ATLANTA – Inches separate the Braves and Mets, who never have been closer and are all tied up, two games into the season after last night’s 3-2 Braves win at the Ted.
If Kevin Appier’s strike-3 slider to Kevin Millwood were inches higher, catcher Mike Piazza could have blocked it and the Mets would have had three outs in the book before Chipper Jones came up later in the inning to rap a two-run single in the third.
Braves catcher Javy Lopez appeared to come within inches of tagging Robin Ventura on a play at the plate in the sixth. Home-plate umpire Brian O’Nora didn’t see it that way. The way he saw it, Lopez did tag Ventura for the third out in the sixth inning, an out that prevented the Mets from tying the game 2-2.
Lopez reached to tag Ventura several feet in front of home plate after a remarkable throw from center-fielder Andruw Jones. Judging by the way Lopez reacted, it seemed as if he certainly thought he missed the first tag. By the time Lopez tagged Ventura again, the plodding runner finally had a hand on home plate. O’Nora punched the out sign. Ventura got in his face and Bobby Valentine rushed out of the dugout.
O’Nora explained that it was the first tag, not the second, that got Ventura.
Piazza blasted the ball Jones fielded to his right so hard the amazing center-fielder had time to make a play and Ventura didn’t have time enough to make it through the quicksand.
Valentine defended his third-base coach’s decision to send the runner home.
“Two outs, ball that deep, I think he has to make him make that throw and he did make the throw,” Valentine said. “That was a great throw and he’s a great center-fielder.”
Strange things can happen to make runs score even on mismatches as blatant as Jones throwing and Ventura running, strange things such as a catcher missing the tag can happen.
If O’Nora had called him safe, Stearns would have dodged the bullet. The umpire called him out and Stearns faced the music after the drama-packed game had ended and he had showered. The Met catching instructor a year ago, Stearns replaced Cookie Rojas at third base. In the wild revolving coaching door that spins around the Mets, few things remain the same.
If coaches don’t bolt from under Valentine’s wing for jobs they feel more comfortable in (Dave Wallace, Rojas), then Steve Phillips fires them (Bob Apodaca, Tom Robson twice). For a team that wins as much as the Mets, it’s a bizarrely unstable situation in the coaches’ room.
Anyway, Stearns is the third-base coach now, working there for the first time in a while, and this is what he had to say about his decision to send Ventura to the lions.
“He’s 300 feet from home plate,” Stearns said of Jones. “I know he has the best arm in the league and I know Robin doesn’t run that well, but it wasn’t right at him, and there were two outs. With less than two outs, I don’t send him there. With two outs, I have to send him. I know how great his arm is, but you’ve got to make him perform there, and he performed. That was just an unbelievable throw.”
Ventura has above-average ability in every facet of the game, except speed. He is among the slowest runners in the league.
“Probably the odds are with him the way I run,” Ventura said. ” . . . It’s just a gamble.”
But the call is with Stearns, who has to be Ventura’s eyes and traffic signal on the play.
What if Ventura stopped through his go sign?
“You can’t do that,” Ventura said. “You just run as hard as you can and do what he tells you.”
Ventura nearly made it a moot point in a dramatic eighth inning against John Rocker. For the second night in a row, the Braves closer faced Ventura in a tight spot. The previous night, Ventura hit the first of two two-run home runs on the first pitch thrown by Rocker.
This time, as the rain fell on them, they gave the crowd a longer show. After falling behind 1-2, Ventura worked a walk from Rocker. Drawing a gasp from the crowd, Ventura put home-run depth on Rocker’s hanging 1-2 breaking ball , but got out in front of it just a bit and smoked it into foul territory.
After Rocker struck out Piazza, Todd Zeile also crushed a home run-depth foul ball. Jay Payton fisted a single into left off Rocker to tie a game the Mets would lose in the ninth.
They also lost it in a sixth inning of close calls when the arms of Jones and Stearns, the legs of Ventura, and the eyes of O’Nora conspired to make a run swing the way of the Braves.