It will forever be forgotten because of the final score, but in yesterday's contest between Seattle and Cleveland, Mariners "shortstop" Mark McLemore made a spectacular defensive play on a pop to short left-center field by Juan Gonzalez.

The second-inning gem seems even more spectacular when you remember that before this season, McLemore had played the grand total of 14 games at shortstop in the major leagues, none of them since 1990: six games (and only nine innings) in 1987, and eight games (all as the starter) in 1990. On the other hand, this season McLemore, at the moderately ripe age of 36, did start 30 games at shortstop, and to this reporter's eyes he didn't look bad doing it.

And with Carlos Guillen laid low with tuberculosis and the only other option being rookie Ramon Vazquez, McLemore is now the Mariners' everyday shortstop in the postseason.

This is not a common thing. By my count, McLemore is only the sixth player in history to serve as his club's starting shortstop in the postseason after playing 35 or fewer games at the position during the regular season.

In 1917, Buck Weaver spent the majority of the season at third base, playing only 10 games at shortstop. But Weaver came up as a shortstop and had been the White Sox's regular at the position until midway through the 1916 season. On August 10, Weaver broke the index finger on his left hand, and Fred McMullin took over at third base. When Weaver was ready to play six weeks later, instead of taking over for McMullin he replaced shortstop Swede Risberg, who was struggling badly at the plate. And with McMullin at third base and Weaver at shortstop, the White Sox topped the New York Giants in the World Series.

On August 16, 1920, a fastball thrown by Yankees submarine pitcher Carl Mays caught Indians shortstop Ray Chapman flush on the left temple. Chapman soon lapsed into a coma, and he died at 4:40 the next morning.

Chapman was an excellent player, perhaps the American League's best shortstop, and the Indians were locked in a tight pennant race with the White Sox and Yankees. The Indians were forced to replace Chapman with rookie Harry Lunte, but nobody thought that Lunte could hit at all, and his defense wasn't anything special, either. Still, Lunte was all the Indians had, and so he took over at shortstop ... until September 6, when he pulled a muscle in his left thigh. That left the Indians with one option: 21-year-old Joe Sewell, then playing for New Orleans and just a few months removed from college.

So the Indians summoned Sewell, who debuted on September 10. He played 22 games down the stretch and batted .329 as the Indians captured the American League pennant, and then beat the Dodgers in the World Series. That was just the beginning for Sewell, who eventually became known as the toughest man in baseball history to strike out, and was elected to the Hall of Fame.

It would be many, many years -- 41 years, to be precise -- before a shortstop would again enter the postseason having played 35 or fewer games at the position in the regular season. But there's a caveat. Tony Kubek was the Yankee shortstop in the '62 Series after playing there only 35 times during the regular season. But he was far from a novice, having served as the club's starting shortstop for most of the previous four years. Kubek didn't play much before the World Series only because he spent most of the season in the U.S. Army.

And then in 1968, the most famous defensive switch in baseball history. During most of the season, the Detroit Tigers used three shortstops: Ray Oyler (111 games), Tom Matchick (55 games) and Dick Tracewski (51 games). All three of them were, shall we say, offensively challenged. Matchick batted .203, slugged .286 ... and he was the slugger among the group. Tracewski batted .156, and Oyler batted .135! Yes, it was The Year of the Pitcher, and Tigers manager Mayo Smith could have lived with those guys playing shortstop in the World Series. But he had another problem: how to get future Hall of Famer Al Kaline into the lineup?

The Tigers opened the season with Willie Horton in left field, defensive wiz Mickey Stanley in center, Kaline in right, and Jim Northrup filling in where needed. In May, Kaline got his arm broken by a pitched ball, and was out of the lineup for a month. Northrup took over in right field, and when Kaline saw only spot duty after coming off the disabled list. Kaline heated up down the stretch, though, and manager Smith wanted to get him into the lineup on a regular basis. Smith's solution was risky, but it worked. Kaline moved back to his old spot in right field, Northrup shifted to center field ... and Mickey Stanley became, for the first time in his professional career, a shortstop.

There are a couple of common misconceptions about the move. One, a lot of people think that it was done to get Oyler and the others out of the lineup, but the real goal was to get Kaline in. And two, it's often forgotten that Stanley did play nine games at shortstop in late September, so he wasn't completely raw when the Tigers met the Cardinals in the World Series.

What people do remember correctly is that the move worked. Stanley made two errors but neither of them cost the Tigers, Kaline batted .379 with eight RBI, and the Tigers won the Series in seven games. (On the other hand, Stanley batted just .214 with no RBI, leading one to wonder if the Tigers would have done just as well with one of the real shortstops in the lineup.)

Four years later, the Tigers were involved in another shortstop switch, though this time they didn't have a choice in the matter. Tigers shortstop Eddie Brinkman ranks as one of the worst-hitting long-time regulars ever, but his defense was so impressive that after the season the Detroit baseball writers named him "Tiger of the Year" in something of a landslide.

The Tigers won the American League East title, but Brinkman played only one game against the A's in the ALCS before a sore back knocked him out. For the rest of the series, which the Tigers lost, second baseman Dick McAuliffe shifted to shortstop and Tony Taylor took over at second base. Shortstop was nothing new for McAuliffe, who had been Detroit's starter for a few years in the 1960s, and had occasionally played the position since.

And now, nearly 30 years later, McLemore.

About yesterday's games...

There's not a whole lot to say about the Indians and the Mariners. Considering the situation and the competition, Bartolo Colon pitched his best game of the year. And so you have to, as they say, tip your cap to him.

And as well as Colon pitched, Curt Schilling was even better, and there wasn't much that Tony La Russa could have done about it. I don't know that Miguel Cairo would have been my choice to pinch-hit in the top of the eighth -- I might have gone with Craig Paquette, who had a better chance of tying the game with a bomb -- but it's very unlikely that anybody on La Russa's bench could have made a difference.

And that brings us to the Braves and the Astros, where we find at least three managerial decisions that will be roundly second-guessed, in Houston if not elsewhere.

Top of the eighth, Houston leads Atlanta by a run. Wade Miller has pitched well, but he'd been lifted for a pinch-hitter in the seventh, so the Astros needed a new pitcher. Larry Dierker's options included the following pitchers (relief stats only):

 
               IP  Hits  BB   ERA 
Octavio Dotel  84   55   33  1.93 
Mike Williams  64   60   35  3.80 
Nelson Cruz    82   72   24  4.15 
Mike Jackson   69   68   22  4.70 

These guys are all right-handed relievers, and I listed them by ERA in ascending order.

Dierker started at the bottom of the list, summoning his worst right-handed reliever (Jackson) rather than his best (Dotel), or somebody in between (Williams and Cruz). Jackson struck out a batter but also gave up a couple of hits that resulted in a game-tying run. Shortstop Julio Lugo booted a double-play ball -- and by the way, why was he still in the game? -- leaving two runners on base with Chipper Jones due up.

Now Dierker called for his best relief pitcher, Billy Wagner, and I don't know that he was wrong. However, the AP story says that Dierker replaced "the righty Jackson with lefty Wagner, forcing Jones to hit right-handed, his weaker side; only eight of his 38 homers came that way."

Well, that's just not right. While it's true that Chipper hit only eight homers right-handed this season, it's also true that he batted right-handed only 109 times this season. He actually slugged substantially higher against left-handed pitchers this year, .679 as opposed to .587 against righties. He was better against lefties last year, too. And the year before that. You have to go all the way back to 1998 to find a season in which Jones did not perform better against lefties than righties.

Perhaps more in Dierker's mind was the fact that in eight career at-bats against Wagner, Chipper was hitless with six strikeouts. Wagner's the man, and you can't blame Dierker for using him.

No, the question that Astro fans will always remember is, Where's Dotel?

And to this point at least, Larry Dierker hasn't supplied an answer.

Rob can be reached at rob.neyer@dig.com, and to order his new book, "Feeding the Green Monster", click here.