Ayala Finally Finds Pitches, Hears Cheers

He often stood on the mound as solitary as Siberia, the boos darting toward him, like beanballs, from every level of the Kingdome.

A city that had fallen blindly in love with the Seattle Mariners saved all of its venom for relief pitcher Bobby Ayala.

Forty thousand sets of lungs would boo when Ayala stood up in the bullpen. They would shriek like the audience at a Wes Craven film when he came into the game.

They blistered the talk show phone lines. Filled sports editors' mailboxes with demands that he be traded. Ayala was the target of all of this city's unfriendly fire.

Ayala drifted into a place you usually entered only once, never to emerge. His confidence waned. He didn't talk to reporters. Still doesn't.

His attitude was a baked-on callus that protected him from his disappointments.

His game had betrayed him and everybody who came into the Kingdome to watch him knew it.

"He was just way out of control on the mound," Mariner pitching coach Nardi Contreras said after yesterday's 9-8 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. "His legs were going up. His back was going up. His head was out. He really had no idea where the ball was going. He would have the pitches maybe in the general direction, but never in a location."

Ayala was getting hammered. He would fall behind in the count and throw fat fastballs and juicy forkballs that were driven into unexplored parts of the ballpark.

He allowed nine home runs in his first 30 innings.

And the boos rang like dirges.

"I'm sure it's been tough," catcher Dan Wilson said. "Nobody likes to get booed. But sometimes you can change that negative energy to motivate you, and I think Bobby's done that and done it very well."

Three weeks ago, he was treated the way this town treated ex-Mariners Mike Schooler and Tom Niedenfuer, the way it treated former carpetbagger owners George Argyros and Jeff Smulyan.

Ayala was Public Enemy No. 1.

But here they were yesterday, 57,000 people on their feet cheering the same Bobby Ayala as he stared down the heart of the Dodger lineup in the top of the ninth of an 8-8 tie.

They roared as he got Eric Karros swinging on a diabolical slider, low and away for the second out of the inning. And the roars grew louder as his splitter got Karim Garcia for the game's final out.

This was Ayala's eighth consecutive outing without allowing a run. He has converted his past four save opportunities. He has pitched 9 2/3 consecutive shutout innings.

Ayala has emerged from the valley of the shadow of death to become the closer the Mariners desperately have been seeking.

"Bobby is throwing the ball as well as I've ever seen him," Manager Lou Piniella said. "He's throwing strikes. He's added a good, sharp slider to his repertoire, which is something we've been trying to get him to do for a while.

"He's been, well, I hate to use the word guts, but that's basically it."

A reliever has no place to hide. He comes into a game that is tense and is expected to relieve that tension. He has to have a short memory. He can't dwell on yesterday's mistakes. There's another jam to escape today.

Ayala has had to take the abuse, face the tension and fight his way through it.

"This is a baseball town now," Piniella said. "People expect this team to go out there and play well and pitch well and win with frequency. What happens is, with expectations come some boos at times. You expect that.

"As a player it's not easy to live with. It really isn't. Every time when they booed me, I thought they were Looing me, so I just took it as a positive. But Bobby's endured that. He's grown because of it. Matured because of it. And you know what, he's throwing the heck out of the baseball now."

Job wouldn't have had the kind of patience Piniella showed for Ayala. This wasn't a slump that lasted a week, or a homestand, or a month. This was a slump that lingered, off and on, for two years.

But Piniella believed in the talent in Ayala's right arm and he waited for that talent to emerge.

"Bobby's cleaned up his delivery. That's all," Contreras said. "He's not out of control anymore, so he's able to throw strikes and in locations where he has to throw them. He's put it together."

Still, it is one thing to master the mechanics privately. It's quite another to do it in the public caldron. Somehow Ayala tuned out the hoots as he tuned up his mechanics.

"He's finally got confidence in himself," backup catcher John Marzano said. "He doesn't feel like he doesn't want to go out there and pitch. Sometimes, when so many people are on you, you feel like every time you go out there you're going to go out there and fail."

Bobby Ayala has silenced the boos, quieted the talk-show callers, stopped the hate mail. He has found his slider and his confidence.

He has endured.

You can contact Steve Kelley by voice mail at 464-2176.