Big Pirate Inning Means One Last Shot : BASEBALL : This Series Isn’t One for the Ages

The National League playoffs have mercifully reached a seventh and decisive game.

Are we supposed to be excited?

Forget it.

A series virtually devoid of drama and pivotal moments found the Pittsburgh Pirates drawing even Tuesday night by helping Tom Glavine recreate his abysmal performance as the National League starter in this year’s All-Star game.

The Atlanta Brave left-hander was pummeled for seven consecutive hits in the first inning of that embarrassment.

Tuesday night, eight consecutive Pirates reached base against him in the second inning.

Pittsburgh emerged with an 8-0 lead and breezed to a 13-4 victory that fit the pattern of a series in which four of the six games have been decided by four runs or more and three by six or more.

As many in a crowd of 51,975 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium Tuesday night pondered why they hadn’t attempted to attend the vice-presidential debate at nearby Georgia Tech instead, two other questions need to be asked.

--Having brought in Bruce Dal Canton, 51, and Phil Niekro, 53, to pitch batting practice in a futile attempt to prepare for the knuckleball of Pirate rookie Tim Wakefield, who’s next? Hoyt Wilhelm, 69.

That’s a question, of course, the Braves don’t have to consider until next year, unless Wakefield comes back on about 18 hours rest to rev up his 60 m.p.h. knuckler and replace Doug Drabek as the Pirates’ starter tonight.

Wakefield limited the Braves to two runs in eighth innings of Game 6 before David Justice hit a two-run homer in the ninth. He is 2-0 against the Braves in the playoffs and 3-0 in his brief career, disproving Niekro’s pregame theory that the more often a hitter sees the knuckleball, the more comfortable he becomes.

--Did Brave Manager Bobby Cox blow this playoff before it started, failing to take advantage of the deepest rotation in baseball despite questions of stamina and form regarding Glavine over the last five weeks of the regular season?

Cox assigned his two best starters down the stretch, 15-game winner Charlie Leibrandt and 7-0 Pete Smith, to the bullpen and went with a three-man playoff rotation of John Smoltz, Steve Avery and Glavine.

He stayed with it even after the Braves built a 3-1 lead, snubbing Leibrandt and Smith in favor of using Avery on three days’ rest in Game 5 (he failed to finish the first inning of a 7-1 loss), which meant Glavine started on three days’ rest Tuesday night, and now Smoltz will do the same tonight.

Three healthy starters can handle a seven-game series, but why shelve Smith and Leibrandt when Glavine’s physical status was an issue in September and he pitched poorly in the 1991 postseason, in which the Pirates scored 12 runs in the seven games of last season’s playoff with Atlanta?

The Pirates have scored 11 runs in the 1 1/3 innings of these last two Avery and Glavine starts on short rest, and Glavine has a 1-5 postseason record, having allowed 21 hits and 14 earned runs in 34 2/3 innings.

He has concluded 1992 by going 1-7 over his last nine starts, 1-5 over the last seven of the regular season.

The one victory gave him 20 for a second consecutive season, but he probably blew a second consecutive Cy Young Award by continuing to pitch over those final five weeks despite a cracked rib that admittedly disrupted his mechanics and diminished endurance. He went more than five innings only twice in that seven-start span and never more than seven.

He did pitch decently in a 3-2 loss to Wakefield in Game 3 before leaving after allowing the decisive run in the seventh, but he was gone Tuesday night while many Atlanta loyalists were still stuck in traffic and unable to join the chorus of boos accompanying his exit.

“I stunk,” Glavine said later, delivering a stand-up performance as he sat at his locker, patiently responding to the same questions from wave after wave of reporters examining what Glavine said was a nightmare inning.

He yielded home runs to Barry Bonds and Jay Bell and was charged with seven earned runs.

The cracked rib? Not an excuse, not an issue, he said. Hasn’t been for the last couple weeks, though an X-ray taken 10 days before the season ended showed it had yet to heal completely.

“I felt fine, I felt comfortable, I felt relaxed,” he said, “but my location was terrible. I made mistakes and they made me pay for it. Everything happened so fast I didn’t have time to adjust. I’m disappointed, but I’ve dealt with failure before. I’ve had pretty good success the last couple years, and that’s what I’ll remember.”

Among the things Cox must remember is the 3-1 lead his Toronto Blue Jays blew in the 1985 playoff. The Angels did the same in ’86. It hasn’t happened since, but the Braves are trying. Will Cox second-guess himself if it happens to him again?

He shook his head and said no on all counts--meaning, he explained, there was no question about Glavine’s soundness, no question about the decision to go with only the three members of his rotation, no thought about pinch-hitting for Leibrandt, who followed Glavine Tuesday night, with two on and two out in the bottom of that nightmare second.

“If we’d had the bases loaded or only one out, maybe,” Cox said, “but I didn’t want to tear up the bullpen with the likelihood that we’d have to play a seventh game tomorrow.”

The likelihood is a reality. So is the fact that Cox will not have to second-guess himself. Others will do it for him.