SEATTLE -- Clear the back pages of the New York tabloids.

Fed up with another loss by his team, fed up with more stranded baserunners, fed up with more tales of the Yankees' postseason invulnerability ... well, fed up with everything, really, Mariners manager Lou Piniella returned to vintage form after Seattle's 3-2 loss to the Yankees in Game 2. Despite trailing 2-0, Piniella guaranteed the Mariners will return the series to Seattle after the next three games in New York.

"We're going to be back here for Game 6," Piniella said while walking to the interview room past a Disneyland-long line of reporters. "You don't have to ask any questions. We're going to be back. Print it."

	“	I haven't seen anything so dominant over there. They're a team ready to get beat if anyone would go out there and beat them. ”
		— Seattle manager Lou Piniella on the Yankees

And just in case anyone missed the point, Piniella opened the news conference by saying, "We're going to be back here to play Game 6, OK? ... I've got confidence in my ballclub. We've gone to New York and beat them five out of six times this season and we're going to do it again."

Piniella has mellowed a great deal in recent years but this was the old Lou that New Yorkers and Cincinnatians remember so fondly. The Lou who was depicted as a red ass in a best-selling book his rookie season, the Lou who once tossed first base into right field, the Lou who once attacked his own pitcher in the clubhouse in front of stunned reporters.

He was even riled up Thursday about New York closer Mariano Rivera not taking the mound quickly enough when he was called into the game. "It looks like this guy makes his own rules," he complained.

It was beautiful. At least someone isn't willing to go quietly into the good night. At least somebody is ready to fight the Yankees, even if his team has shown no sign of that.

"I haven't seen anything so dominant over there," Piniella said later in his office, still hot, still as subtle as a Farrelly brothers movie. "They're a team ready to get beat if anyone would go out there and beat them."

"I don't mind sticking my neck on the line by saying what I said. You just have to go out and kick their asses. That's all you have to do."

Now, the Yankees are the three-time defending World Champs and they expect to be treated as such. Express any hint that they are not the best team to ever take the baseball field or voice any suggestion that they are not God's chosen team to win every game in October and they're ready to release the hounds. Heck, they went nuts last year when Oakland's Eric Chavez complimented them on their fine run, apparently failing to kiss their rings and compliment them on their future championships as well.

So, they won't take kindly to Lou's words, even if they blew off his comments Thursday night as saying they were just a manager expressing confidence in his players. "It's similar to what I said to my club in Oakland, down 0-2 in a best-of-five series," New York manager Joe Torre said.

But Piniella's message wasn't for them anyway. Or the media. Or the fans. It was for the Mariners.

"Oh, yeah, definitely," Mariners center fielder Mike Cameron said. "Obviously, he told you guys to send it on to us.

"We've got to rally around him and find out a way to get it done. It's put up or shut up now. We're going into the Bronx with our backs against the wall, one of the toughest places to play and some pretty good pitchers to face. But we've got to find a way."

The Yankees all but mapped the way and escorted them down the path with a global positioning device on Thursday. Despite all the press to the contrary, the Yankees don't always play flawless ball in October and they certainly didn't in Game 2. Bernie Williams dropped a flyball for a two-base error. Starter Mike Mussina allowed seven baserunners in the first four innings. The Yankees had one runner picked off and two caught stealing. It was not one of their finest efforts.

The problem is the Mariners were worse. The Yankees gave them chances to score and when New York does that in the postseason, you better take advantage of it. The Mariners didn't. They were hitless with runners in scoring position, and when they weren't striking out with runners on base, they were grounding into double plays.

Bret Boone led the American League in RBI this season with 141, but is 4-for-28 in the postseason. First baseman John Olerud is 3-for-24. Edgar Martinez has two hits this series, but he grounded out with runners on first and second in the first inning and flied out with Ichiro on third to end the third inning.

Ichiro is hitting well, but with Dan Wilson on second base and first base open in the seventh, Torre intentionally walked him to face Mark McLemore instead, even though that meant putting the go-ahead run on base in a 3-2 game. He did so because Ichiro hit nearly .500 in such situations during the regular season and because McLemore has a postseason average under .200 in five previous years in the postseason. He grounded out weakly to first base to end the inning, the third time he failed to advance Ichiro in the game.

The Mariners are pitching well, but the team that led the majors in runs during the regular season (927) has scored 20 in seven postseason games and is hitting .161 as a team. The club that won more games than any previous American League team is 3-4 in the postseason and two losses from a long winter.

In other words, Piniella's postgame comments were needed to wake up a slumbering team.

"Whether he needed to say them or not, he said it," McLemore replied. "What needs to be done is we need to win a ballgame."

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.