Carter’s Single Puts Mets One Away : Gooden, Ryan Gone When It’s Decided in 12th Inning, 2-1

On an afternoon during which nearly all the glory belonged to pitchers, Gary Carter, the most humbled of hitters, if not the least humble, made the swing that may have swung the National League playoffs to the New York Mets Tuesday.

Carter, whose campaign to be recognized as the league’s most valuable player had been mocked by his 1 hit in 21 previous playoff trips, singled off Astro reliever Charlie Kerfeld in the 12th inning, driving home Wally Backman with the winning run in the Mets’ 2-1 victory over the Houston Astros.

Kerfeld had put Backman in scoring position with a throwing error on a pickoff try.

“I’m drained,” said Met first baseman Keith Hernandez, too exhausted to celebrate the 3-2 edge the Mets hold over the Astros in the best-of-seven playoffs. The series will resume in Houston this afternoon.

“This was like a storybook,” Hernandez said. “You couldn’t write a better thriller. I’ve never played in one like it. And this was the pivotal game, let’s face it.

“This was everything everyone expected: Two teams with the best two pitching staffs in the league. It was everything I knew it would be.”

For nine innings, 39-year-old Nolan Ryan of the Astros made what might have been his last grand pitch for immortality, striking out 12 Mets while giving up just two of the Mets’ four hits.

“We really didn’t have much to say on the bench,” said Darryl Strawberry, whose home run in the fifth inning was the Mets’ first hit off Ryan and accounted for their only run in regulation.

“He was striking everybody out. Take your seat, that was the bottom line. He wanted to prove to himself and the New York Mets that he was at the top of his game.”

For 10 innings, 21-year-old Dwight Gooden of the Mets--who has been immortalized before his time--matched fastballs, if not strikeouts, with baseball’s King of Ks, and showed true grit when pure power was not enough.

“People who like pitching got an eyeful today,” said Houston second baseman Bill Doran, whose fifth-inning force-out scored Alan Ashby with Houston’s only run.

“We had our chances against Dwight, but that’s when he gets his toughness. He doesn’t get tentative, he gets more aggressive. That’s why he’s as great as he is.”

For 11 innings Tuesday, the score was tied, due in part to a run that didn’t count, the one that first base umpire Fred Brocklander took away from Houston when he called out Craig Reynolds at first on a disputed double play in the second inning.

But in the end, it came down to Kerfeld, the irrepressible kid from Knob Noster, Mo., against Carter, the Kid with the capital K and the lower-case batting average in the playoffs--.048 when he strode to the plate in the 12th.

Backman was on second after reaching base on a smash off Houston third baseman Denny Walling’s wrist and advancing on Kerfeld’s wild pickoff throw.

“I was playing (Backman) shallow,” said Walling, who earlier had been hugging the line to take an extra-base hit away from Carter in the 10th.

“With two strikes, I backed up about four or five feet off the dirt. And son of a gun, if the guy doesn’t hit the next pitch off the dirt where I’d been.

“It took a tough hop and I didn’t block it.”

Hernandez was on first, the recipient of an intentional walk, as Carter advanced to the plate.

Astro second baseman Doran turned to base-runner Backman. “The way the Kid’s been swinging the bat lately, he’s the last person I want to see at bat right now,” Doran told Backman, according to the Met.

On paper, of course, that didn’t make sense. Carter not only had just one postseason hit, he hadn’t had a hit off Kerfeld all summer.

“But he’s always dangerous,” Doran said. “You can take those averages and throw them out the window.”

Kerfeld fell behind Carter, 3 and 0, the second pitch sailing about a foot over Carter’s head. But Kerfeld kept throwing more fastballs. Carter took one for a strike, then fouled the next three.

Kerfeld, who had set down the first seven Mets he faced after relieving Ryan, reared back one more time and fired. Carter whacked the pitch right back at him, past second base into center field.

“I challenged him with my best and he answered the challenge this time,” Kerfeld said. “That’s why he hits fourth on a team that won 108 games.”

The Kid, relieved of his age-inducing worries, finally got to act like a kid, the focal point of a mob of Mets.

“How many times have you seen a guy who was struggling come up in that situation and come through?” Hernandez said. “Bobby Grich (of the Angels) is a classic example.

“I’m real happy for him. He’s a key for us, let’s face it.”

Carter, Hernandez said, had found it tough to live with his previous failure.

“It’s been bothering him,” Hernandez said. “Hey, I’ve been there. I went 0 for 15 in the World Series (in 1982).

“I know what he was going through. It’s more magnified in the playoffs and World Series. When I went 0 for 15, I was driven fruity.”

Ryan had been driven to some suffering of his own in Game 2 last week, when the Mets pounded him for a 5-1 loss, the seventh straight time he had been beaten by the team for whom he had pitched in the World Series as a 22-year-old phenom.

Now, trying to return to the World Series for the first time since that year of the Miracle Mets, Ryan was the old warrior, reflecting on a prize that may be snatched away once again.

“Seems like I’m on the wrong side of these more often than the right side,” Ryan said resignedly.

“It very easily could have been over in nine.”

Instead, the Mets and the Kid lived on, and the Astros may be over today.

DUELING FASTBALLS

Pitcher IP H R ER BB SO Nolan Ryan 9 2 1 1 1 12 Dwight Gooden 10 9 1 1 2 4