NL Playoffs’ Big Swing Goes Giants’ Way, 6-4

The latest Chicago Cub to be fitted with a mantle of failure stood in front of his locker with head down and lower lip trembling.

“There’s been a lot of times I’ve lost important battles,” Steve Wilson said slowly, “but never something so important, never something with so much on the line.”

His eyes grew red and his mouth tightened and, in front of reporters and teammates, the rookie pitcher began to cry.

And so another October has brought another Cub team to the verge of despair, this time at the hands of the San Francisco Giants. They grabbed the Cubs by the scruff of their sorry history and shook them nearly into next season Sunday night, using Matt Williams’ two-run homer off Wilson in the fifth inning to take a 6-4 victory in Game 4 of the National League championship series.

The Giants hold a three-games-to-one series lead and will have three chances to advance to their first World Series since 1962, the first coming today at noon in Game 5 at Candlestick Park. Waiting for the NL’s best is American League champion Oakland.

If the Giants are their opponents, it will be the first all-Bay Area series ever.

“But we still aren’t thinking about Oakland,” Giant first baseman Will Clark said with a smile. “We’re think only about San Francisco . . . until at least tomorrow.”

Fittingly, the only thing standing between the Cubs and a wake-up call on this dream season will be today’s starting pitcher Mike Bielecki, who said that he was so nervous in his first playoff start in Game 2 last week, he nearly choked.

“I didn’t think it would be that bad,” said Bielecki, who will face Giant veteran Rick Reuschel today. “But when I got out there, I found my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.”

His teammates know the feeling. In front of a second consecutive record Candlestick crowd of 62,078, the Giants did more than just beat them with Williams’ homer, which gave him four runs batted in for the game and an NLCS-record nine RBIs for the series. Before and afterward, they tortured them into wondering what they were doing in this series in the first place.

“Team of destiny, my butt,” Cub reliever Mitch Williams growled. “Destiny ain’t going to win this thing for us now.”

For example:

In the first inning the Giants tackled their way into a run when a limping Clark broke up a double-play grounder. In the third, they pushed across two runs when Clark sneaked home while the Cubs backs were turned

In the fourth, they rattled 23-year-old Chicago starter Greg Maddux into two terrible throws in the course of three pitches, bringing home another run.

Then they won it in the fifth when, in the best at-bat of a series full, Williams battled Wilson through 12 pitches, including six two-strike foul balls, before finally lining a full-count fastball 350 feet into the left-field stands.

At the time, Clark was standing on second base after a double. Williams could have easily been walked and the left-handed Wilson might have done better with the next two hitters, since both Terry Kennedy and Pat Sheridan bat left-handed.

“I know, I could have walked him, but sometimes, you get caught up in the confrontation,” Wilson said softly. “It’s your best against his best, and you want to put that fastball right past him. Unfortunately, I got it in too much.”

As it usually works in baseball’s postseason, one man’s nightmare is another man’s fantasy.

“You dream of things like this,” Williams said.

The Giants added a final mental blow in the sixth inning, when Cub shortstop Shawon Dunston became so frustrated with some common baseball jeering, he nearly started a fight at first base.

Dunston led off the sixth with a broken-bat single down the right field line. Downs said he walked toward Dunston and jokingly shouted, “You can’t take that little hit.”

“It was a joke,” Downs said. “But I guess he didn’t take it that way.”

No indeed, as Dunston began shouting back at Downs, first baseman Clark stepped in and shouted back, first-base coach Jose Martinez jumped between them and Dunston shoved Martinez while trying to get to Clark. At this point, both benches cleared and everyone milled around around the two players for a few minutes before order was restored.

“It was the kind of thing where, once everybody got out there, they were all shouting, ‘What happened, what happened?’ ” Clark asked. “I told them I was just trying to be peacemaker, that I didn’t know what happened either.”

Dunston said: “Heat of the game. Sometimes things get out of hand.”

From that point it was apparent the Cubs were beaten, although they put together one last ninth-inning rally. With two out, Ryne Sandberg singled to right, followed by a bloop single to right by Lloyd McClendon that popped out of Robby Thompson’s glove.

By this time, Steve Bedrosian had replaced Downs. In stepped Andre Dawson, who hit the ball hard in three of his previous four at-bats.

But he never touched a pitch. After taking a first-pitch ball, Bedrosian fooled him into swinging at three straight pitches, the final one a half-swing that sent catcher Kirt Manwaring leaping in the air and the Giants streaming from the dugout.

This is the first time in NLCS history that a team has led three games to one, but the Giants should learn from the American League. Four teams have led by that margin, but only twice had that team advanced to the World Series.

“One thing about it, I’m going to use Yogi Berra’s line about it being over,” Cub Manager Don Zimmer said. “I know this year we beat the (New York) Mets three times in a row, beat the (St. Louis) Cardinals three in a row, beat the (Montreal) Expos three in a row.”

At least one Cub wouldn’t mind going home for the winter this minute. He is Maddux, who after his two starts this week will wear the scars of a veteran. After allowing four runs in 3 1/3 innings Sunday, he left the game as the most battered pitcher in league championship series history.

In 7 1/3 innings, he has allowed 12 runs, 11 earned, both of which are records. To be fair, those records should be shared by the Clark, who went five for five against Maddux with two homers, two doubles a single and six RBIs.

He had a fitting exit after leaving the game with one out in the fourth. While the stadium was filled with the sounds of the country classic “I Fall to Pieces,” Maddux grabbed his jacket and walked down the right-field line and into the clubhouse, not even waiting in the dugout until the inning ended.

“I don’t buy that bit about me being young, I’ve heard that for three years,” Maddux said. “I just didn’t make the pitches.”

Certainly not in the fourth inning, with the Giants leading, 3-2, when he threw a pickoff attempt into center field and that allowed Jose Uribe to move to second, and later threw a wild pitch that allowed him to score.

By then, the Cubs had been rattled when Clark turned Mitchell’s potential double-play grounder into an RBI grounder in the first by taking out Sandberg at second. And then in the third, a hobbling Clark scored from second on Williams’ bloop single to center when Sandberg took the outfield relay but did not turn around in time to see him.

* BIG DIFFERENCE

Giants are making the big plays whereas the Cubs are not. Mike Downey’s column, Page 12.