BASEBALL PLAYOFFS : A National Chopping Spree : NL Game 7: Smoltz shuts down Pirates and Braves score early as Atlanta goes from the worst in baseball to the best in the NL, 4-0.

For three months they had watched and marveled as their fans did it. Alone in an unfriendly stadium Thursday, with their dreams only nine innings from possible expiration, the Atlanta Braves finally decided to do it themselves.

In the most important baseball game for the franchise in 34 years, they peppered the Pittsburgh Pirates with quick and repeated blows, cutting through the stronger team’s bravado and striking them through the heart.

The Braves didn’t merely beat the Pirates. They tomahawk-chopped them for a 4-0 victory in the decisive Game 7 of the National League playoffs.

In a manner that resembles winning pitcher John Smoltz’s dance toward first base after Brian Hunter fielded Jose Lind’s grounder for the last out, the Braves have gone from worst to the World Series.

And don’t think they don’t remember how, once, nobody believed.

“I bet a lot of people still don’t think we have the best team,” said Lonnie Smith, who was so excited he needed four stitches after cutting his right eye when he brushed it against an ash tray during the celebration.

“In fact, I bet there’s a man out in Los Angeles named Tommy Lasorda who is saying right now that he had a better team,” Smith added. “But you know something? It doesn’t matter, because all of that is on paper. What we did happened on the field.”

And in the spirits of people throughout the South, who this morning are undoubtedly nursing sore elbows and hoarse voices.

The Braves will meet the Minnesota Twins beginning Saturday night in Minneapolis in the first World Series game in Atlanta history, and first for the Braves’ franchise since 1958.

A bedsheet down the right-field line at Three Rivers Stadium said it all: “Focus on a Dream.”

Smoltz focused on that banner, and said it inspired him to give up only six hits in pitching the Braves’ third shutout of the series. He was also inspired by three first-inning runs highlighted by rookie Brian Hunter’s two-run home run.

“That’s all I could think about, ‘focus on a dream, focus on a dream . . . ‘ “ Smoltz said. “And when the game had ended, that dream had come true.”

For Pittsburgh, the ending of the game was the beginning of tears.

“I cannot duck this uppercut,” Andy Van Slyke said, his eyes red.

“The hardest thing,” Barry Bonds said, “was to hear our fans booing us. As if we wanted this to happen.”

The Pirates had the best regular-season record in baseball and their winningest pitcher, John Smiley, on the mound.

It essentially ended about 30 minutes later, when the vast differences between two teams battling in one of the closest playoffs finally became evident.

The Braves scored three runs after five hitters on Ron Gant’s fly ball and Hunter’s first playoff home run.

The Pirates’ first two batters in the bottom of the first inning reached base but neither scored.

It was prophetic when Van Slyke, with runners on first and second, hit a long fly ball to right field. David Justice caught it on the warning track, and Van Slyke leaped twice in frustration.

“It thought I hit it 365 feet, but I only hit it 355 feet,” Van Slyke said. “I knew from then it would be real tough.”

The Pirates, after fashioning the best batting average in the league during the regular season at .263, didn’t score a run in their final 28 playoff innings at Three Rivers Stadium.

They did not score a run in their final 22 innings, period.

They had seven hits in 62 at-bats (.113) with runners in scoring position. They had two run-scoring hits with two out. They collected more than two hits in one of 62 innings.

And that celebrated middle of the order--Van Slyke (four for 25), Bonds and Bobby Bonilla--combined to hit .200.

Bonds, who stranded four runners Thursday with a first-inning grounder and an eighth-inning fly ball, batted .148 (four for 27) with no home runs or runs batted in. He was hitless in 16 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Last season, when Bonds was the league’s most valuable player, he was the playoff goat against the Cincinnati Reds with a .167 average. This year, with another MVP likely, it happened again.

Is it any wonder that the series most valuable player was a Braves pitcher, Steve Avery, who set a league playoff record with 16 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings while winning two 1-0 games?

“But this year is the hardest. This year is the worst,” Bonds said. “I’ve come up with two outs a lot of times during the regular season, and I’ve come through. I just couldn’t do it this time.

“The most unbelievable thing is that we got shut out by John Smoltz (who had a 10.80 ERA against Pirates in the regular season ). That is the most unbelievable thing to me.”

But many things about the Braves have been unbelievable this year, including how they became only the third team in league playoff history to win the final two games of a series on the road.

“If you would have told me that could happen here, I would have said you were crazy,” the Pirates’ Steve Buechele said.

A couple of months ago, to say the Braves would even be playing in a Game 7 would have sounded crazy. After the first half of the season, they trailed the first-place Dodgers by 9 1/2 games.

With four games left in the season, they trailed by the Dodgers by one game.

In the playoffs, they trailed the Pirates one game to nothing. And three games to two.

“All year long we had to prove things to people,” Smith said.

They don’t need to prove anything to Smiley. He walked leadoff hitter Smith on a full count. Terry Pendleton then singled up the middle.

With each bad pitch thrown, Smiley thumped his hand into his glove. Before each batter he stalked the back of the mound.

“Everything I threw, they could hit,” Smiley said.

Ron Gant hit a fly ball that drove Bonds to the left-field wall, scoring Smith. One out later, Hunter homered. Smiley, one of the league’s two 20-game winners, was removed one batter later after 27 pitches.

“Amazing, that’s all I can say about this series,” Van Slyke said. “Just amazing.”