BASEBALL PLAYOFFS : Braves Win Another 1-0 Those Games : NL Game 6: Avery sharp as Atlanta ends scoreless drought after 26 innings to beat Pittsburgh, 1-0, and force Game 7 tonight.

The game ended, appropriately, with one of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ best hitters standing at home plate, his bat on his shoulder, frozen.

Andy Van Slyke, ashen-faced, stared at the mitt of Atlanta Brave catcher Greg Olson. Lodged safely inside was strike three, ending the best at-bat of one of the classic games in playoff history with the tying run on third base.

Van Slyke could not move. Alejandro Pena, the Atlanta pitcher, could not stop moving, hopping and skipping off the mound into the arms of teammates.

Together the Braves had avoided the end of their dream season with a 1-0 victory over the Pirates in Game 6 of the National League playoffs before 54,508 at Three Rivers Stadium.

It was the record-setting third 1-0 game of this series, a memorable pitching duel matching the Braves’ Steve Avery against the Pirates’ Doug Drabek.

It was a game in which nobody could score until, with two out in the top of the ninth inning, Olson knocked a double down the left-field line.

Ron Gant raced around from second base, finally stopping in front of home plate and staring at it as if it were fine china. He then gently tapped it with his foot.

“I knew that run was all it was going to take,” Gant said.

It was also a game of records, with the Pirate pitchers fashioning a playoff-record 26 consecutive scoreless innings before the ninth, and Avery has worked a playoff-record 16 1/3 scoreless innings.

What can possibly be next?

How about a Game 7 tonight at 5:35 p.m. PDT, matching the Braves’ John Smoltz with the Pirates’ John Smiley?

“Great, great games like this are the reason these series are seven games,” marveled the Pirates’ Steve Buechele, shaking his head. “Looks like we’re going the distance.”

This latest round was won by the Braves because Avery refused to give up a run, Olson refused to get beat twice by the same pitch and Pena refused to give in.

It was lost by the Pirates because Drabek, struggling in the 40-degree temperatures with a left hamstring injury, refused to acknowledge his pain.

This made for great drama in the first eighth innings, as Drabek worked out of three jams during which the Braves advanced a runner as far as third base.

“I don’t know where he got it, I don’t know how he got it . . . but from somewhere down deep, he kept pitching,” catcher Don Slaught said.

But then with one out in the ninth inning, Drabek walked Gant. And on the next pitch, Ganthad a great jump and stole his record-setting sixth base of the series.

Drabek, it turned out, was in too much pain to throw to first base to keep him close.

Up stepped Olson, who two innings earlier, with Gant on third, hit a grounder to shortstop Jay Bell, who threw out Gant at the plate.

“I told myself, he was not going to beat me again,” Olson said.

And so he drove an 0-and-1 pitch down the left-field line.

“I didn’t even feel myself touching first base,” Olson said. “I was floating.”

The Braves were brought back to earth two batters later. Bobby Cox, the Braves’ manager who has already made several questionable moves in this series, sent up Tommy Gregg to bat for Avery.

Avery had held the Pirates to three singles. No Pirate had reached third base. The potent Pittsburgh offense was on the verge of giving up.

“The only way we could beat him was if he retired,” Van Slyke said.

But Cox, hoping for the extra run with runners on first and second, decided a pinch-hitter was better than Avery. Gregg struck out, and Avery watched the ninth inning from the bench.

He spent that inning shivering under a coat.

“I don’t know if I was shaking because I was nervous or cold,” Avery said. “I think it was a combination of both.”

Gary Varsho, a pinch-hitter, led off the ninth with a hard line drive to center field that bounced off the heel of Gant’s glove for a single. After Orlando Merced bunted Varsho to second, Bell hit a fly ball to right fielder David Justice for the second out.

Up stepped Van Slyke, who fouled off the first pitch, then watched Pena throw a wild pitch to move Varsho to third.

Pena then reared back and threw five consecutive fastballs. Van Slyke dug in and fouled off each of them. This included one hard foul into the right-field corner followed by one into the left-field corner.

“On the bench there was screaming, then silence, then screaming, then silence,” Buechele said. “It was an incredible at-bat.”

Then Pena threw something soft, a changeup.

“I was just praying he wouldn’t throw it wild,” Olson said.

He threw it just wild enough, floating it across the high outside corner of the plate in a pitch that Van Slyke could not even swing at, much less hit.

“He goes 98 (miles per hour), 98, 98 . . . then throw a butterfly,” Van Slyke said. “There was nothing I could do.”

Said Olson: “I heard the umpire yell ‘strike three,’ and it was time to celebrate. Our backs were to the wall, but now if we win one more game, we get to answer all of our childhood dreams.”