Hot streaks, like summer weather, don’t last forever. Jaret Wright and Sandy Alomar Jr. will have to come to their senses sometime. The Cleveland Indians hope this battery has more heroics in it, especially if they need some magic in the seventh game of the World Series.
Neither had trouble performing Wednesday night, when Game 4 might as well have been played at Lambeau Field. Wright was utterly unflappable, and Alomar drove in three more runs as the Indians beat the Florida Marlins 10-3, evening the Series at two games apiece.
“I was very impressed with Jaret Wright,” Marlins manager Jim Leyland said. “He has all the ingredients to be a great one, from what I’ve seen. He’s everything I had heard, and more.”
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.
If the Series is extended to its seven-game limit, there’s a good chance Indians manager Mike Hargrove will start the 21-year-old Wright on three days’ rest instead of veteran Charles Nagy. 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 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 left-hander Tony Saunders, who seemed as out of place as his 4-6 regular-season record would suggest.
“It was the coldest I’ve pitched in,” Wright said. “But Saunders had to pitch, and everybody has to play in it. And there’s heaters in the dugout.”
Wright’s calming presence on the mound restored order to an event that had appeared in chaos 24 hours earlier. The Marlins broke open a 7-7 tie with seven runs in the ninth inning, then wound up clinging to a 14-11 Game 3 victory.
“I wasn’t putting any more pressure on myself because we lost last night or anything like that,” Wright said. “You try to put yesterday behind you and get them today, which we did.”
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.
One almost would have thought Alomar had grown up playing in the snow, rather than on the sun-baked diamonds of Puerto Rico.
“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” he said. “Yesterday our bodies were getting acclimated to the weather. You go from 85-degree weather to 35-degree weather, obviously your body is not going to function the same way it functioned the day before.”
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.
With a crowd of 44,877 urging them on, the Indians led wire-to-wire against Saunders, who was making only his second start of the postseason. They scored in the first inning for the fourth consecutive game. This time they went ahead 3-0 on a two-run homer by Manny Ramirez and a run-scoring double by Alomar.
Williams, who had singled with two outs, scored from first on the Alomar double. He slid across the plate just in front of a relay throw from shortstop Edgar Renteria.
“That was huge,” Williams said of the first inning. “That set the tone for the evening. If that’s a double-play ball (from Ramirez), it may be a different story, but Manny did a nice piece of hitting.”
Cleveland chased Saunders with three more runs in the third inning. That rally was a flashback to Game 3. It was built around three walks and two Marlins errors.
Florida pitchers have walked 15 in the two games in Cleveland.
“For me, a walk is like an extra out,” Leyland said. “When you start giving good teams an extra out, you’re going to get beat.”
