Herbert Perry had two words of advice as the White Sox headed to Seattle with blindfolds in place and the firing squad ready to take aim.
“Don’t panic,” Perry said.
Don’t panic? The Sox are down 0-2 and have to sweep the Mariners in two games at Safeco Field to stay alive to force a decisive fifth game in Comiskey Park Sunday.
“It’s not do or die,” Perry said. “We don’t want to lose but losing is not the end of the world. If you’re afraid to lose, you’re going to lose.”
The ball will be in the hands of James Baldwin, the right-hander who is coming back from a serious shoulder injury. In Baldwin’s only outing of the year in Safeco, he held the Mariners to one run on four hits over seven innings in a 2-1 Sox victory May 30.
The mere threat of rain was enough to convince the Mariners to close the retractable roof of Safeco Field for that game, which made manager Jerry Manuel ecstatic beforehand.
“That’s J.B.’s thing,” Manuel said. “Go tell J.B. it’s a dome now.”
Baldwin improved to 15-1 in domed stadiums with the victory and hasn’t pitched in a dome since. The forecast for Friday afternoon’s game calls for partly cloudy skies with highs in the upper 60s, meaning the roof likely will be open. The Mariners are 9-3 this season with the roof closed.
Safeco Field, like Comiskey Park, is considered pitcher friendly, which benefits the Mariners’ fly-ball staff. The distances down the lines are shorter than Comiskey’s dimensions–331 feet to left and 327 feet to right, as opposed to 347 feet down both lines at Comiskey. But Safeco’s power alleys are 390 in left-center and 387 in right-center, as opposed to 375 in both power alleys at symmetrical Comiskey.
“You can hit the ball out, but the alleys are big and so is the center-field area,” Seattle manager Lou Piniella said. “I would define it more of a pitcher’s park than a lot of parks in the league. This park here is big, but when the weather’s warm, it seems to carry very, very well.”
