Pendleton’s Plays in Second Pay Off : Baseball: Third baseman robs Mondesi, Offerman to help preserve no-hitter. Butler’s baserunning helps Braves.

At the time, they were simply a couple of nice plays that brought a ripple of applause from the Atlanta Braves’ fans at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

But it developed that Atlanta third baseman Terry Pendleton’s glove work in the second inning kept intact a no-hitter for Kent Mercker, who won, 6-0.

Pendleton, a three-time Gold Glove winner, took potential hits away from the Dodgers’ Raul Mondesi and Jose Offerman.

“Ah, they were just routine,” Pendleton said. “Just kidding.”

First, he ranged to his left to short-hop Mondesi’s grounder and throw out the speedy rookie by a couple of steps.

“I can’t back up on a ball hit like that,” Pendleton said. “I’ve got to get it on the short hop or I don’t have enough time to throw him out.”

Two batters later, he made an even better play on Offerman, backhanding a hard grounder that was headed down the third-base line.

“That was do or die,” Pendleton said. “Offerman hit a bullet and I just tried to make a stab at it.”

In the sixth inning, some ad-lib strategy by Brett Butler unwittingly kept the no-hitter alive.

Eric Karros hit a line drive up the middle that would have landed in center field for a single under normal circumstances.

But Butler was going on the pitch, and second baseman Mark Lemke was heading to the bag.

In perfect position, Lemke made the catch.

“There’s no way I would have gotten it otherwise,” he said. “Funny, with me breaking, if Karros hits the ball to where the second baseman normally is, he gets a base hit.”

Of course, something exceptional happens in this Dodger-Brave series on April 8 every 20 years.

On that date in 1974, Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run.

The pitcher was Al Downing of the Dodgers.

Downing, who will broadcast tonight’s game on CBS radio, was at Dodger Stadium to see Mercker’s gem.

“He was getting ahead of the hitters all night,” Downing said. “That’s the key to any well-pitched game.”

All evening, Downing had been asked about that other game 20 years ago in Atlanta.

“It doesn’t bother me to talk about it now,” he said. “It did, though, when both of us were still playing. Everybody tried to make a big issue out of it.

“Sure, I gave up the 715th. But it could have been anybody. I couldn’t have done it without help from a lot of other pitchers who threw home run pitches to him.”

Another former Dodger pitcher, Don Sutton, was behind the microphone in the Braves’ booth Friday.

“Mercker’s changeup was the difference,” Sutton said. “Here’s a guy who can throw in the 90s, but he also gave the Dodgers something they’ve never seen from him.”

Mercker is a reliever by trade, who started only six games last season for the team with the best rotation in baseball.

He will probably be back in the bullpen again when the Braves return to a four-man rotation of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Steve Avery and John Smoltz.

“Just think, he throws a no-hitter and he doesn’t get a chance to start the next time,” Sutton said.