Reds Advance to Series, With a Catch : NL Game 6: Ninth-inning grab by Braggs preserves 2-1 victory over the Pirates. Next up is Oakland.

Carmelo Martinez launched a fly ball to deep right field Friday night and, for a moment, Cincinnati’s Glenn Braggs reacted the same way many others did in Riverfront Stadium.

“My heart stopped,” he said.

With five steps and a leap that will be etched in Cincinnati history, the Reds’ 6-foot-4 right fielder went back and made the catch that turned Martinez’s potential two-run home run into nothing more than the second out of the ninth inning.

One out later, the Reds completed a 2-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the National League championship series, four games to two.

Beginning here next Tuesday, the Reds will face the Oakland Athletics in the Reds’ first World Series appearance since 1976. They weren’t quite ready to think about that yet.

“We are feeling so many emotions right now, so much going through us . . . I think we’re all just exhausted,” said catcher Joe Oliver amid a strangely subdued postgame celebration void of champagne, which was replaced by bottles of sparkling cider.

In another corner, Braggs, who took over right field in the eighth inning, was quietly talking about dreams.

“You spend the whole series hoping that you can be the hero,” he said. “You sit there on the bench and you just hope you can have the chance to make the game-saving catch, or get the game-winning hit.

“Then all of a sudden it happens and it’s like, you can’t believe it. It really is like a dream.”

The ending was nearly a nightmare for the Reds, who were still in danger of losing in the ninth, even though Danny Jackson, Norm Charlton and Randy Myers combined to hold the Pirates to one hit, a championship series record.

The Reds had set the stage for a dramatic ending by taking the lead in the seventh on Ron Oester’s single, Billy Hatcher’s single, and Luis Quinones’ full-count, pinch single. Quinones was batting for right fielder Paul O’Neill, which meant that Braggs would go to right in the eighth.

Then Myers set up the drama in the ninth. With one out, he threw two quick strikes to Barry Bonds, but ended up walking him, the sixth walk given up by the Reds. Up stepped Martinez, who had a career average of .429 against Myers. Martinez also had the Pirates’ only hit, a run-scoring double against Danny Jackson in the fifth.

With a 2-and-2 count, Myers threw a fastball and Martinez swung and the crowd of 56,079 was suddenly silent.

Standing in the bullpen, Charlton announced, “That ball is out.”

Standing in the Reds’ dugout, Mariano Duncan prayed.

“I said, ‘Dear Lord, please don’t let the game end this way,’ ” Duncan said.

Braggs could only think of one thing.

“I said, ‘Get to the wall, get to the wall, then jump as high as you can,’ ” he said. “He smoked the ball, and I wanted to make sure that if it beat me, it was a home run.”

It might have been a home run. But it did not beat him. He timed his leap and stab perfectly.

“It was like slow motion,” Braggs said. “I felt my back hit the ball, then watched the ball go right into my glove.”

When his feet hit the ground with the ball in his glove, the crowd went wild. Braggs threw the ball to the infield and then stood frozen, as if in disbelief.

Behind home plate, Oliver reacted differently.

“I turned to the umpire, I gave him this amazed look, and then I winked,” Oliver said. “It was like, this is the kind of thing that has been happening to this team all year long.”

Moments later, when Don Slaught swung through a third strike, the celebration began. Braggs stuck his right hand into the air and ran toward the infield screaming.

The players that were hugging and dancing on the mound quickly moved toward him, and then the entire team surrounded Braggs in shallow right field, caught in one giant embrace.

“The man brought back a home run, and I was there to see it, 25 feet away from it,” Rob Dibble said. “It was a catch that everybody will be talking about for years, and I was just glad to be a part of it.”

Dibble and Myers were voted co-most valuable players in the series for allowing no runs on two hits in 10 2/3 innings. Together they helped the Reds stifle the Pirates’ top three hitters in what became the key to the series.

Bonds, Bobby Bonilla and Andy Van Slyke combined for 12 hits in 63 at-bats for a .190 average with three extra-base hits and five RBIs.

“But as anyone who watched this series knows, there is no one hero on this team,” said Dibble in a rare humble moment. “If there was just one hero, maybe it wouldn’t have been so nerve-wracking, so draining.”

As Braggs’ catch proved, the other most valuable players were the Reds’ outfielders, who had three key assists in this series aside from the catch.

“If there was one key, it was their defense in the outfield,” the Pirates’ Wally Backman said. “It won their whole series for them.”

Typically, there were other Reds’ heroes Friday, beginning with Manager Lou Piniella. He did not flinch when the Pirates tried to distract him by making a last-minute pitching change, giving reliever Ted Power his first start in more than a year in place of Zane Smith.

Piniella reacted by shifting Duncan from first to seventh in the order, but other than that, the Cincinnati manager made only one change in his starting lineup, replacing Braggs with O’Neill. Then, Power lasted only 2 1/3 innings before being replaced by Smith.

“Somehow, our guys always found the strength to win,” said Piniella, whose team led the West Division throughout the season.

After the Reds scored in the first inning on a grounder by Eric Davis, the strength came from Jackson, who was perfect for 4 1/3 innings before walking Bonds and giving up Martinez’s double to tie the game.

Then that strength came from Quinones, who had spent much of the game running sprints in the clubhouse to stay loose in the cold, wet weather. When he fell behind 1-and-2 to Smith in the seventh with runners on first and third, he admitted he was nearly shaking.

“I was as nervous as I have ever been in my life, I think,” he said. “I’m lying if I tell you I’m not. I just hope to get bat on the ball.”

His grounder to right field scored a run, and now the Reds await a second World Series with the A’s. In the 1972 Series, the A’s beat the Reds, four games to three.

“We will be the underdogs, like always,” said Jose Rijo, the probable Game 1 starting pitcher. “Nobody will believe in us. And we will love it.”