Hot streaks, like good weather, don’t last forever in baseball. Sandy Alomar Jr. and Jaret Wright will have to cool off sooner or later.
But neither member of the Cleveland Indians battery had trouble performing on Wednesday night, when the World Series might as well have been played at Lambeau Field. Wright was as unflappable as always, and Alomar drove in three runs as the Indians beat the Florida Marlins 10-3, evening the Series at two games apiece.
Orel Hershiser will try to put the Indians in control Thursday night. He faces Florida rookie Livan Hernandez in a rematch of the Series opener.
Hershiser, a hero in other Octobers, would do well to imitate the 21-year-old Wright. Nothing seems to bother this surfer from the beaches of California.
The pressure of a divisional race didn’t. The fans at Yankee Stadium didn’t. So why should a a little thing like snow flurries?
Wright won a World Series battle of rookies that began with the Jacobs Field thermometer at 38 degrees. He gave up three runs in six innings to beat lefty Tony Saunders, who seemed as out of place as his 4-6 regular-season record suggested. Cleveland is 15-4 in the games Wright has started.
Alomar, the man who embodies the grit of the American League champions, collected a first-inning double and a third-inning single off Saunders, who probably would have been working out of the bullpen had former White Sox ace Alex Fernandez not suffered a torn rotator cuff.
Alomar finished with three hits and would have had four if not for a good play by Florida third baseman Bobby Bonilla. He is 8 for 17 in the four games against Florida and has driven in 15 runs in the Indians’ 15 postseason games, a record for a catcher.
Alomar is one of four Indians who have hits in all four Series games. Matt Williams (3 for 3 with a two-run homer), Jim Thome and Bip Roberts are also leading Cleveland’s offensive resurgence. The Indians won a pennant despite averaging 3.5 runs in their playoff series against New York and Baltimore.
Cleveland has scored in the first inning in all four games. It jumped out to a 3-0 lead off Saunders, who couldn’t shut down the Indians even after Manny Ramirez’s two-run home run.
Williams grounded a single through the right side with two outs and churned around the bases to score on Alomar’s double to left-center. Shortstop Edgar Renteria, who relayed a throw from Devon White, had a play at the plate on Williams but made Charles Johnson come up the third-base line to take the throw.
Saunders held the Indians scoreless in the second inning despite a Roberts double. But he failed to retire any of the five hitters he faced in the third inning.
In a rerun of Cleveland’s fifth inning Tuesday, when a battered Al Leiter served up a homer to Thome, Marlins manager Jim Leyland stayed with Saunders longer than many managers would have. Saunders walked Ramirez to start the inning, then made a wild pickoff throw. David Justice followed with a roller to the left side that Renteria fielded. The shortstop slipped while planting to throw, heaving a one-hopper past first baseman Darren Daulton.
With one in, Justice on second and no outs, Saunders walked Williams. Alomar singled through the right side, scoring Justice. Leyland left Saunders in to face Thome, and he walked him to load the bases. Reliever Antonio Alfonseca got out of the mess allowing only one more run. Tony Fernandez’s single gave the Indians a 6-0 lead.
After leaving runners on second or third base in each of the first three innings, the Marlins scored on a double by Daulton and single by Jim Eisenreich in the fourth. But Wright again frustrated Florida. He got a force at second on a Johnson grounder and retired No. 9 hitter Craig Counsell on a liner to center-fielder Marquis Grissom.
The Marlins closed within 6-3 on a two-run homer by Moises Alou in the sixth. They were unlucky later that inning when Johnson followed an Eisenreich single with a liner right at Thome, who tagged Eisenreich for an inning-ending double play.
