They Maintain a Brave Front

Some of the tomahawk boys are sitting around watching television on a holiday afternoon. Steve Avery is in a folding chair, folding his arms across his chest. Tom Glavine stands behind him, fidgeting. A portable TV inside the visiting clubhouse of Dodger Stadium is flickering images of the San Francisco Giants claiming another game, X’ing one more day off the calendar.

Avery is helpless. Glavine, too. They are such skillful pitchers, such competitors, but they can do nothing from in front of a TV tube. Nothing but wait their turns. And wait for something to go wrong for the Giants, and for everything to go right for the Atlanta Braves, a baseball team ticking like a “60 Minutes” stopwatch, running out of time.

Off goes the TV.

Another sad soap opera--”Monday Day Baseball.” Might as well have watched Geraldo or Oprah.

John Smoltz feels it, too. A form of helplessness. Hours later, he is the losing pitcher in a 2-1, down-to-the-last-out struggle with the Dodgers, and about all that Smoltz can do is adjust the ice pack on his shoulder, shake his head and say: “I was bound and determined not to lose one more game this season. I really, really thought I could do it.”

He, too, pitches for what might well be the best club in baseball. Avery, Glavine, Smoltz and Greg Maddux are the rotation of a generation; maybe two. Deeper than Cuellar-McNally-Palmer. Deeper than Lemon-Garcia-Wynn. Pride of the Ted Turner fleet. On these arms, the prayers of thousands of TBS’ers ride. Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine & Avery and Pray for Bravery.

How weird the league playoffs would be without them. San Francisco’s pitching staff is Who, What and I Don’t Know. Best of the lot is this guy Rod Beck, the relief pitcher from the Buckwheat Hair Club For Men. Little by little, the Braves close ground, coming after them with the relentlessness of Tommy Lee Jones. But is there time?

Smoltz sighs and says: “I think so. Man, I hope so.

“It’s a teeter-totter. We go up, they go down. They go up, we go down. The momentum keeps switching back and forth. I guess I’d like to be 3 1/2 games up with 23 to go or whatever, yeah, but somebody around here said something a month ago that’s worth remembering. They said: ‘Even if we’re three down with three to go, we’re not dead.’ ”

Meaning?

“Meaning, pitch every game like it’s for the championship,” Smoltz says.

He is clinging to positive thoughts, rubbing them into the baseball. Smoltz is 13-10 and can’t understand how so many things could have gone so wrong for him. He is bothered by a down year for him personally, bothered by what he calls “some little knickknack injuries” that make his task that much harder.

Yet these are the Braves, after all, who throughout the ‘90s have organized themselves in a circle, singing: “We shall overcome.” This is a team so brimming with talent that Sid Bream must ride a bench and Ryan Klesko must ride the treadmill of the minor leagues, unable to play because a two-time World Series team went shopping for Fred McGriff like a Beverly Hills matron at Tiffany’s.

They are so good, these Braves, that they must bench either Deion Sanders or Otis Nixon on given days; so good that October hero of yesteryear Brian Hunter is practically disposable in a proposed deal for a pitcher, Dennis Martinez, they do not even need; so good that Mike Stanton strings together 27 saves before suddenly noticing that a rookie, Greg McMichael, is being given the ball in the ninth.

It is a team that pulls Francisco Cabrera out of thin air. It is a team that, without Ron Gant, without Sanders, without Hunter, goes into a big game with a left fielder, Tony Tarasco, who has batted a grand total of 23 times. What does he do? Drives in their only run.

But a bad break here, bad break there, and back they go, 3 1/2 behind the Giants.

Monday night football must be on catcher Greg Olson’s mind when he says: “We just didn’t put enough points on the scoreboard. Before the game, we were in here watching the Giants play, so we knew what we had to do. We are the team that has played the best in the second half--and sooner or later, I think we’re going to catch them--but we can’t let up.”

Across the way, relief pitcher Mark Wohlers wonders what tomorrow will bring.

“I know it’s impossible for us not to lose a game here and there,” he says. “I’ve just been hoping that maybe, you know, we won’t.”