Maddux Keeps the Change, Wins

Darryl Kile of the Houston Astros pitched a two-hitter Tuesday, holding the defending National League champion Atlanta Braves without a hit after the second inning . . . and lost.

Game 1 of this National League playoff series went to the Braves, 2-1, before 46,467 at Turner Field, because a solo home run by Ryan Klesko, leading off the second inning against Kile, gave four-time Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux a 2-0 lead, which was all he needed.

Maddux scattered seven singles and pitched a complete game, his first in postseason play since the opening game of the 1995 World Series against the Cleveland Indians.

His most serious challenge came in the eighth inning, with the dangerous Jeff Bagwell at the plate and the tying run on second base. Maddux struck out Bagwell with a wicked, full-count changeup.

Atlanta catcher Eddie Perez was asked, “Was that unhittable?”

“Untouchable,” Perez replied.

On the previous pitch, Bob Abreu--who led off the eighth with a pinch-single--stole second. Maddux was busy with Bagwell, setting him up for the strikeout pitch with an 86-mph fastball, about as hard as he threw all day.

He had told Perez exactly what he planned to do. The changeup came inside to Bagwell, who swung clumsily as the ball dropped at his feet.

Bagwell said it was the only inside pitch Maddux threw him all day.

“When you see it coming inside, you think heater,” Bagwell said. “Then the bottom drops out of it, and we’re out of the inning.”

The studious Maddux--who had an unfinished crossword puzzle in his locker--made a mental note that Bagwell had made outs on first-pitch fastballs his first two times up.

Maddux doesn’t miss much. He kept the “Killer Bs”--Craig Biggio, Derek Bell and Bagwell--at the top of Houston’s batting order hitless (0 for 12).

As usual, the pitcher downplayed the importance of anything he did. Maddux said things like, “You got to get all nine guys out. I mean, the pitcher had two hits today.”

Kile, indeed, contributed to his own cause with two singles, knocking in the only Astro run.

His catcher, Tony Eusebio, got a one-out single in the fifth, then startled Maddux and the Braves by stealing a base, the first of a career spanning 864 at-bats.

Eusebio took third on a groundout, then scored when Kile, a .124 hitter, lined a 2-and-0 pitch into center field off perhaps the best pitcher in baseball.

“I got lucky. The ball fell on my bat,” Kile said.

Maddux demurred, saying, “He was being nice. He got me.”

That run cut Atlanta’s lead in half, to 2-1.

Kenny Lofton had led off the first inning against Kile by doubling, advancing on a fly to right and scoring on Chipper Jones’ sacrifice fly to left. It was exactly the sort of “little ball” Kile had said he feared most from the Braves.

There was nothing little about Klesko’s first-pitch homer in the second inning, which flew 391 feet over the fence in right field. Klesko’s tippy-toe Babe Ruth trot ate up a sizable portion of the 2-hour, 15-minute game.

After the homer, a duel between the 19-game winners ensued.

Kile faced only two batters over the minimum before being lifted for a pinch-hitter in the eighth.

“Lucky we got him early,” Lofton said, “because if we didn’t, we were in trouble.”

Maddux, meanwhile, got out of a couple of jams. He retired Biggio and Bell routinely with two Astros on base in the third. In the sixth, Luis Gonzalez’s pop fly was lost in the sun, but Gonzalez strayed too far toward second base and was trapped in a rundown.

Maddux himself doesn’t lose in the sun. He is 11-0 this season in day games.

“Coincidence, maybe,” he said. “I like to get up early. But probably just coincidence.”

Whatever the case, he looked particularly sharp to Perez, his personal catcher, whom Manager Bobby Cox had considered benching because of a batting slump. Perez said the pitcher threw harder than usual and joked that Maddux’s slider was effective “for the first time in his whole career.”

Maddux struck out six . . . five of them looking.

He usually doesn’t last long enough to throw 114 pitches--in one game he was winning, Maddux called it a day after 88--but was well-rested, not having worked since Sept. 22.

“It’s not like I throw hard anyway,” Maddux said, self-deprecating as usual.

“I’d like to think I can pitch better than I did today. Kile could pitch better too, if we face him again. You can always pitch better, unless you pitch a perfect game. And I wouldn’t know about that. I just pitch, man.”

His next assignment will come Sunday at the Astrodome, in Game 5 of this series, unless there is no such game. In that case, the next time Maddux pitches, it will be against the San Francisco Giants or the Florida Marlins.