WORLD SERIES / TORONTO BLUE JAYS vs. ATLANTA BRAVES : Key to Victory Is on the Mound : Game 4: Blue Jays get pitching gem and beat Braves, 2-1, to get into position to finish things off tonight.

The team that used to wobble under the slightest hint of pressure, led by the manager whose professional head was demanded after he lost the first game of the American League playoffs, moved within one game of its first World Series championship Wednesday.

Led by left-hander Jimmy Key, who was bumped from the playoff pitching rotation by Manager Cito Gaston, and a remarkable eighth-inning defensive play Kelly Gruber made through the haze of a possible concussion, the Toronto Blue Jays held off an Atlanta rally for a 2-1 victory before a SkyDome crowd of 52,090, the second-largest to see the Blue Jays play.

And if the victory was sweet, the irony of taking a 3-1 World Series lead into Game 5 tonight is even sweeter. The Blue Jays’ starter will be Jack Morris, who pitched 10 shutout innings against the Braves a year ago to claim the championship for the Minnesota Twins. His opponent, as he was a year ago, will be John Smoltz.

“I wouldn’t want to give the ball to anyone else at this point,” said Blue Jay center fielder Devon White, who had three hits and scored Gruber with the second Toronto run.

Giving the ball to Key on Wednesday was the best in a long list of good decisions made by Gaston. Having held Key out of the Oakland series because Gaston feared the Athletics’ right-handed power hitters might overwhelm his off-speed offerings, Gaston slipped him into the Series rotation in a perfect spot. Besides getting a 7 2/3-inning gem from Key, who struck out six and retired 20 of 21 batters after Otis Nixon and Jeff Blauser singled in the first inning, Gaston has a well-rested Morris to apply the finishing touch Thursday.

“I don’t know too many guys who have been in this position, and if they have, they’ve been lucky guys like me,” said Morris, who can become the fourth pitcher to win the deciding game in two consecutive World Series.

The others were Art Nehf of the 1921-22 New York Giants, Lefty Gomez with the New York Yankees in 1936-37 and Allie Reynolds with the Yankees in 1952-53. Only one other pitcher has won the decisive game with two different teams: Catfish Hunter with Oakland in 1972 and the Yankees in 1978.

“I feel grateful for this opportunity and the way guys have played the last couple of games so I could be in this position,” added Morris, who lost the Series opener, 3-1. “It’s just a great, great feeling. I don’t think there’s a pitcher in the major leagues, minor leagues, Little Leagues, any level that ever pitched who doesn’t want to win the game that wins the World Series.”

Key helped put Morris and the Blue Jays in that position Wednesday by giving up only five hits, two of them in the first inning and two in the fifth. He escaped danger in the first inning by picking off Nixon, which minimized the effects of Blauser’s single to center field.

Key credited Gruber’s gliding grab of an eighth-inning shot by Mark Lemke that glanced off the mound and Key’s hand before bouncing toward third for saving the ballgame.

“He hit it sharp. It hit the slope of the mound and then hit my (right) arm above my glove,” Key said. “Fortunately, it caromed far enough for Kelly Gruber to come up with it and make a great play. If Kelly doesn’t make that play, they’ve got a pretty good inning going.”

It was a good enough inning to get one run in, when Ron Gant doubled to left field and Brian Hunter surprised Key with a bunt. That put runners on first and third for Damon Berryhill, who startled everyone in the SkyDome--including Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox--by bunting.

“We were stealing, and I have no idea what was going through Damon’s mind,” Cox said. “We were looking at runners on second and third. I can’t figure it out.”

It seemed logical to Berryhill at the time, but a huge blunder as he reflected on it.

“My thought was if I laid down a good bunt, we’d get a run in, Brian would be in scoring position and I’ve got a chance to beat out a base hit,” Berryhill said. “If I get a decent bunt and I’m thrown out at first, we’ve still got a runner in scoring position.

“It was a good pitch. I just didn’t do the job. I didn’t see him stealing. If Brian was stealing and the pitch was there, I was going to do what I was going to do. That’s just the way it went. Really the only bad thing that could happen, happened.”

The bad thing was a pop to catcher Pat Borders, wasting an out. Lemke followed with his hopper to the mound, probably the best play Gruber will never remember making.

When he barehanded Lemke’s ball, Gruber was still woozy from making a chin-first slide home for what became the winning run in the seventh inning. It was an unnecessary slide as it turned out, because Candy Maldonado’s throw from left field was cut off before it reached the plate. Gruber shook his head each time he was asked to describe the play, relying on TV replays to describe it.

“I don’t remember how I got that one. Everything’s pretty hazy,” said Gruber, who will be watched by doctors over the next 24 hours to be sure he doesn’t have a concussion. “I think when I was out there I was off a little bit. I had problems with our signs. I can’t remember anything.

“I saw it. I can’t tell you what was going through my mind because I can’t remember it. From the replay, it came off Jimmy’s glove, came straight up and I barehanded it and threw. That’s all I know.”

The Braves knew they were in trouble when Berryhill’s bunt failed, and when Duane Ward came in to strike out out Nixon. Although Nixon reached on a wild pitch and stole second, Ward got Blauser to ground to first baseman John Olerud, who was playing about two feet off the line, to end the inning. “He hit a bullet and Olerud is right on the line, and I can’t figure out why,” Cox said.

Nor could the Braves figure out Tom Henke, who earned his second Series save and fifth in postseason play by retiring the Braves in order in the ninth.

“They’re not screwing up, are they?” Berryhill said, with a sad smile.

Not so far, anyway. And having come this far, they are eager to take that last, long step.

“It’s really important that we don’t go back (to Atlanta),” Gaston said of the site of Games 6 and 7, if necessary. “Let’s win it here with our fans who have supported us from Day 1, because without the fans, we would not be able to put this kind of team on the field. Hopefully we can wrap it up tomorrow.”

History is on their side, if Smoltz isn’t. No non-dome team has ever won a Series game--the Twins were 4-0 in 1987 and 1991 and the Blue Jays are 2-0--and the Braves haven’t won a road Series game since 1958, when the team played in Milwaukee.

BLUE JAYS: The bullpen keeps shutting the door. Ross Newhan’s column, C6.

NOTES: Umpire says he probably blew call. C7.

TONIGHT’S GAME 5

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Atlanta’s John Smoltz vs. Toronto’s Jack Morris

TIME: 5:25 PDT

TV: Channel 2

RADIO: KNX (1070), KFMB (760), KTNQ (1020, Spanish)