Braves 10
Mets 4
ATLANTA – The biggest cheer Tom Glavine received yesterday at his former haunt was when he left during the fourth inning trailing 5-0. Even then, there was considerable booing as he hit the showers.
Some Atlanta fans may have forgotten how the new Met ace helped pitch the Braves to glory, but his former teammates didn’t forget the 37-year-old lefty’s repertoire.
Pitching with a blister on his index finger and fooling no one, Glavine surrendered 400-foot homers to Andruw Jones and Javy Lopez, allowed eight hits and didn’t strike out a Brave over 31/3 innings. He was charged with six earned runs in the 10-4 bloodbath, a huge buzzkill after Friday night’s inspiring 6-5 victory.
“I wanted to get it over with,” said Glavine, who didn’t blame the blister for the poor outing but acknowledged it bothered him. “Those of you who know me know I don’t feel comfortable with this much attention.
“It’s strange coming out of the other side, strange pitching against an organization I’ve been a part of for so long.”
It was his shortest outing of the season, even briefer than his Opening Day meltdown. Glavine said the blister popped up after a scoreless, seven-pitch first inning, and he had a Band-Aid on it after the game. It’s not known whether he’ll be pushed back from his next start.
Art Howe visited Glavine with the training staff in the third and left him in, but removed him the following inning. Howe has no doubt that the blister was why Glavine struggled.
“I wanted to nip it in the bud,” Howe said. “It was just gonna get worse.
“His heart got in the way a little bit today. He wanted to battle. He doesn’t want to use that as an excuse. That’s Tommy.”
Glavine (5-4) walked out of the visiting dugout in the middle of the first, and the boo birds got a jump on the appreciative Atlanta fans. At first, boos rained down on him. Eventually the cheers surpassed the negative vibe at Turner Field.
“No one understands the magnitude of how tough it was for Tommy,” Braves closer John Smoltz said of Glavine’s decision to sign a three-year, $35 million deal with the Mets.
As Glavine threw his warm-ups moments before his first start against his former team, he even received a brief and partial standing ovation. More cheers (and boos) came when he batted in the third.
“There were a lot of people who clapped, and I’m appreciative of that,” Glavine said. “In all the time I spent here, I tried to conduct myself professionally on and off the field.”
Andruw Jones, batting against Glavine for the first time after seven seasons as a teammate, led off the second by crushing a 78-mile-per-hour cookie 409 feet into the left-center-field seats.
After Atlanta scored twice in the third to take a 3-0 lead, Lopez, Glavine’s batterymate for 11 seasons, mashed a signature sinker on the outer half 406 feet to center leading off the fourth. After three more batters, Glavine was done.
“Of course it’s an advantage because we know what pitches he’s got,” Lopez said. “Everybody was expecting everything away. Most of the pitches hit were away.
“We wanted to do that to him. We didn’t want him to beat us.”
Countered Chipper Jones: “You feel a little guilty when he’s walking off the field and maybe wishing he was still a teammate.”
A 410-foot three-run shot by Robert Fick off reliever Jaime Cerda capped a seven-run fourth and gave Atlanta a 10-0 lead. The Mets scored two in the seventh and two in the ninth.
