It's a Pratt Fall Classic

By ROSS NEWHAN

Oct. 10, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK —

He was the reluctant hero, saying he could easily have been the goat, that he was only one player in the Mets’ mix, and that he didn’t feel he belonged in a New York pantheon with Bucky Dent or Jim Leyritz or any other unsung player who delivered an unexpected and dramatic home run in the postseason.

One other thing about Todd Pratt, the reserve catcher who replaced Mike Piazza again Saturday and rocked Shea Stadium with a 10th-inning home run off flame-throwing Matt Mantei to give his team a riveting 4-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks and put it in the National League’s championship series against the Atlanta Braves:

The reluctant hero seems to carry a degree of bitterness over the way he was treated by the Mets last year, when other catchers kept getting opportunities to replace the injured Todd Hundley. Pratt, who sat out the 1996 season because he “hated baseball so much” and felt he was too good a player--”the Mike Piazza of triple A,” he said--to keep being sent back, almost quit again when sent out by the Mets on the eve of the season only to be talked out of it by Rick Dempsey, the Dodger coach who was then the Mets’ triple-A manager.

So there he was, soaked in champagne, standing before a room full of reporters as a crowd of 56,177 continued to shake Shea’s foundation in response to his 414-foot homer to dead center field, and he was saying that he “didn’t want to bash” the Mets because they were the team that gave him the opportunity to play again after he sat out in 1996. “But there was a lot of frustration and hurt last year the way I was treated. They kept bringing one catcher after another in here and I kept getting sent out. I mean, it’s hard to forget, and today was the exclamation point on that.”

More than that measure of personal gratification, it punctured Diamondback hopes after a season of 100 wins and served to punctuate the Mets’ ongoing comeback from the dead.

In rebounding from a seven-game losing streak that began with three losses to the Braves in Atlanta during the next to last week of the regular season, the Mets have won seven of their last eight games, and Manager Bobby Valentine couldn’t help but needle the Braves when asked if he thought his team had something special going.

“I’ve thought that for a long time because this is a special group of guys,” Valentine said. “Whether it’s karma or chemistry, it’s going to take a good effort to stop us, and the next team we’re playing may be thinking they’re playing ghosts because they said we were dead, so I don’t know if they have ever played against people who have come back from the grave.”

The Mets are very much alive and well, particularly an exultant Valentine, who had managed more than 1,800 major league games before reaching the postseason this year. Now he has taken another wild-card step and said it was difficult to describe his emotions but compared them to his son’s birth and “convincing some dumb banker to give me a loan for my first house.”

For Arizona Manager Buck Showalter, the “finality” of Pratt’s homer was tough to take.

“You win 101 games [including Game 2 against the Mets], and the next thing you know you’re a spectator,” he said, “but I have a lot of pride in what we accomplished and we’re going to work hard to continue what we’ve started.”

The Diamondbacks never really got started against the Mets because catalytic leadoff man Tony Womack, who led the league with 72 steals, was restricted to two hits in 18 at-bats while Met counterpart Rickey Henderson went six for 15 with four walks, six steals and five runs.

Both played key roles in a spellbinding game that included:

A volatile argument that probably will result in a suspension for Met third base coach Cookie Rojas for shoving umpire Charlie Williams; a brilliant duel between left-handers Al Leiter and Brian Anderson as each maintained his season-closing form; home runs by Edgardo Alfonzo and Greg Colbrunn that left the score tied, 1-1, through five; a 14-pitch at-bat in which Henderson fouled off nine consecutive pitches before he singled to open the sixth and eventually scored on Manny Agbayani’s double for a 2-1 lead; a two-run double by Jay Bell off Armando Benitez in the eighth for a 3-2 Arizona lead; a perfect throw by left fielder Melvin Mora, a defensive replacement for Henderson, to nail Bell trying to score on Matt Williams’ single for the final out in that eighth inning; a dropped fly ball by Womack in right field that enabled the Mets to tie the score, 3-3, in the bottom of the eighth before Mantei forced New York to leave the bases loaded in that inning and strand two more in the ninth.

Ultimately, it was Pratt, with three home runs this year and 16 in a career in which he has been with seven organizations, against the 96-mph heat of Mantei with one out in the 10th and Pratt deciding that he wasn’t going to choke up on the bat as he normally does against a hard thrower but would stay down on the knob and swing at the first fastball within reach.

“It was in my favorite spot,” he said of the 1-and-0 pitch, “up and over the plate.”

The drive barely eluded the leap of Steve Finley at the fence as Pratt, showing his true emotions, leaped exultantly as he rounded first base and the Mets streamed onto the field.

Later, however, the reluctant hero downplayed his role.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the 32-year-old catcher said, “I’m happy that I’ve given my team a chance to go to the NLCS, but I don’t want to make too much of it. It’s only the divisional series, not the LCS or World Series. I’m only one guy in the mix, and I could easily have been the goat. I had a couple chances to drive in runs earlier and didn’t.”

Pratt said he would go home, kiss his wife, high-five his son and celebrate by playing computer games. He had put that exclamation point on the lingering frustration and bitterness of last year, and the man he replaced couldn’t help but laugh when informed how Pratt had talked about that scenario and not wanting to bash the Mets when, in fact, he did.

“If he’s still frustrated, that’s unfortunate,” said Piazza, who hopes to return to the lineup Tuesday night in Atlanta. “The important thing is that we won, and if Todd can keep doing that because he’s bitter, I hope he stays bitter.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Playoffs

Saturday

Indians lead series, 2-1

BOSTON: 9

CLEVELAND: 3

Indians have few big names, but they still have hope. Page 7

Braves win series, 3-0

ATLANTA: 7

HOUSTON: 5

Braves oust Astros in their final Astrodome game. Page 6

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