WORLD SERIES: ATLANTA BRAVES vs. CLEVELAND INDIANS : They Caught Fire in Time to Prevent Becoming Cubed

B-r-r-r-r! Welcome to the Winter Olympics! Otherwise known as the 1995 World Series.

The, er, ah, C-c-c-cleveland I-i-indians w-w-won the th-th-ird g-game of the W-W-World S-S-Series h-h-here T-T-Tuesday night. The g-g-game, if t-that’s w- what it w-w-was, t-took p-place on an ice floe off Lake Erie c-called J-J-Jacobs F-Field.

You’ll have to p-p-pardon me, I-I’m trying to w-w-write this with f-f-fingers that f-f-feel m-m-more like i-icicles.

I keep looking around for Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. They should play this game on skis and skates. Never mind buying me some peanuts and crackerjack, how about some cough syrup and Dristan?

They should call this place The Igloo. The temperature at game time was--well, embarrassing comes to mind. The wind-chill factor was polar. A great place to be a penguin.

You wonder why they held the games here--was Albertville busy? Lillehammer booked? Next year, Siberia? The only way you knew it wasn’t a Winter Olympics was that neither of the squads on the field could be construed as Dream Teams. They couldn’t even beat each other in regulation.

The good news is, the Cleveland Indians finally showed up. Just as they were beginning to drag the rivers, check the mountain lodges to see if they were tied up, bound and gagged and blindfolded some place or if they had thought the strike was back on, they mysteriously reappeared.

You know what the real Cleveland Indians are like--all those home runs (207), the highest team batting average (.291) in history. “Murder One.” The take-no-prisoners gang. The guys who won their division by 30--count ‘em--games and were 14 games ahead of their nearest pursuer in the whole league. The guys who averaged 7.1 runs a game. Those Cleveland Indians.

Well, the clowns in Indian uniforms in the first two games were a poor imitation. The Cleveland Indians of 1995 don’t pop up with the bases loaded, ground into double plays, die on third and swing at ball four the way these impostors did. The real Cleveland Indians are like Custer’s. They ambush you, leave you for dead. Every game is Little Big Horn.

This other bunch who took their places in Games 1 and 2 should be prosecuted for impersonating big leaguers. A fraud on the public. Vegas should put a price on their heads. The gamblers should sue.

John Smoltz may have a lawsuit on his hands. Smoltz took the mound for Atlanta on Tuesday night under the impression he was going to go up against the same collection of designated outs as his fellow moundsmen had been facing.

They let him know early this was a brand-new ball game. The first batter singled and the second tripled.

Then the two teams began to roll around in the dirt scratching and fighting. Bloody nose baseball. None of those state-of-the-art pitching performances by Picassos with a curveball. These guys were working stiffs. They made mistakes on the mound. Not artistic but fun.

It went into the early morning hours. One of those.

But the real heroes weren’t the guys on the field in uniform. They were people in the seats bundled up like Nanook of the North.

Their new stadium is a curious edifice, modeled after something you’d carry hats in. But, in a way, it seems a shame to put the Cleveland Indians in it. Visiting teams think of it as the Death House, a place where they pull the switch on the condemned men of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.

But it’s really a joy to behold how baseball architects have finally come to understand the grand old game and have a blueprint to fit it. It’s not symmetrical, but symmetry is overrated. In baseball, the accent is on eccentricity, not symmetry.

They take something from the 21st century and make it look like something from 1904. A better time. It’s well known that baseball belongs to the straw hat and the streetcar. It’s a welcome relief from those antiseptic, round, multipurpose structures with roofs on them and rugs under them. Baseball as it should be. Instant nostalgia. Baseball should be played in places that are linked with the past and have fences designed to accommodate city streets and surrounding buildings and not just giant operating rooms.

They played a dandy in it Tuesday, a two-day affair with a parade of pitchers and hitters longer than a post office line at Christmas. It had intentional walks, unintentional walks, bunts, home runs and just when it seemed it might go on till the sun came up--if it ever comes up in Cleveland--the Indians eked by, 7-6, in the 11th inning.

The World Series is now an agony fight--which is a prizefight term for a slugfest between two foes neither of whom rely very heavily on fancy stuff.

Cleveland needs punching room, while Atlanta is better at infighting. It looks pick-em. Carlos Baerga was the hero. In the 11th, he put up a good fight with the pitcher, Alejandro Pena, what is known as a “good at-bat.” That is, he took and fouled off enough pitches to force one he could hit for distance and when he got it he hit it off the center-field wall. He scored after a walk and a none-out hit by Eddie Murray who heats his bat on a dugout heater, I guess so it won’t turn into an icicle.

Baseball the way it should be. But if you’ll excuse me, I have to go home and have a good sneeze and Cleveland has to thaw out for Game 4. And pray it doesn’t snow.