There’s No Tomorrow (Unless It Rains Tonight)

Cardinal catcher Tom Pagnozzi grasped the situation immediately.

“A three-game-to-one lead is now a zero-game lead,” he said.

Cardinal shortstop Royce Clayton said: So what?

“What’s the disadvantage?” he demanded to know. “You explain it to me.”

Well . . .

(a) Momentum? (b) Home-field advantage for Atlanta? (c) Tom Glavine pitching Game 7 for the Braves? (d) Cardinals hitting .212 as a team? (e) One run in their last 18 innings? (f) . . .

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Clayton said. “We have to win a big game. They have to win a big game. They’re in the same situation. It’s back to square one. It’s even-steven. I don’t know how else to put it.”

We get the picture.

One more win, and they bite from the big apple.

One more loss, and it’s bye-bye Redbirds.

St. Louis is restless this morning. Only one organization in baseball has squandered two 3-1 series leads, and that’s St. Louis, in the 1968 World Series and again in 1985.

Atlanta, meanwhile, is back in the wahoo business. Cardinal third baseman Gary Gaetti paid the tomahawk-choppers a compliment after Wednesday night’s 3-1 defeat in Game 6 of the National League championship series, “We hear their fans go wo-wo-wo-wo-wo. It sounds real good. I mean, that’s great the way they can all do it in unison, isn’t it? I’m serious.

“But it’s not like they’re intimidating us, or anything.”

St. Louis did miss another shot at the pennant.

“Well,” Gaetti said, looking a guy in the eye, “I’m sorry.”

For the folding Cards, things are coming apart at the seams. Everything seems to be spinning Atlanta’s way. Since seizing a 3-1 lead in the series, the Cardinals have been outscored, 17-1. Their team batting average is very low, although the Mets did hit only .189 when they won the 1986 league championship series over Houston.

You don’t have to hit the ball hard. The Mets went on to win that World Series after a ball went through a guy’s legs.

The Braves aren’t exactly tattooing it.

Their first run in Game 6 scored on a medium-deep sacrifice fly. Their next two were scored by players who got hit by pitches, Jeff Blauser in the fifth inning, Javier Lopez in the eighth. Lopez scored on a ball that never left the infield.

“This was a tough day to be a hitter,” said losing Manager Tony La Russa. “There wasn’t a whole lot out there.”

Six hits by St. Louis, all singles.

The city’s 16th invitation to a World Series is so close, the Cardinals can taste it. Somewhere up north, the New York Yankees are waiting. If tonight’s game should be rained out--and there’s some rain in the forecast--the Game 7 winners might have to go directly from their champagne-drenched clubhouse to Hartsfield Airport here to play Saturday’s game at Yankee Stadium.

OK, one thing at a time.

“This is the last of the gunfight,” Pagnozzi said. “We go once more, and see who’s left standing.”

La Russa is ad-libbing as he goes. He pitched a rookie in Game 6, the first rookie to start an NLCS game since Pittsburgh’s Tim Wakefield in 1992. The news was broken to Alan Benes on the flight here, that he would join his brother, Andy, in becoming the only brothers to pitch a postseason series for the same side since Paul and Dizzy Dean started five games of the 1934 World Series.

St. Louis won that series.

Was the rookie ready? Well, Benes did yield only three hits. But afterward, being perfectly frank, Benes said, “In my situation, let’s face it, there were not a lot of people who expected me to pitch and beat Greg Maddux. So there really wasn’t any pressure on me.”

Yes, those Game 6s, they’re generally pressure-free for rookies.

La Russa is no rookie. He called his decision to pitch Benes “a gut call, not a hunch,” an interesting distinction.

His decision not to walk Rafael Belliard in the eighth inning, that one was baffling. Two on, two out. The pitcher due up next. The pitcher? Mark Wohlers, who scares most batters hitless. If Belliard is walked intentionally, either Wohlers has to bat, or he has to leave the game. Either way, it’s a lucky break for St. Louis.

La Russa’s explanation: “I didn’t have any doubt we could get Belliard out.”

They didn’t get Belliard out.

So, back to the old ballyard they go. One more gunfight. Last man standing. Square one. Even-steven. There must be another way to put it.