ST. LOUIS 3, ATLANTA 2 Starting in 1991, Atlanta played in three National League Championship Series with Ron Gant as a prominent member of the lineup. Atlanta played against Gant and Cincinnati in 1995, and it is playing against Gant and St. Louis this time.
Last week, Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine was talking about Gant's presence as an opponent and said: 'Ronnie is a winner. Everybody who played with him here knows that. We keep running into him. You've got to wonder when you're going to get burned.'
Answer: Saturday.
Gant hit two home runs and drove in all three against Glavine, giving St. Louis a 3-2 victory and a 2-1 lead in this championship series.
'You come into a series and Ronnie is a player you don't want to let beat you,' Glavine said. 'He beat me and he beat us. I made two bad mistakes today and they were both to Ronnie. If it was another hitter, it might have been different.'
Gant had 36 home runs and 117 RBI for Atlanta in 1993. He had agreed in January 1994 to a one-year, $5 million contract.
One week later, Gant fractured his leg dirt-biking. Atlanta released him in spring training rather than pay the contract for a player who would miss the season.
Until Saturday, Atlanta did not have much reason to regret the decision. It won its first World Series in 1995. On the way, Atlanta won four straight against Cincinnati in the NLCS. Gant had three singles and one RBI.
'I wanted to hurt the Braves in that series,' Gant said. 'The problem was I wanted to hurt 'em too much. I took out the tapes of my at-bats in that series before we started playing this time. I wasn't patient. They kept pitching me outside and I was pulling off the ball.'
Saturday, Gant demonstrated remarkable patience in the bottom of the first inning, with his team down 1-0. Royce Clayton singled. There was an out. Gant stood in.
On a 1-1 pitch from Glavine, umpire Bob Davidson put Gant in the hole by calling a strike on a pitch that was 8 inches off the outside corner.
'Eight inches? You said that, not me,' said Gant, smiling. 'I did know Glavine was going to go back out there.'
Gant took two pitches off the corner. For some reason, Davidson called both of those non-strikes balls, something that Glavine is not used to from a plate umpire. That made it a full count.
'We threw two horrible change-ups,' Atlanta manager Bobby Cox said. 'Ronnie hit 'em both.'
The first home run landed in the Cardinals' left field bullpen. How did Gant lay off those two outside pitches, either of which many NL umpires will give Glavine?
'I'm prepared to hit the pitch away in this series,' Gant said. 'I closed my stance a couple of weeks ago. That puts me closer to the plate. I have better plate coverage. I thought those pitches were outside Tom's normal zone.'
The second 'horrible change-up' to which Cox referred was so bad that it was actually a fat fastball, according to Glavine. 'I had him set up for an inside fastball on 1-2,' Glavine said. 'I decided to go away once more. Instead, the ball stayed down the middle.'
Then, the ball stayed high and fast, until it landed 420 feet away in center field.
That made it 3-1, a lead that became very shaky in the Atlanta eighth. Chipper Jones and Fred McGriff, the remaining thunder in Atlanta's lineup, singled. That was it for Donovan Osborne.
Mark Petkovsek arrived and Javier Lopez singled to third. 'Gary Gaetti made a super play to knock that ball down,' Cox said. 'Javy hit a bullet.'
Gaetti's knockdown loaded the bases with no outs. 'Right there, you're thinking, `Get out of this with one and you've done OK,' ' Petkovsek said.
Jermaine Dye hit a sacrifice fly. Terry Pendleton showed up as a pinch hitter and hit a soft liner to second.
Jeff Blauser - a shell of a once-solid hitter - struck out. Petkovsek got the Cardinals to the ninth with a 3-2 lead.
Lefty Rick Honeycutt, the oldest Cardinal at 42 years, 3 months, threw one pitch to retire Ryan Klesko. Righty Dennis Eckersley, the second-oldest member of these Graybirds, threw four pitches to retire Marquis Grissom and Mark Lemke.
'I had put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears for the Braves,' Gant said. 'I thought I was going to be a Brave for life. What hurt is that it was so easy to let me go.'
