Blast from the Past

July 24, 200322 yr

Article from the Atlanta Journal Consitution...

MARLINS 5, BRAVES 4, 12 INNINGS: Blast from the past

Mordecai's HR beats old team

Jack Wilkinson - Staff

Thursday, July 24, 2003

The Redman reaction? Dissatisfaction. Shock, too. For 7 2/3 innings Wednesday, Mark Redman again befuddled the Braves. The Marlins were set to remind us that for two months now, they've played as well as baseball's winningest team. Then came the ninth inning.

Trailing 4-1, the Braves scored three runs off Braden Looper --- two on Julio Franco's triple after Juan Encarnacion's ill-advised dive, then a pinch-hit single by Robert Fick --- to tie it. "I thought we'd win that ballgame," Bobby Cox said of an inevitability that seemed, well, inevitable.

Not so. Looper got out of the ninth. Despite two scoreless innings of relief by John Smoltz, Florida then got an improbable two-out homer in the 12th from ex-Brave Mike Mordecai for a 5-4 victory that revived the Marlins and disappointed the remnants of a Turner Field crowd of 27,137.

"If somebody's gotta hit it," Cox said, "I'm glad Mike did."

Mordecai's first homer of the season was his first since Aug. 8, 2001. It came off Trey Hodges (3-1), the fourth Atlanta reliever of the evening. "I feel like I'm the guy responsible for the loss," said Hodges, who left a fastball up. "I was just trying to get it over the plate, take my chances with him --- especially with Encarnacion up next. The likelihood of him hitting one out with the guys behind him is a little bit higher. But he's a major-leaguer and did what he should've done with it."

"It was right where I was looking," said Mordecai, who has 22 career homers and entered the game in the 10th, pinch-running for Mike Lowell. Laughing, he said, "I probably don't have as much sock as I used to."

This was just Atlanta's third loss in 17 games, only the sixth in 25 games against left-handed starters this season. The Braves (66-34) still have the best 100-game record in franchise history and sit comfortably atop the NL East. Florida, though, after a 19-29 start, is now 53-48 and in the NL wild-card chase. Since May 23, the Marlins and Braves are 34-19, tied for the best record in baseball in that span.

It nearly didn't happen, though. Looper walked Andruw Jones to open the ninth inning and then gave up a single to Javy Lopez. On Franco's sinking liner to right field, Encarnacion charged and foolishly dived for the ball. It bounced by him and rolled to the wall for a two-run triple.

After Vinny Castilla bounced out, Fick (batting for Roberto Hernandez) lined an opposite-field single to tie it. Looper escaped further damage and struck out the side in the 10th. When Nate Bump worked a 1-2-3 12th, Florida had revived itself.

The Marlins nearly wasted another superb effort by Redman, who beat the Braves 8-1 June 30 on a complete-game five-hitter. This night, he allowed just one hit through five innings and no runs through 7 2/3, before walks to Rafael Furcal and Marcus Giles preceded Gary Sheffield's RBI single.

By then, Florida had scored four runs off Mike Hampton. This was nothing like the July 1 debacle in Miami, when Hampton was shelled in a 20-1 rout. "Kind of a fluke," Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone called that outing, when Hampton was pounded for 10 hits and nine earned runs in four innings.

This night, Hampton, who'd won three straight, retired the first nine Marlins but left in the eighth after giving up 11 hits.

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