WORLD SERIES / TORONTO BLUE JAYS vs. ATLANTA BRAVES : Smith Bears All the Blame : Braves: Outfielder wants a championship to replace the memory of his ’91 baserunning gaffe against the Twins.

Lonnie Smith reaches into his locker for one of the packs of cigarettes on the top shelf. A letter drops to the floor. Smith picks it up, starts to read and grimaces.

He shows the letter to a visitor.

“Dear Mr. Smith,” it says. “It’s your (mistake) that cost us the World Series last year. You do it again, and we’ll chase your . . . out of town.”

The letter was not signed. That kind of letter seldom is. And Smith has received lots like that since the 1991 World Series. This, actually, was one of the kinder ones.

“It’s like no one will ever let me forget,” Smith said. “I go out into public, into a restaurant or something, and people still give me bad looks. They act like I did it on purpose.

“Fans are so fickle. They love you when you’re doing great, and they’re on your . . . when you mess up.”

Just as Bill Buckner will be remembered for the ground ball trickling though his legs in 1986, and Mickey Owen for the third-strike passed ball in 1941, Lonnie Smith may never be able to shed the memory of his baserunning blunder in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

If Smith had only kept running in the eighth inning when teammate Terry Pendleton hit that double into the left-center gap at the Metrodome, the Braves probably would have won the World Series. Instead, they lost, 1-0, in 10 innings to the Minnesota Twins.

Now, thanks in part to the ninth-inning baserunning of Sid Bream on Tuesday, the Braves are back in the World Series, beginning Saturday night at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium against the Toronto Blue Jays. But if the Series is new for Toronto, it’s anything but for Smith. This will be his fifth. He is the only player to have played in them for four teams--Philadelphia in 1980, St. Louis in ’82 and Kansas City in ’85 before last year with the Braves.

“It’s no damn accident either,” Atlanta third base coach Jimy Williams says. “He’s the toughest SOB--physically and mentally--I’ve ever seen on a ball field. There ain’t nobody like him.

“That’s why it’s sickening to hear people blaming him for what happened last year. It’s a bunch of crap. It’s an injustice, is what it is, and it’s hurting the man.”

Smith grabs another cigarette and explains what happened that Oct. 27 evening. He wonders aloud why he’s even talking about it.

Maybe, he says, it’s simply to help soothe the pain. Perhaps Angel pitcher Donnie Moore would still be alive today, Smith says, if he had talked openly about giving up that crucial home run in the 1986 American League playoffs.

“I think people really thought I was going to commit suicide, too,” Smith says. “I think they thought I would never be able to get over it.

“I was down, real down, but I wasn’t going to kill myself. I had to get on with my life, and I wasn’t going to let it ruin my family’s.”

Still, it’s a play that has been talked about for a year and surely will always be a part of the Braves’ lore.

“I knew when we didn’t score in that game, people would blame me for losing the World Series,” Smith says. “I just knew it. That’s why when the game ended, I wasn’t talking. I knew no one would believe me.

“To this day, I’ve only watched the replay of the play one time, and that was enough. I just wanted to hear what the announcers had to say. They lied, everybody believed them and now nobody believes me.”

The game was scoreless when Smith led off the eighth inning with a single to right field. Manager Bobby Cox, realizing this might be the Braves’ last opportunity, gave Smith the steal sign.

“I got the sign OK, but I wasn’t comfortable with it,” Smith says. “I didn’t know if I could pull off a straight steal. So I decided to go with a delayed steal.”

Pendleton, thinking that Smith would be running, swung away and hit a shot into the left-center gap. Only then did Smith start running. The ball bounced between center fielder Kirby Puckett and left fielder Dan Gladden, caromed off the wall and fell to the artificial turf.

But there was Smith, standing at second, looking as if he had lost his way. He was thoroughly confused.

While Smith had been approaching second, Twin second baseman Chuck Knoblauch was making believe a ground ball had been hit.

Smith says he saw Knoblauch’s deke but knew that the ball had been hit into the outfield. In fact, he says, he had seen Puckett break for the ball, so there was no way he was falling for Knoblauch’s act.

“But I never saw it,” Smith adds softly. “I never saw that damn ball. I just knew it was hit in the outfield. But with the way Kirby was catching everything during the series, I figured he might be catching this one, too.

“By the time I saw the ball, it was too late. I knew I could get to third, but I had no chance of scoring.”

Still, it was no reason to panic. The Braves still had no outs, and their third-, fourth- and fifth-place hitters were coming up.

“We still should have scored,” Pendleton says. “That was the crime of it all. People forget what happened afterward.”

What happened was that Ron Gant hit a grounder to first baseman Kent Hrbek for the first out, preventing Smith from scoring. David Justice was intentionally walked. And with the bases loaded, Bream grounded into a double play, ending the inning.

“I knew right there what everyone would be talking about,” Smith says.

Two innings later, the Twins were celebrating when Gene Larkin’s 10th-inning fly-ball single scored Gladden with the winner.

By the next morning, Smith was reading the first wave of newspaper stories, and within days the hate letters were arriving.

“To this day, people still don’t believe me,” Smith says “because (Tim) McCarver blamed me and said that Knoblauch faked me out, and Jack Buck said it was terrible baserunning. Why would anyone believe anybody else?”

Now, in what may be Smith’s final hurrah with the Braves, he desperately wants his lasting memory to be a World Series championship.

“We still owe these people a championship,” Smith says. “And I’m sure people will say no one owes more than me. That’s OK. I can live with it. I lived with all of the blame this past year.

“Maybe if we win it all this year, people will forget all about last year.

“It’d only be fair, wouldn’t it?”