How is it the Braves and Pirates keep meeting like this?
Granted it has been almost 20 years, and nobody lost out on a trip to the World Series -- you’d hope -- but at least Sid Bream was safe in the 1992 National League Championship Series. And everybody knew it.
The Braves and Pirates didn’t played six games to meet -at home plate like that again Tuesday night, er, Wednesday morning. Just six hours, -39 minutes, the longest game in either Braves or Pirates history.
It was 1:50 a.m. Wednesday morning when Braves infielder Julio Lugo slid into Pirates catcher Michael McKenry’s path, and appeared to take his swipe tag on the shin. In live action -- or as live as home plate umpire Jerry Meals was going to see it after calling 609 balls and strikes in a 19-inning game -- he saw safe and signaled so.
“He’s called safe, and the Braves win the game,” Chip Caray said on the Braves' TV broadcast, almost 20 years after his father, Skip, used some of those same words to call Bream’s legendary slide.
The Pirates haven’t had a winning season since then, 1992, when the Braves went on to their second consecutive World Series. After losing 4-3 on Tuesday night, the Pirates were 53-48, and only a game out of first place in the NL Central.
“It’s a blue-collar story,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. “It has the potential from rags to riches, from last to first, from bad to good -- all those things that can capture your attention.”
McKenry was a 7-year-old living in Knoxville when catcher Mike LaValliere’s diving tag attempt missed Bream the last time these two teams saw so much uproar about a play at the plate.
He was right around the age of the young girl in the Turner Field stands Tuesday night who had been yelling “Let’s Go Pirates” so far past her bedtime, nobody could say much. It was past theirs, too.
Even Barbara Walters was up, apparently channel-surfing with insomnia, and came across the 19th inning on television. It was one of the first things she threw out for discussion on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday morning. She and Whoopi Goldberg agreed: Lugo was out.
McKenry knew it, too. “I knew what I felt,” he said. “I felt like I tagged him.”
But that’s not what kept him up until about 4 a.m.
“Adrenaline’s still going,” McKenry said. “Nineteen innings, you’re running on pure adrenaline. It’s so hot here I didn’t stop sweating until about 4 either.”
When Braves pitcher Scott Proctor woke up Wednesday morning, he awoke to his 3-year-old son Cooper, decked out in his catcher’s mask, squatting. He had heard that daddy’s catcher had gotten hurt the night before.
So Brian McCann’s oblique injury was the biggest news of the day in the household of the one who drove in the winning run, and collected the win, too?
Proctor smiled about it Wednesday afternoon. He had a lot to feel good about, after pitching three scoreless innings in relief to win his first game since May 21, and to do it to do it as the last pitcher standing before Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez would have had to get really creative.
Proctor was the one who hit the ground ball to third baseman Pedro Alvarez, who threw home to McKenry on the pivotal play. Proctor was busy belly-flopping on the infield grass, trying to scramble to first base to beat out a potential double play.
He was getting mobbed by teammates up near first base when Hurdle came out onto the field to give Meals a piece of his mind.
Hurdle had calmed down quite a bit by the time he talked to his father on the phone Wednesday morning. He could laugh a little.
“I asked my dad, back when I was 6 and I felt like I got bullied, I’d call you and ask you to go beat somebody up,” Hurdle said. “But I don’t think this is an appropriate incident for that.”
The Pirates filed an official complaint to Major League Baseball. MLB Executive Vice President Joe Torre acknowledged in a statement the call was missed. Hurdle asked for and received an admission of guilt by Meals, who came out and said after watching video of the play, he missed it.
“On one particular replay I was able to see that Lugo’s pant leg moved ever so slightly when the swipe tag was attempted by McKenry and that’s telling me I was incorrect in my decision,” Meals told an assembled group of three reporters Wednesday afternoon. “He should have been ruled out and not safe.”
About two hours after making that statement, Meals got the first close call of Wednesday night’s game between the Braves and Pirates. He was umpiring third base, and Martin Prado of the Braves was trying to take third on a ball to the left-field corner. Alvarez caught the throw, put the tag on, and Prado was out.
Meals got it right. And the game went on.
“It’s a tough game; it’s a tough job,” said McKenry, who said he does not advocate the use of instant replay, and still doesn’t. “They’re going to get some right; they’re going to get some wrong. That’s just part of it because nobody is perfect at the end of the day.”
