Braves Get a Rise Out of El Duque, but They Can’t Hit Him

ATLANTA —  Greg Maddux led, 1-0, and knew that would be as good as it got. He led, 1-0, on a fourth-inning home run by Chipper Jones and knew he would have to make it stand up.

He came to this conclusion as he batted against Orlando Hernandez for the second time in the sixth inning of Saturday night’s World Series opener and struck out for a second time. No surprise in the strikeout, but it was what he saw from the New York Yankee right-hander known as “El Duque’ that convinced him he would have to be perfect over the final three innings if he and the Atlanta Braves were going to win.

Sinkers? Breaking pitches? Overwhelming velocity?

Well, there was some of that, but Maddux, a four-time Cy Young Award winner who can do tricks with the ball and knows extraordinary stuff when he sees it, shook his head later and said, “He threw me one ball that actually looked like it rose--and it did. I figured that was it, we’re not going to score any more. I don’t care how good a hitter you are, when a pitcher can do that with the ball, you don’t have much of a chance.”

The Braves didn’t. Maddux, replacing the ill Tom Glavine, knew he would have to be perfect over those final three innings and wasn’t.

The Yankees scored four runs against Maddux and John Rocker in the eighth inning and won, 4-1.

The Braves were quietly displeased with the calls of plate umpire Randy Marsh in that decisive eighth inning--thinking he tightened the strike zone--but it was El Duque who left Maddux and Rocker in an untenable position with his dominance of the Atlanta hitters--throwing a variety of pitchers from a variety of angles.

Atlanta leadoff batter Gerald Williams struck out in the first inning and again in the third and was able to laugh later and say there was nothing complicated to it. “It was a situation where he made his pitches and I was in the dugout,” he said. “He mixed his speeds, hitting both sides of the plate. I don’t think we got many hits.”

One, to be exact. Jones’ homer was it in El Duque’s seven innings. He silenced the Braves and a tomahawk-chopping crowd of 51,342, striking out 10 on a night that saw the Braves strike out 12 times and collect only one more hit--a ninth-inning single by Bret Boone off Mariano Rivera.

It was another illustration that the regular season counts for little in October. Hernandez was 0-2 with a 9.72 earned-run average against the Braves, who had bombed the Yankee right-hander in a 10-7 interleague win on July 16.

Obviously, he wasn’t making the ball rise then as he was in this game, compounding what Walt Weiss said was a “real good slider and late-breaking fastball. I mean, it’s tough to get a read on him because he changes speeds and changes arm angles so well. He was a different pitcher from the one we saw in July. He’s a different pitcher from batter to batter.”

Maddux wasn’t bad himself and wasn’t disturbed by the last-minute assignment after initially being scheduled to pitch Game 2.

“It’s the World Series,” he said. “I wasn’t happy to learn that Tom was sick, but I was happy and excited to be pitching.

“It beats sitting around and doing nothing, and I’d had plenty of rest. That wasn’t a factor.”

Maddux had a three-hit shutout going into the eighth, when a single by Scott Brosius, a walk to Darryl Strawberry and a Brian Hunter error on a Chuck Knoblauch sacrifice bunt loaded the bases for Derek Jeter, who slapped a 1-and-2 single to left to tie the score and bring on Rocker. Paul O’Neill’s single through a drawn-in infield gave the Yankees a 3-1 lead that was expanded to 4-1 on a bases-loaded walk to Jim Leyritz.

The Braves were angered by Marsh’s calls on the Strawberry walk and the 0-and-2 Maddux pitch to Jeter, which they felt was a third strike. They also felt Rocker--who would mouth the word “unbelievable” when he left the mound after that inning--was forced into a 3-and-1 count on O’Neill by some bad calls that were duplicated during the Leyritz walk.

“I better not talk about any of that,” catcher Eddie Perez said.

Pitching coach Leo Mazzone wouldn’t talk directly about it either, but there was no mistaking his intent when he said, “both of our guys made good . . . pitches the whole game. I honestly thought 1-0 was going to stand up. He threw good enough pitches to make it stand up.”

Said Manager Bobby Cox: “I made up my mind, I’m not going to talk about the umpires in this Series. But, you know, close, close pitches will determine the game one way or the other. We also felt Chipper was safe [on a stolen base attempt after walking in the seventh]. It’s 1-0. We get a hit with him on second [replays showed that he was safe] and it’s 2-0. That’s a very big difference.”

Maddux refused to criticize Marsh, but said the only bad pitch he made in the eighth was the 1-and-2 fastball to Jeter that he didn’t get low and away enough.

“You’re not going to get every call,” he said. “Sometimes you get pitches and sometimes you don’t. I don’t think there was a game played this year where the umpire got everything right. I like to think I’m mentally tough enough and experienced enough to deal with it.”

Rocker, in his first full season, came into a 1-1 game with the bases loaded, none out, and the middle of the Yankee lineup on deck.

“In that situation,” he said, “they pretty much have you where they want you, but I don’t think I could have made better pitches . . .

“O’Neill hit a four-hopper through a drawn in infield. When you have to play the infield in, it raises a hitter’s average about 100 points.”

Make no mistake:

The plate umpire’s calls had the Braves’ temperature rising in the World Series opener, but Maddux knew that the real difference was the rise on those pitches delivered by the dominant El Duque.