ATLANTA – The needle on the here-we-go-again meter raced past full and the confidence level of most of those watching on television back home sprinted toward empty.
Seventh inning, Mets leading the Braves by a run. The bases were loaded. Were you? Has it come to that? Must you find comfort in a bottle when the Mets put themselves and you through this annual southern discomfort in September at the House of Horrors, Turner Field?
The count was three balls, no strikes to Andruw Jones. John Franco stood on the same Turner Field mound from which he failed to protect an eighth-inning lead in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series against the Braves.
What went through the veteran reliever’s mind?
“Don’t mess up,” Franco said.
Franco delivered the fastball that came in above the belt. By the rulebook, it was a strike. By the practice of most 21st century umpires, it was a ball.
Home plate umpire Bruce Froemming called it a strike and Braves manager Bobby Cox hollered two words from the dugout. One of them was profane.
“No, no,” Cox then hollered.
Yes, yes. Franco was granted a reprieve.
And this was what he did with that reprieve on a night he didn’t have much going for him in the way of command: He gave the Mets their biggest out of the season. Jones popped out to Mets right fielder Derek Bell. Franco was met with an army of ‘attaboys when he made it back to the dugout.
One line in the boxscore indicates Franco, in the midst of a terrific season as a set-up man, had an awful night. The most important line in the boxscore, the one that showed the Mets defeated the Braves 6-3, was more relevant.
Franco’s line: Two-thirds of an inning, two hits, one run, earned, one walk, one strikeout, one home run.
Franco replaced Al Leiter with runners on first and second and two outs in the seventh and walked pesky Braves leadoff man Rafael Furcal to load the bases and set up the confrontation with Andruw Jones.
“That’s a big out,” Franco said. “If walked him, Chipper comes up with the bases loaded. Chipper usually has his way with us and we saw what he did the next inning.”
Chipper Jones led off the eighth with a homer to left off Franco, who then struck out Brian Jordan and surrendered a single to Andres Galarraga before being replaced by Armando Benitez.
Franco has reason to remember one of those two outs long after he forgets the ugly line.
Andruw Jones spits a two-run single into the outfield and gives the Braves a 4-3 lead or he walks and Chipper hits a grand slam and makes it 7-3 and it would have taken the Mets’ two-hour flight about a week to get back to Philadelphia. That’s how heavy the air would have been.
Not that the Mets show their displeasure easily. They are a different bunch in that regard. They tend toward loudness, even in the midst of slumps.
Consider the pregame atmosphere in the clubhouse.
It’s 4 in the afternoon. No bird pops out of a clock to announce the time with four cuckoos. None is needed.
John Franco and Mike Bordick are sitting on a leather couch watching a Barry Manilow concert on a big-screen TV.
“At the Copa, Copa Cabana,” croons the man with the styled hair.
Rick White, Turk Wendell, Eric Cammack and Rick Reed are riveted to the TV on the other side of the room. They are watching a Wendell hunting videotape. Many kills.
Benitez is removed from this all, engaged in his daily talk about pitching with his mother, who takes the calls in the Dominican Republic.
Timo Perez, who doesn’t yet read English, is working on learning the language, sitting at his corner locker, thumbing through a magazine, looking at the pictures mostly.
Later, at the entrance to the clubhouse, Jersey Jones, Bell and Benitez are thumbing through a salesman’s gold chains. After the game, Cammack walked around the clubhouse wearing a yellow-and-black Wolverine super-hero costume and Grant Roberts wore an Elvis Presley costume, complete with chest toupee.
Franco took one look at Cammack’s costume and cracked, “He borrowed that from Derek.”
Bell is the Mets’ loudest dresser.
The annual rookie hazing would not have seemed nearly as funny if the Braves completed another September sweep of the Mets. And Franco would not have been in the mood to discuss his eighth-inning at-bat, a swinging strikeout.
“I can’t remember when my last at-bat was,” Franco said. “I think it was in 1962. I felt pretty good up there. My bat was at home. If I had that, I probably would have gotten a hit.”
Lenny Harris lent him a batting helmet and Mike Hampton lent him one of his bats so that Franco could make an out. It was far from his biggest out of the night. One win doesn’t end a team’s mental block against another any more than one strike cured Steve Blass of the disease named after him.
Nevertheless, making it go into remission felt pretty darn good to the men who flew north last night.
