WORLD SERIES: CINCINNATI 5, OAKLAND 4 : Eckersley’s Slider Not Nasty, Just Hit for Winning Run

No more than a second or two passed between the instant Joe Oliver made contact with Dennis Eckersley’s slider and the instant the ball went over third base for the game-winning hit in the Cincinnati Reds’ 5-4, 10-inning victory over the Oakland Athletics Wednesday night.

Brief as that span was, it was ample time for Eckersley’s mood to jump from elation to relief to regret.

“I’m thinking DP (double play),” Eckersley said, “then I’m thinking foul ball, then I’m thinking, ‘See ya.’ ”

Eckersley didn’t stick around long enough to see the Reds rejoicing after winning the first two games at Riverfront Stadium. Head bowed, he trudged toward the A’s dugout, deaf to the cheers of 55,832 fans as Billy Bates crossed home plate.

“I was thinking we had this game, then it got away from us. It got away from me,” he said. “You can’t make a mistake or you lose in that situation. I did and I lost.”

Losing was an unfamiliar experience for Eckersley, who had 48 saves in 50 opportunities during the regular season and two saves in as many chances during the A’s playoff sweep of the Boston Red Sox. Eckersley couldn’t remember the last time he had walked off a loser as he did Wednesday might.

“Maybe Gibson in ‘88,” he said, referring to the dramatic home run he gave up to the Dodgers’ Kirk Gibson in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. “But I don’t want to get into that again.”

He didn’t get into the game in the eighth inning. It appeared he might when he began warming up in the left-field bullpen, but he didn’t expect to be called upon so early. Manager Tony La Russa let starter Bob Welch hit for himself in the top of the inning. Welch sacrificed after Ron Hassey singled to left and Mike Gallego forced Hassey. Hassey was stranded at second base when Rickey Henderson flied out to left.

In the bottom of the eighth, after Billy Hatcher tripled and Paul O’Neill walked on four pitches, La Russa let Welch face Eric Davis, and Welch got Davis to fly to shallow right. “First and third with Davis up I would have been ready, but in the back of my mind I didn’t think he’d do it,” Eckersley said.

La Russa, who said he had wanted Welch to start the eighth, was sure he wanted Honeycutt to follow Welch.

“The big thing is that it’s going to be tough to escape a bullet there. Honeycutt getting a ground ball . . . (for) a double play is as good a chance as (getting Eckersley) to punch somebody out,” La Russa said. “You have a tie game, and I don’t want Eck pitching in a tie game on the road if you can help it.”

La Russa summoned Eckersley at the start of the 10th inning, and the inning began well enough for the 36-year-old right-hander when he got Davis to ground to short. Pinch-hitter Bates hit a grounder that third baseman Carney Lansford failed to scoop on the artificial turf, putting Bates on first with his first hit as a member of the Reds. Chris Sabo stroked a fastball for a single to left, putting Bates in scoring position and Eckersley in a precarious situation.

“I made a bad pitch to Sabo, I thought, and I was lucky it was only a single,” Eckersley said. “It was over the middle (of the plate), where he can hit it out of the ballpark.”

He got an 0-and-1 count on Oliver before throwing a slider that the light-hitting catcher chopped past third, where it bounced on the left-field foul line.

“It was a slider that wasn’t nasty,” Eckersley said. “It wasn’t sharp enough. Any time a guy gets a hit it wasn’t a great pitch. . . . I was too quick (in his delivery). You can’t be real quick when you’re throwing breaking balls. Call it anxiousness. But there’s no time out there. You can’t say, ‘Oh God, I’m scuffling here.’ I haven’t even had time to second-guess myself.”

But he did guess that he’d get Bates after getting off relatively easily with Sabo. “I thought I was going to get the next guy. I always think I’m going to get the next guy,” Eckersley said.

He didn’t, making it all but imperative that the A’s get the next victory in the Series if they are to preserve their hopes of repeating as World Series champions.

“We feel like everybody else, thinking, ‘Hey, this is the A’s. Look what Cincinnati is doing to the A’s,’ ” he said. “Desperate? No. Three-zero is desperate. No one here is happy, that’s for sure.

“I don’t think we’ve had our backs against the wall like this all year. We’ll see what we’re made of. . . . It’s not over. We’re too good for that.”