Road Cramps Their Style : NL Game 3: The Pirates must forgo their pregame regimen of slam dunks as the series moves to Atlanta.

For the Pittsburgh Pirates, the hardest part about leaving home Friday for Atlanta was not what you might think.

It was not that they are 0-6 this season at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where they must play the Braves during the next three days in a National League Championship Series that is tied, 1-1.

It is not that they were outscored, 46-21, in Atlanta, while accumulating a .228 batting average and a 7.88 earned-run average against the Braves there.

It is not even that they are fighting memories of last season, when they split the first two games of the playoffs, then lost three of the next four to the Cincinnati Reds.

The hardest part is that, in their Atlanta clubhouse, there will be no place to play basketball.

“You should have seen them playing in our clubhouse just a few minutes ago,”

Pirate Manager Jim Leyland was saying before his team’s 1-0 loss in Game 2 at Pittsburgh Thursday night. “They were pulling off some of the damnedest slam dunks I have ever seen. If our CEO walked in there and saw it, I would have gotten fired.”

The second-hardest part is that in Atlanta there is no large lounge area where they can hand out the coveted Sammy Award, an Oscar-imitation statuette given after bone-headed plays.

It is named after Sammy Khalifa, a Pirate shortstop in 1985-87 who once raced to his position without his glove.

The first winner was Leyland, who was given the award in early June. While Bobby Bonilla was on the verge of being ejected from the game during a heated argument with an umpire, Leyland was in the bathroom.

“You could say our manager got caught with his pants down,” Andy Van Slyke said.

Leyland sighed.

“I manage this team with one eye closed and one ear closed,” he said.

What the Pirates will not be lacking this weekend is the sort of intimate spirit fostered by such fraternity house behavior.

It is this sort of spirit that will give them their best chance of weathering what is sure to be a Southern storm--three games in front of whooping sellout crowds against a team that won 13 of its last 17 home games.

“Guaranteed, that first playoff game there, everybody is going to get chills,” Brave second baseman Jeff Treadway said.

The Braves will send John Smoltz, who had a league-best record of 12-2 in the second half of the season, against the Pirates’ John Smiley, who won his last seven decisions, in Game 3 today at noon PDT.

The important thing for the Braves, who are batting only .197 with two extra-base hits in the first two games, is to receive more production from the top of the batting order. Lonnie Smith and Terry Pendleton are hitless in 14 at-bats.

The Braves also need a resilient performance from Smoltz, who handles misfortune worse than any starter in this series.

Smoltz said a psychologist who has been working with him since midseason is helping him change that reputation.

“He helped me adjust, not my mechanics, but my mental state on the mound,” Smoltz said.

The important thing for the Pirates is to maintain the looseness that typifies them off the field.

“Never once has Jim Leyland told us to win,” said Lloyd McClendon, who presides over the Sammy Award ceremony. “He tells us to always be prepared to play, and he tells us to always have fun. But never does he come in here before a game and talk about winning.”

Not that they would hear him, anyway. Since Van Slyke tacked a miniature backboard and rim on a post 7 1/2 feet above the carpet and then purchased a tiny rubber basketball, the center of the Pirate clubhouse has been transformed into a loud playground.

Lights have been broken, tiles have been chipped and the goal has been replaced several times after destructive dunks by Jose Lind.

They call their tiny arena “the Rat Forum,” and there are pieces of tape on the floor serving as boundaries, as well as spelling out the letter “R.”

“What are they supposed to do in there before games, read Ted Williams’ hitting books?” asked Leyland, who also participates in their various tournaments.

“It’s just another way of bringing us together,” Van Slyke said. “We feel so good about each other . . . when it comes down to the rest of this playoff, we know we can get three more wins. We just know it.”

It is with this lack of insecurity that the Pirates are able to enact their other clubhouse ritual, the Sammy Awards.

Besides giving it to Leyland for being caught in the bathroom, they also gave it to him after the team plane was forced to land earlier this year because of his chest pains. They accused him of unfairly scaring them.

“ They were scared?” asked Leyland, who later passed a battery of medical tests.

Van Slyke won the award when he ran onto the field to take his position after a teammate hit what he thought was an inning-ending fly ball. Only, the ball wasn’t caught, and Van Slyke had to race back toward the dugout.

McClendon won the award when he forgot to leave game tickets for his wife. Randy Tomlin won the award when he was spotted taking advantage of a Pirate ticket promotion by cashing in a stub for ice cream at a local fast-food restaurant.

“Only the dumbest things qualify,” Van Slyke said. “But we’ve had a lot of qualifiers.”

Unspoken but obvious amid this boyishness is an us-against-the-world attitude. This weekend, when at times it will seem as if the whole world is against them, the Pittsburgh Pirates will need it.