[jg2977]

SEATTLE — October 16, 1917
By Peter Gammons
As the postseason often does, Game 3 of the American League Championship Series offered a messy, musical symphony of improbability—a game that started with the Mariners flexing power and ended with the Orioles conducting chaos in key after key. When the dust finally settled at T-Mobile Park, Baltimore had walked off the stage with a 15–9 victory and a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

It was the kind of game that defied clean narrative arcs, the kind that reminded you why the postseason remains baseball's most unpredictable instrument. A 4-run Seattle first, followed by 6 unanswered Baltimore runs in the third. Then came the fifth and sixth innings, where the Orioles tacked on six more in a blur of patient at-bats, line-drive singles, and mistake pitches that didn’t come back.

The day belonged to Jimmy Hyland—a player whose career has always been built on angles and instinct rather than raw power. He finished the game 3-for-4 with a double, a triple, two walks, four runs scored, and two driven in. His baserunning and presence in the middle of the order added tempo to an already relentless Baltimore offense. In the process, he tied the American League postseason record for runs scored in a game with four—a quiet milestone that echoes louder in the context of a lopsided win.

“He’s been our rhythm guy all year,” Orioles manager Ed Galindo said postgame. “When Jimmy gets on, everything behind him starts to click.”

What clicked on this day was a 19-hit Baltimore attack that never let Seattle’s pitching staff exhale. Eight different Orioles collected hits. Bill Hemphill, the emerging catalyst at second base, continued his October tear with four more hits and five RBIs, bringing his postseason average to a staggering .600. Justin McCarvill added three more singles and three RBIs, showing the kind of postseason maturity you don’t expect from a 25-year-old corner infielder with just 247 regular-season at-bats.

And yet, as dominant as the box score looks, this game tilted on smaller decisions. In the third, Seattle starter Gary Hall faltered under pressure, allowing three inherited runners to score after being relieved with two outs. Hall was charged with six runs on seven hits in five innings, but the turning point came with two outs and nobody on—when two bloop singles, a hit batsman, and a missed location to McCarvill cracked the game wide open.

The Mariners, for their part, did not roll over. Josh Freeman and Phil Welch homered in the first inning, keying a four-run frame that had T-Mobile Park on edge. They racked up 17 hits of their own, including three from Marcus McCall and four from Freeman. But every punch they threw, the Orioles countered with two. And in the postseason, asymmetry of that magnitude becomes a death sentence.

Seattle manager Justin Burg tried everything: matchups, pinch-hitters, bullpen flips, even Rhett Tellez, who hadn’t pitched since September 25th. But there was no stopping the Baltimore wave—relentless, professional, and altogether postseason-hardened.

“We’re just not sequencing,” Burg said. “We’re getting the hits, but not in bunches. And they are.”

Now trailing 3-0 in the series, the Mariners must not only win Game 4—they must do so against a team that has outscored them 28-12 over the last three games and boasts the deepest lineup in the league.

“We understand where we are,” said Hyland, wrapping ice around both knees. “But we also understand what it takes to finish a series. That’s tomorrow’s job.”

Baseball doesn’t always follow the expected script. But sometimes, when a team brings a storm of contact hitting, patient plate appearances, and timely execution—when it writes in the margins instead of headlining with long balls—you start to sense something bigger. You start to believe they’re not just winning games. They’re conducting something closer to a masterpiece.