It’s time to talk champagne, but only talk it. The St. Louis Cardinals know better than to think too much about drinking it or at least spraying it on each other and slow-footed reporters.
There will be cases of bubbly at Turner Field this weekend, which was assured when the Cardinals walloped Atlanta 10-4 at Busch Stadium Thursday to take a 2-0 lead in their best-of-five National League Division Series.
But St. Louis remembered, and was reminded often, that it led the Braves three games to one in the 1996 National League Championship Series before getting outscored 32-1 in the final three games and turning the champagne over to the Braves.
Instead of talking about the series almost being over, they wisely chose to put a cork in it.
“We recognize this is a three-win series, not a two-win,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. “Nobody is celebrating.”
To win either Games 3 or 4 in Atlanta, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, St. Louis once again will have to conquer Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, whose 2 1/3-inning outing Thursday was his shortest postseason start since 1992 but should make him available over the weekend.
Atlanta manager Bobby Cox is likely to start Maddux, the Game 1 loser, on Saturday, with Kevin Millwood as his other option.
“We will have Tommy, Mad Dog [Maddux] and Millwood,” Cox said. “Those are three outstanding pitchers, so we do have a crack at it.”
If the Braves can make it to a fifth game, which would be Monday at Busch Stadium, they’ll have to face 20-game winner Darryl Kile, who retired 13 in a row at one point Thursday and allowed just four hits in seven innings.
Kile fell behind 2-0 after Chipper Jones and Brian Jordan had runs batted in in the top of the first, but Will Clark smashed a three-run homer off Glavine in the bottom of the inning to give St. Louis the lead for good.
“That was pretty special,” said Clark, who hit a grand slam off Maddux in the 1989 playoffs at Wrigley Field and faced Glavine in his first at-bat with the Cardinals two months ago. “The one that I got in Wrigley sort of broke the game open, but the one today re-established the momentum.”
Carlos Hernandez homered in the second and then the Cardinals tacked on three more in the third to make it 7-2, the big blow being Ray Lankford’s double.
The Braves had a mini-rally with two runs in the eighth that would have been worse if Jim Edmonds hadn’t made an over-the-head catch of Rafael Furcal’s warning-track line drive that began the inning.
A catch of a lifetime for some, but routine for Edmonds, who is 6-for-9 in the series after hitting three doubles in Game 2.
“I bet you if you see us play in a series, you will see him do at least one of those every [time],” La Russa said. “He is just a complete center-fielder because he has range in four directions.”
Saddled with a bum right knee, Mark McGwire would like a little more range but has come to accept he won’t be able to do much besides pinch hit during the playoffs. The possibility of McGwire entering the game at any time is perhaps even more thrilling than waiting for the four or five at-bats he usually gets.
McGwire was on deck in the seventh but didn’t bat. Instead he led off the eighth inning and pounded out a home run to center-field that left the crowd of 52,389 in a frenzy.
“Mark is the heart and soul of this organization,” Clark said. “Not this team, but this organization.”
