Just in case the series finale against the last-place Astros was getting a little short on drama, the Braves called on their five-time All-Star catcher Tuesday afternoon for the game of his life in what amounted to a cameo appearance.
Brian McCann was scheduled for a day off. That meant only that Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez had McCann up his sleeve to pinch hit with two outs in the ninth inning.
Sure enough, down to his last strike, McCann launched a game-tying home run to force extra innings. His idea of a curtain call? McCann hit a two-run walk-off homer two innings later for a 3-1 win in 11 innings.
“Doesn’t get much better than that,” said McCann, still picking celebratory infield dirt his teammates covered him with out of his ear. “I ate six pounds of dirt.”
While his teammates were thinking, “Hey, maybe a double here,” with Eric Hinske at first base and one out in the 11th, McCann went well beyond democratic. He worked a 1-0 slider from reliever Jeff Fulchino for a shot just fair inside the right-field foul pole for his second career walk-off homer and first since last August against the Marlins.
McCann was only touring the premises when his shot to left center on a 1-2 curveball from Mark Melancon in the ninth became his second career pinch-hit home run.
“To be able to hit a ball to left center field, I’ve been working on it for a long time,” said McCann, who doubled his home-run total for the season in two at-bats to four. “Today was the first time I’ve really backed one up to left center field for some power. I was very pleased.”
While McCann was working on the finer points of his approach, backup catcher David Ross watched in awe. Ross caught the first nine innings before turning things over to McCann.
“Part of me wants to give him this huge hug, and part of me wants to kick him in the groin because he made it look so easy,” Ross said. “I just grinded out nine innings and battled my tail off, and he comes in and hits two homers. I’m so happy for him and us.”
Gonzalez had watched former Braves manager Bobby Cox use McCann this way when Gonzalez was a third-base coach for the Braves and as manager of the Marlins. He was happy to be playing the cards this time.
“As one old wise guy always told me, it’s nice to give guys days off because you can always put them in anywhere you want to later in the game,” Gonzalez said. “Sure enough we put McCann right where we wanted him.”
McCann got his second walk-off hit in six games, after helping the Braves beat the Nationals 6-5 in 11 innings Thursday. They have won five of those six, carrying momentum through a series win over the Phillies and a two-game sweep of the Astros that took less than 24 hours.
The Braves finished the homestand 5-3 and within two games of first place in the National League East, pending the Phillies’ game against the Cardinals on Tuesday night. They’re 12-4 in May as they hit the road for a three-city trip starting in Arizona.
Scott Proctor and Cory Gearrin both worked out of bases-loaded jams to finish what Derek Lowe had started, allowing only one run in seven innings on a Brett Wallace homer to give a dominant Wandy Rodriguez some competition.
Rodriguez had shut out the Braves for eight innings, leaving them down 1-0 until McCann came to the plate in the ninth.
“That’s the best I’ve ever seen Wandy Rodriguez,” said Chipper Jones, who returned to the lineup Tuesday despite torn cartilage in his knee. “We’ve faced him 10 times since I’ve been here. He was in and out. He was changing speeds. We couldn’t get anything going against him.
“Luckily we had Mac on the bench waiting in the wings to win the ball game for us. ... That’s a day off people dream about right there.”
