ATLANTA -- Sometimes you can feel it in a ballpark. This is the one that matters. This is when it gets decided.
One team has a chance for the kill, or something very close to it, while the other has one last chance to save its competitive dignity and force a marathon battle of attrition.
On Sunday evening, in a fantasyland setting of war drums and tribal echos, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Miracle Braves of '91 had a playoff game that -- whatever the outcome of this series -- felt as if it were played for all of the National League's marbles.
By the end, after Spanky LaValliere had won Game 4 of this playoff series, 3-2, with a 10th-inning pinch hit, the score stood at two games apiece. However, the sense in this silent ballpark was that the Pirates, stunned and ready to be dispatched, were more than alive; they were very dangerous. It was the progression of this game that made it so.
No one has felt lucky against these Braves all year. The Pirates should now. If not for a pointless throw by right fielder David Justice -- which took a tough hop that led to an error that led to an unearned run -- the Braves would have won this game, 2-1, in nine innings. And an All Worst-to-First World Series would be a near certainty. Now, it's the Pirates who know they'll be finishing their work back home, far from the Little Chop Shop of Horrors.
Like a good Pier 6 brawl, this game began with the Braves landing a haymaker, which was almost a knockout, in the very first inning. With every tom-tom beating and every Braves fan baying at the black sky in their best Seminole war chant imitation, Atlanta played a textbook inning that might have daunted any opponent.
Leadoff man Lonnie Smith bounced a double over the 385-foot sign in right-center field against Randy Tomlin, the sort of eight-game winner who does not often prosper in such circumstances. Smith immediately raced to third on a liner to right that, as the night progressed, became a symbolic play. Bobby Bonilla made a perfect throw to third, which should have nailed Smith, but Steve Buechele backed up to play the hop safely, allowing Smith to belly-slide under him by an inch. That meant a run as Smith scored on a groundout.
As if that weren't bad enough for a first act, the Braves spanked three straight hard-hit singles to produce a 2-0 lead. This was very ominous for citizens of western Pennsylvania, who must feel deep paranoia by now, since roughly 97.3 percent of the American public, in the most recent polls, would like to see a World Series between the Twins and Braves.
This time, however, one of the tiny, little-known Braves at the bottom of the batting order actually made an out in the clutch. Usually, Brian Hunter, Greg Olson, Mark Lemke and Rafael Belliard pretend that they are Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello -- the Mutant Turtles, not those old painters.
The Pirates finally roused themselves to get a clutch hit in the second inning -- a novelty in this NLCS as in last year's. Don Slaught, not one of the more highly paid gentlemen who preceded him in the order, got the RBI single.
The importance of this game came into focus in the fifth inning when the Pirates tied the score on -- can this be? -- an Atlanta mistake in fundamentals.
On a routine two-out single to right, Gary Redus sped from first to third. Who knows why Justice made such an earnest effort to throw him out. His heave was powerful, but it also handcuffed Terry Pendleton at third, bounced all over Fulton County Stadium and let Redus score to tie the game. What the Pirates had proved repeatedly that they could not do with their bats, the Braves gave them.
Ever since Game 2, when Buechele played a fairly routine ground ball into a game-winning "hit" by letting his eye stray toward an approaching runner, the Pirates have played as though under a whammy cloud. When you lose at home by a 1-0 score on a play so unforgivable and goofy, it sticks with you. Especially when your best pressure pitcher (Doug Drabek) can't work again until Game 6 because he hurt himself running the bases.
By midgame, the tension in the crisp fall air was palpably brittle. One run by Pittsburgh might even this series and, in turn, assure the Pirates of a trip back to Three Rivers Stadium. One run by Atlanta might build the sort of three-games-to-one margin from which teams almost never recover.
Who would break through? And what would the break be? By the ninth inning, this game lay like a shot put in the stomach of both teams. So many chances lost for such great stakes. The one question worth asking was also the only question. Who'd rise to the moment?
In the 10th inning, everything you need to know about the Braves of 1991 was on display -- all that's most remarkable about them, everything that gives them an aura of such great promise and everything that may yet prevent them from meeting their mirror-image Twins in the World Series.
Mike Stanton, who's been superb this season (2.88 ERA in 74 games) was relieved by another young lefty, Kent Mercker, who was even more impressive (2.58 ERA in 50 games.) When Mercker began wildly, walking Andy Van Slyke, the reliever who got up in the Braves pen was Mark Wohlers who, while he may have been minor league player of the year this season, is also only 21 years old.
With two out, the veteran Van Slyke stole second base off the young, unpolished Mercker, who then semi-intentionally walked Beuchele. So, into a game that may end up being the fulcrum on which the pennant tips, the Braves brought a child.
As Wohlers threw two strikes past LaValliere, Wohlers looked like the Todd Worrell of the '90s.
However, when Wohlers threw an 0-2 strike that LaValliere fouled back with a good swing, Wohlers looked extremely inexperienced and imprudent. The words "waste one, kid" seemed to hang in the park. When Wohlers came back with another buzzing pitch over the plate at the knees, he looked exactly his age.
LaValliere, a snappy lefty hitter with a odd habit of batting about .300 in odd-numbered years, knew what to do with an undeserved chance to be a hero.
He grabbed it.
His line drive landed in right-center field, driving home Van Slyke and driving a stake in the Braves hopes of dealing the Pirates an all-but-killing blow. It felt decisive. But was it?