.

Third baseman Edgar Martinez had batted .302 in 1990, his first full major-league season, and was showing qualities of a great right-handed hitter.

Ken Griffey Jr. had batted .300 with 22 home runs and 80 RBIs the previous season and, barring injury, his production could only go up.

DH Alvin Davis was nearing the end of his career, but in the hitter-friendly Kingdome, he remained capable of 15 to 20 home runs and 60 to 70 RBIs.

Jay Buhner, a power-hitting outfielder who played 51 games in 1990, became the Opening Day starter in right field.

Dave Valle, a quality defensive player behind the plate, returned as the starting catcher.

Journeyman outfielder Tracy Jones started in left field as the Mariners sought stability in a position that had seen four different players there in the previous five years.

The anchor to the defense was Omar Vizquel, the young Venezuelan shortstop who already had displayed his amazing hands in two major-league seasons.

“When Omar started playing every day, it was like, ‘Wow!’” pitcher Bill Krueger said. “The kid couldn’t hit his way out of a brown paper bag, but oh he could play the field.”

On the mound, the Mariners were stout, returning three pitchers from the 1990 rotation who offered unlimited promise—Randy Johnson, Brian Holman, and Erik Hanson.

Johnson had a wild streak—he led the league in walks in 1990—but his dominance became clearly evident. He went 14–11 in 1990, the first winning record of his short career, and finished with five complete games, a 3.65 ERA and 194 strikeouts.

Johnson’s biggest conquest was a no-hitter against the Tigers on June 2, 1990, at the Kingdome. It was this performance that illustrated how dominant but also how wild he was early in his career. The Tigers couldn’t handle his blazing fastball and knee-buckling slider, but he issued six walks.

Six weeks earlier on a cool night in late April, Brian Holman had silenced the Oakland A’s, taking a perfect game into the ninth inning at the Coliseum. He got the first two outs easily, then faced Ken Phelps, the former Mariners first baseman. Phelps jumped on Holman’s first pitch, driving it over the fence in right-center field for a home run that ruined the perfect game, the no-hitter, and the shutout.

Hanson, a 6-foot-6 right-hander, established himself as a bonafide starter in 1990 with an 18–6 record and a 3.24 ERA.

Rich DeLucia (who pitched five games after being called up in September) and Bill Krueger (6–8 after 17 starts in 1990 with the Brewers) rounded out the starting rotation.

The 1991 Mariners had more than enough talent to produce a winning record, but they still had to overcome a long-standing feeling that it would take more than talent to win.

Harold Reynolds smiles from the dugout in 1985. Photo by The Herald of Everett, Washington

“Those guys kept reading and hearing about how hapless or hopeless the Mariners had been,” team president Chuck Armstrong said. “But if you looked at the team position by position, we were better then in a lot of positions than we are today. And it was not a bad starting rotation, especially if you got those guys in a good year. It just shows what a mental game this is.”

Manager Jim Lefebvre, an enthusiastic skipper who did his best to instill a winning approach, was beginning his third year, and many players had heard his spiel before.

“Jim, for all his critics, projected a positive image,” Krueger said. “You could kind of drink the Kool-Aid with him for a while and it got you fired up. Over time, it wore on some guys, a lot of guys. He’d played for the Dodgers and he was a winner and he wanted to project that on this club and see some things change. We weren’t just hoping to win, he projected that we had good players and we were going to win.

“A lot of players were hungry to hear that. The Dave Valles and Harold Reynoldses and Alvin Davises had been through all that losing and they were pretty fed up with it.”

The Mariners didn’t go into 1991 with aspirations of a championship. When you haven’t finished better than .500, there are other goals to achieve first.

“You can’t go from last place to winning a world championship all at once,” Valle said. “You’ve got to strive for something that’s reachable.”

So the Mariners began the 1991 season full of hope, but also with a realistic approach to what they could accomplish. Before anyone dreamed of reaching the postseason, a .500 record was their target.

“For us,” Valle said, “that was step No. 1.”

Six games into the season, the Mariners took a giant step backward. Both the Angels and A’s swept them in two series on the road, and the Mariners returned to the Kingdome for their home opener 0–6.

Despite hearing all the talk about this being a different season, Mariners fans already had a here-we-go-again feeling. Then the M’s turned that wicked start around.

“We didn’t pitch well on that opening trip,” Krueger said. “But you knew that eventually these guys were going to pitch. Once we started pitching, we had a chance to string wins together.”

Johnson pitched a complete game and beat the Minnesota Twins 8–4, and the Mariners swept their opening homestand, winning three from the Twins and three from the A’s. Then they went back to Anaheim and won the first two games against the Angels.

The Mariners lost seven of their next nine, but followed that stretch with victories in 13 of 15, putting them eight games above .500 on May 20. The streaky nature of the team continued until the All-Star break, with the Mariners enduring stretches when they lost seven straight, won seven of 10, and lost eight of nine. They had a 40–42 record at the break.

After the break, the Mariners won 17 of 23, were nine games above .500 by August 4, and were playing with a sense of confidence.

“We realized we were capable of playing with anybody,” Valle said. “Most of the players were starting to come into their own that year. Junior was coming into his own as a star player. With Randy Johnson, we knew we had a dominating pitcher who gave us a chance to win every fifth day. All of those things colliding at the same time started to make us think, ‘We can do this.’”

An early September losing streak dropped the record to 68–69, and the Mariners hovered around the .500 mark heading into the final 10 days of the season. A loss at Chicago on September 28 left them 77–77 with eight games remaining.

After 15 years of losing, the Mariners would either break that stigma or extend it in their final two series of the season, four games at Texas and three at the Kingdome against the White Sox.

Jay Buhner homered in the 11th inning, and the Mariners beat the Rangers 3–2 in the first game of a doubleheader to begin the series at Texas. Krueger pitched well in the second game, holding the Rangers to seven hits in a complete game, but Brian Downing’s home run in the first inning and Monty Fariss’s homer in the fifth beat the Mariners 2–0.

In the third game of the series, right-hander Dave Burba, making only his second start after spending most of the season either in the bullpen or the minors, held the Rangers to three hits in six innings, and Calvin Jones pitched the final three to finish an 8–1 victory, the Mariners’ 80th of the season.

Manager Jim Lefebvre and catcher Dave Valle talk to pitcher Bill Krueger. Photo by The Herald of Everett, Washington

On October 2, the Mariners sent young left-hander Dave Fleming to the mound with a chance to win their 81st game and clinch the first .500 record in franchise history. Fleming held the Rangers to just three hits in 4⅔ innings, but two of those were home runs—a solo shot by Julio Franco in the first inning and a two-run blow by Dean Palmer in the fifth—and Texas took a 3–0 lead.

Then the Mariners came back.

Valle led off the sixth inning with a double and scored when Edgar Martinez doubled. Martinez went to third on Harold Reynolds’s ground out, then scored when Rangers right-hander Jose Guzman threw a wild pitch, cutting the Rangers’ lead to 3–2.

In the seventh, Buhner singled and Vizquel walked, and Valle drove them both home with a double. The Mariners led 4–3, and their bullpen kept it that way.

Scott Bankhead pitched 2⅓ scoreless innings in relief of Fleming, and Mike Jackson didn’t allow a hit in the next 1⅓ innings, striking out Juan Gonzalez for the first out in the ninth inning.

Manager Jim Lefebvre brought in left-hander Russ Swan, who got Kevin Reimer on a grounder back to the mound for the second out.

Lefebvre went to the bullpen again, bringing in right-hander Bill Swift to face Palmer. Swift ended it, getting Palmer to bounce back to the mound for the final out and a historic moment for the Mariners.

To the players who’d endured years of losing, it felt like they’d won the World Series.

“I know a lot of the players didn’t realize the historic significance of it, and I use that term—historic—lightly,” Valle said. “But for us it was. For myself, Alvin Davis, Harold Reynolds, and the others who had been battling for respect in the big leagues, it was a big night for us.”

Davis grabbed head athletic trainer Rick Griffin and gave him a huge hug.

“We’re not losers anymore!” Davis told Griffin.

Valle, who drove in the tying and winning runs, couldn’t contain his emotions. During a postgame interview with play-by-play announcer Dave Niehaus, Valle broke down crying.

“I got choked up because I was thinking of everything it had taken for us to get there,” Valle said. “We had been the butt of all the jokes for so long. But it was a day for us.”

The Mariners won two of their final three games, finishing the season 83–79.

Momentum Lost

Having shed the loser label in 1991, the Mariners had every reason to believe they’d win more games in 1992. Most of the lineup returned, and the club made offseason changes to pump up the offense.

“Those who hadn’t been there for all the losing felt good about what we’d done,” Krueger said. “But beyond that, this was just like, ‘OK, but we expect to win. Now if we can add one hitter, we can go on to the next subject.’”

Instead, the 1992 season turned into a very sore subject.

Jim Lefebvre didn’t return as manager, having lost his handle on the clubhouse after three seasons. Players who’d worn “Lefebvre Believer” T-shirts three years earlier when he was hired were ready to burn them by the end of the ’91 season, despite the team’s success.

“To Jim’s credit, he had a plan,” head athletic trainer Rick Griffin said. “When he started, he said we were going to have a winning record, and we did. That’s one of the highlights of my career. But there was a lot of uneasiness in the clubhouse and mistrust in the clubhouse. A lot of times, players didn’t feel like there was a lot of honesty.”

The Mariners promoted Bill Plummer, who had managed their Class AAA Calgary team and was a favorite of many young players who developed under him.

They acquired left fielder Kevin Mitchell, the former National League MVP who’d hit 109 home runs and driven in 287 runs the previous three seasons, in a trade with the Giants that ultimately proved costly. Mitchell was a bust, with only nine home runs and 67 RBIs for the Mariners, and certainly not worth the price the Mariners paid to get him—pitchers Bill Swift, Mike Jackson, and Dave Burba.

Swift went 31–12 the next two seasons with the Giants, including 21–8 in 1993. Jackson became one of the game’s top closers later in the 1990s, and Burba was a solid member of the Giants’ pitching staff both out of the bullpen and as a starter, including a 10–3 record in 1993.

“That trade might have cost us more than 15 wins,” Griffin said. “We got a guy who didn’t particularly want to play, and we traded away three unbelievably good arms. Those guys all had very good careers.”

The Mariners also let longtime fan favorite Alvin Davis flee to free agency (he signed with the Angels) and replaced him with promising young first baseman Tino Martinez, who was their first-round draft pick in 1988.

Randy Johnson, Dave Fleming, and Erik Hanson returned to the starting rotation, but after them, the other two rotation spots were uncertain.

Brian Holman, who came within one out of pitching a perfect game in 1990 and won 13 games in 1991, tore his rotator cuff and never pitched again.

Behind Johnson, Fleming, and Hanson, six other pitchers made the bulk of the remaining starts in 1992—Russ Swan, Brian Fisher, Rich DeLucia, Mark Grant, Tim Leary, and Clay Parker. The Mariners used 23 different pitchers that season.

They lost 13 of 15 games in May and never climbed out of their downward spiral, finishing 64–98.

Plummer struggled as well in his first, and only, season as manager.

Early in the season, he filled out the lineup card with two first basemen and no DH for a game at Chicago in mid-April. The Mariners made numerous lineup changes to avoid having the pitchers hit, and they lost 5–4 to the White Sox.

At times as the season wore on, Plummer seemed indifferent to what was happening.

“When he’d walk back from the mound after a pitching change, he’d look into the stands and shrug his shoulders as if to say, ‘Hey, it’s not my fault,’” said Jim Street, who covered the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

On the final day of the season, Plummer and Griffey got into an argument on the bench after Griffey had thought he would play only a few innings. Instead, Plummer left him in for six innings and three at-bats.

“Junior played with his shoelaces untied, he was so upset. He even made a catch over his head with his shoelaces untied,” said John Moses, who replaced Griffey in the seventh inning. “He thought he was only going to get an at-bat and that was it, but Plum left him in until the seventh.”

A new skipper was in place the next year, and it became the best hire in franchise history.