Garner Defends His Visit to the Umpires

Maybe when the dugout phone repeatedly malfunctioned in the seventh inning at Turner Field on Thursday, Phil Garner should have taken it as a sign.

Instead, the Houston Astro manager went with his instinct and brought in closer Brad Lidge in an attempt to quell the Atlanta Braves’ rally in Game 2 of the National League division series, igniting a controversy on two fronts.

Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox essentially accused Garner of gamesmanship after Garner went onto the field to tell umpires that the phone continually was busy, causing a delay of several minutes as Lidge warmed up in the bullpen.

“I honestly can see how he could feel that way,” Garner said.

“I had no alternative. I think this is too grand a stage to try to pull a stunt like that. I wouldn’t do that at all.”

The Braves played the remainder of the game under protest, which became moot after they rallied for a 4-2 victory in 11 innings that tied the best-of-five series at one game apiece heading into Game 3 Saturday at Minute Maid Park.

But Houston fans might not be as forgiving since Lidge, after escaping a runner-on-third, two-out jam in the seventh, gave up the tying run in the eighth during a season-high 2 2/3 -inning appearance.

Garner dismissed the contention that he overworked Lidge, saying he had used the reliever in the seventh several times this season.

“He was well rested,” Garner said. “I felt good about it, and I’d do it again.”

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Houston players and coaches praised General Manager Gerry Hunsicker for his faith in the Astros in mid-August, at a time when many thought Hunsicker would be best served to take a sledgehammer to the roster and build for the future.

Garner recalled a dinner in Philadelphia in which he told Hunsicker that the outlook for the sub-.500 Astros was bleak.

“I said, ‘Gerry, I’m not giving up on the team, but we’re not turning this thing around. I thought by now we would have turned it around,’ ” Garner said.

“He gave no consideration to breaking the team up. His only comment was that he was going to give this club every chance it could to succeed.”

Said first baseman Jeff Bagwell: “They never wavered from their stance that they were going to keep this team together. A lot of us in the clubhouse thought, you know, ‘Why?’ We were that bad.”

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Atlanta’s Game 3 starter, John Thomson, threw what Cox described as a “very, very good side session” Thursday and is expected to be close to full strength after having his start pushed back a game because of a strained muscle on his left side

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Chipper Jones joked that John Smoltz’s ninth-inning single, his first hit since 1999, “was the worst thing that could have happened” because now the third baseman who is hitless in the postseason will never hear the end of it. “He’s one for one and I’m zero for eight.”