SEATTLE -- Mariners starter Aaron Sele has a beautiful curveball and has averaged 16 wins the past five seasons, but he has never won a game in the postseason. Part of that is due to poor performances (his postseason ERA is 4.79) and part of it is due to facing the Yankees in four postseasons -- they've beat him every time, including Wednesday in Game 1 of the Seattle-New York series.

The Yankees have been even more frustrating for Seattle's Mark McLemore. He lost to the Yankees in three postseasons in Texas (1996, '98 and '99), another last year with Seattle and is looking at the possibility of losing another series this October. Not that he would concede any frustrations or the voice of Bob Sheppard rattling around in his head.

	“	You know you'll have to fight them for a full nine innings and that you'll have to play mistake-free baseball. And when you have an opportunity to score, you better. ”
		— Seattle left fielder Jay Buhner on how to beat the Yankees

"It doesn't matter who it is, you can let anybody get into your head if you let them," he said. "It's up to you. I can only speak for myself, but they don't get into my head."

Perhaps not, but saying you're not going to let the Yankees' considerable postseason aura get into your head is easier said than done. It's like telling a company to take you off their junk mail list. No matter how many times you call to complain, you're still going to find a mailbox full of pre-approved credit card offers.

Same with the Yankees. You can win 116 games in the regular season and win your division by so many games that you begin buying champagne by the case in June, but come October, you find yourself not just facing the 25 players in their dugout, but the entire Yankees postseason history as well. So pretty soon Andy Pettitte is breaking bats in half and Paul O'Neill is homering to right and you're stranding or doubling up what few runners you have and you're losing the opener 4-2 and you're talking about winning the next game just to salvage the two games at home before going to New York and damn, what does it take to beat these guys in October, anyway?

"You know you'll have to fight them for a full nine innings and that you'll have to play mistake-free baseball. And when you have an opportunity to score, you better," left fielder Jay Buhner said. "When they give you a gimme run, well, no run is a gimmee, but we had a runner on third with one out and all I had to do was put the ball in play and I didn't. If you don't put the ball in play ... well, that speaks for itself."

Buhner was referring to the fifth inning when Edgar Martinez singled for Seattle's first hit against Pettitte and went to third on Mike Cameron's double. John Olerud scored Martinez with a groundout but Buhner struck out on three pitches, looking at a letter high curve for strike three, and stranded Cameron. Pettitte then struck out Dan Wilson, preserving a 3-1 lead.

"I thought the third pitch was high and I let it go by, but the bottom line is I didn't do anything with the other two strikes," Buhner said. "That was the key to the game. All I had to do was put the ball in play. Hit a sac fly. We went from having the momentum to giving it right back to them."

Pettitte pitched a great game against the Mariners, jamming hitters with fastballs and making them lunge at breaking balls away. He was so effective that he broke Martinez's bat twice in one at-bat. "It's a combination of good pitches and bad swings," said the man who has fewer bad swings than anybody.

The Mariners scored early plenty in the regular season, outscoring opponents 232-137 in the first two innings. But they've struggled in the postseason, scoring only 17 runs in five games and playing from behind in four of them.

"The key is scoring early," Buhner said. "That takes pressure off our pitcher and gives you an edge."

There was one promising sign among all the strikeouts and broken bats in Game 1. After batting .095 in the Cleveland series, league-RBI leader Bret Boone singled and walked in four plate appearances. "I'm on fire," he joked.

	No fear of the Yanks
	Freddy Garcia, the Mariners' Game 2 starter, has pitched in five games in the postseason in his career. Below is a rundown of those games:
	Date	Opp.	IP	H	R	Dec.
	10/3/00	ChW	3.1	6	4	ND
	10/10/00	NYY	6.2	3	0	W
	10/15/00	NYY	5	7	2	W
	10/9/01	Cle.	5.1	9	4	L
	10/14/01	Cle.	6.1	4	2	W

"Seriously, I felt better at the plate today. I felt like my body was a lot more under control. I went a long time without feeling bad at the plate this year and not having a lull and then I had one (in the first series). Today I felt a lot better. Hopefully, I can get back to where I've been all season."

Sele was 15-5 during the season but he struggled early in Game 1, digging the Mariners into a 3-0 hole in the fourth inning after O'Neill's home run, before recovering. That he was starting the opener of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees could not have comforted many Seattle fans -- Mr. October he is not. The loss dropped him to 0-5 in the postseason in his career.

The Mariners were forced to go with Sele in the opener because Cleveland stretched them to five games in the Division Series, with 20-game winner Jamie Moyer pitching the final game. Moyer will come back to pitch Game 3 in New York while Freddy Garcia, Seattle's only legitimate power pitcher, starts Game 2 Thursday on three days' rest.

	Tracking the Moose
	Mike Mussina, the Yankees' Game 2 starter, has pitched in seven games in the postseason in his career. Below is a rundown of those games:
	Date	Opp.	IP	H	R	Dec.
	10/4/96	Cle.	6	7	4	ND
	10/11/96	NYY	7.2	8	5	L
	10/1/97	Sea.	7	5	2	W
	10/5/97	Sea.	7	2	1	W
	10/11/97	Cle.	7	3	1	ND
	10/15/97	Cle.	8	1	0	ND
	10/13/01	Oak.	7	4	0	W

Garcia beat the Yankees twice in last year's postseason and he was one of the league's best pitchers this year, winning 18 games and leading the league in ERA. But he'll also be pitching on three days' rest after pitching two games in the Division Series. He faces Mike Mussina, who is pitching on four days' rest after his 1-0 victory over Oakland.

"It's not a must-win situation, but we would really like to leave here 1-1," reliever Norm Charlton said. "Freddy will have to throw a good game, and he will throw a good game."

The Mariners are starting Garcia on three days' rest because if they backed him up to Game 3, they would only be able to start Moyer once this series. This way, they can pitch Garcia and Moyer twice.

Of course, that's if the series goes seven games -- and the Yankees haven't played one of those since 1964.

So the Mariners must hope they can keep Derek Jeter off the bases again and get Ichiro on base and have Boone start hitting again and get ahead early and hold New York off late and somehow put a dent in the Yankees' invincible postseason aura and -- hey, is that Jeffrey Maier in right field?

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.