WORLD SERIES / CINCINNATI REDS vs. OAKLAND ATHLETICS : Reds Second Their Motion, 5-4 : Game 2: Oliver’s single off Eckersley beats A’s in the 10th inning. Cincinnati takes 2-0 edge.

The ball could have bounced to the left of third base and into foul territory, but it didn’t.

It could have bounced to right of third base and into the glove of Carney Lansford, but it didn’t.

“Ball went right over the base, right over the base,” Joe Oliver said afterward, still breathless from screaming.

And the Cincinnati Reds could have folded in Game 2 of the World Series Wednesday night, but they didn’t.

Oliver bounced a ball over third base and into left-field foul territory for a run-scoring single with one out in the 10th inning, giving the Reds a 5-4 victory over the Oakland Athletics and a two-games-to-none lead.

“This team is not going to die, not for anybody,” said Oliver, who thrust his arms into the air as he rounded first base amid streams of confetti and a stadium that shook. “We will not be intimidated .”

With the Series moving to Oakland beginning Friday, the Reds, like Oliver’s one-strike hit, have found themselves in a perfect position.

Twenty-one of 25 teams that have won the first two games of the Series at home have eventually won the championship.

“We’ve got them right where we want them,” Reds owner Marge Schott said.

Not that the defending world champion A’s are down. Angry is more like it.

“What are you going to do, crawl into a hole and let them win?” Lansford asked. “I’m not giving them anything.”

There was no need to give the Reds anything Wednesday before 55,832 at Riverfront Stadium. The Reds just took it. If their Game 1 victory over A’s ace Dave Stewart was an enigma, this was almost an embarrassment.

The Reds rebounded from a 4-2 deficit to tie the score in the eighth inning against 27-game winner Bob Welch, then won it in the 10th against ace reliever Dennis Eckersley. He rarely allows baserunners, much less anyone to cross home plate.

And they did it not only with Billy Hatcher’s four hits that gave him seven consecutive hits, a Series record. And not only with a bullpen that threw 7 1/3 scoreless innings.

They did it with Billy Bates.

With one out against Eckersley, who started the 10th, Bates was summoned to bat for pitcher Rob Dibble. He fell behind two strikes, then chopped a ball that caught third baseman Lansford on the short hop and ticked off his glove.

Bates was safe at first with a single, moved to second when Chris Sabo singled to left and scored the winning run on Oliver’s single.

The upset here is not his hit or his run, but that Manager Lou Piniella would even think of Bates.

At 5 feet 7, 165 pounds, Bates is the smallest and most little-used player on the team. He would not even be on the roster if Bill Doran had not suffered a back injury late in the season.

Since joining the organization from Milwaukee June 9 as a throw-in in the trade that also brought Glenn Braggs, Bates has spent three months at triple-A Nashville while playing only eight games, with five at-bats, for the Reds.

His big hit Wednesday was his first as a Red.

“Yeah, I was surprised when Lou told me to get loose,” said Bates. “I only had time for a couple of swings and then I had to get out there.”

Bates’ scouting report on Eckersley?

“I had seen a lot of him on TV,” Bates said.

When Bates crossed first base safely, it was almost as if the Reds knew they had already won.

“All I could think of was, every night on this team it’s somebody different,” reliever Norm Charlton said. “Every night, a new hero.”

Oliver, a catcher more known for his defense, batted only .231 during the season and .143 in the playoffs.

“I have never gotten a hit like that before--that kind of hit is something you only imagine,” he said. “When I first hit it, I thought it was fair, then it looked foul, then when I saw the umpire signaling fair, I just can’t tell you what that felt like.”

Eckersley, still remembered for allowing Kirk Gibson’s game-winning homer for the Dodgers in the 1988 World Series, can tell you what it felt like.

“I thought we had this game won, but we let it get away from us-- I --let it get away from us,” Eckersley said.

The stage is set for an even more unlikely Reds’ hero Friday. Tom Browning, the scheduled Reds’ starting pitcher, left Wednesday’s game in the seventh inning when his wife, Debbie, went into labor with their child. He is still scheduled to be on the mound.

“Nothing around here surprises any of us anymore,” said Charlton, who combined with Scott Scudder, Jack Armstrong and Dibble for the shutout relief inning. “People still think we will fold. Heck, people still don’t believe we won the National League. But we don’t care if nobody else believes in us, because we do.”

After scoring a run in the game’s first two minutes on Rickey Henderson’s single, stolen base, a sacrifice, and a run-scoring grounder by Jose Canseco, the A’s thought they were going to win.

The Reds scored two in the first after consecutive doubles by Barry Larkin and Hatcher, who is seven for seven in this series with four doubles and a triple. But the A’s rebounded with three in the third on Canseco’s homer, a single, two walks by Jackson, a sacrifice fly by Ron Hassey and a run-scoring single by Mike Gallego.

Oester’s pinch-single in the fourth inning made it 4-3.

The Reds tied the score in the eighth when Hatcher tripled off the glove of Canseco in right field, then scored when Glenn Braggs slid into first to avoid an inning-ending double play.

The Reds could have won the game in the ninth, but with runners on first and second and two out, Paul O’Neill flied to center field. The Reds would have already scored by then, but Rickey Henderson made the catch of the game on a line drive to left field by Todd Benzinger.

Henderson leaped and caught the ball with more than half of it sticking out of the web of his glove. He landed, turned to the television camera above the left-field wall, then grabbed and shook the ball for all to see.