SEATTLE (AP) - The magic has been taken out of the Seattle Mariners' magical season.
If the team with the best record in baseball wraps up the AL West next week, as expected, its victory celebration will be subdued.
"I think you'll see some handshakes and some hugs, but it won't be a blowout celebration,'' second baseman Bret Boone said Friday when the Mariners went through their first workout in four days.
The Mariners' players won't feel like popping champagne so close to Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Reliever Jeff Nelson, who spent five seasons with the New York Yankees, was so staggered by the loss of life and the destruction of the World Trade Center that he felt like ending the 2001 season now.
"It's very tough,'' Nelson said. "In some ways, you don't even feel like playing any more. As good a year as we've had, this takes something out of it. If we didn't have a chance to go to the World Series, I'd say, 'This is it.'''
The Mariners returned home by plane Thursday night after being stuck in Anaheim for three days. They will work out Saturday, Sunday and Monday, too, before resuming their season Tuesday night against Anaheim at Safeco Field.
Seattle manager Lou Piniella, who spent 11 seasons as a player and three more as a manager with the New York Yankees, had tears in his eyes as he talked about the tragedy that erased two landmarks in Manhattan.
"The baseball season seems rather irrelevant now,'' he said. "Your thoughts and your prayers are with these people. It's going to be very, very difficult when we start playing again.''
Reliever Norm Charlton said he thought it was important to start playing games again for the sake of both the players and their fans, and America's enemies and the enemies' victims.
"You're not going to bring the greatest country in the world to its knees by sneaking up and hitting it in the head from behind,'' Charlton said. "I would think if you had a chance to ask one of the people who got killed what they wanted us to do, they wouldn't want us to close up shop.''
Designated hitter Edgar Martinez has a reputation of being a gentle man on and off the field, but he was angry at the terrorists who attacked America. He was born in New York and reared in Puerto Rico.
"I couldn't believe something like that happened,'' he said. "I felt shock. I thought, 'If people can do something like this, what else are they capable of doing?'''
Japan's Kazuhiro Sasaki, the team's closer, and Stan Javier, a utility player from the Dominican Republic, said they felt a special empathy for what America is going through.
"I'm not a citizen, I don't even have a green card,'' Javier said. "But I feel just like an American. My father played baseball here, I've earned my living by playing here. My three children were born here. I appreciate all America has done for myself and my family.''
Sasaki said he received many phone calls from friends in Japan to make sure he was fine.
"This is a tragedy,'' he said. "I'm very saddened by it. Something like this should never happen.'' Notes: Freddy Garcia (16-5) will start for the Mariners Tuesday night against Anaheim followed by LHP Jamie Moyer (17-5) Wednesday night and Aaron Sele (13-5) Thursday in the other two games of the Angels' series. Paul Abbott (15-3) will start Friday night and rookie Joel Pineiro (5-1) Saturday in Oakland.