Brian Snitker’s Braves jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the 117th World Series with a 6-2 win over the Astros last night, and now they try to make it two in a row in Minute Maid Park. GAME TIME: 8:09 PM ET.
Dusty Baker doesn’t panic. Baker has seen it all before. A 1-0 deficit in the 117th World Series isn’t going to faze the 72-year-old veteran of 19 seasons as a major league player and 24 as a big league manager.
Baker is not worried about losing the series opener to the Atlanta Braves last night at home in Minute Maid Park, and neither are his Houston Astros.
“Our team doesn’t worry, and our team’s very confident,” Baker told reporters after a 6-2 loss. “We have the knack of bouncing back after losses, after tough losses because they don’t quit, they don’t give up, they don’t get down. That’s the secret of sports.”
“You know, on a loss you have to forget yesterday,” he added. “That’s one of the keys. This team is excellent at forgetting yesterday if you have negative events like we did today.
“I mean, you go in our clubhouse, I’ve never seen these guys worry. They know they can play, and they know they’re going to rebound.”
Braves’ skipper Brian Snitker talked after the win about his club jumping out to a 5-0 lead after two and a half innings and holding on to take the first matchup of the best-of-seven series.
“It was good,” Snitker said, “… but against this club here, I’d rather get a 5-0 lead after the seventh inning than when we did because they have so much time to come back and it’s such a dangerous team. That 5-0 feels like 1-0, quite honestly, to me, just because of the club they are.
“They’ve been through these wars, and they’re so dangerous, and they’re so relentless, which makes it even more special to me in what our bullpen did.”
Snitker’s bullpen gave the Braves 6 2⁄3 innings after starter Charlie Morton took a comeback grounder off his lower leg and later left the game with what was diagnosed as a right fibula fracture.
What did the manager make of his first experience managing a World Series game?
“It was good,” Snitker told reporters. “I wondered before we got here what I’d feel like.
“When the game started, I felt like it was a baseball game, and you kind of get so tunneled in to what you’re doing that you forget where you’re at.
“It’s just another baseball game, a really loud baseball game.
“Then so much happened really quick that I didn’t have a chance to do anything other than that. But it was nice. I’m glad, obviously, we won the game.”
Will the Braves win again, or will Baker’s Astros even things up in Game 2 of the Fall Classic?
Southpaw Max Fried starts for Atlanta tonight against Houston righty José Urquidy at 8:09 PM ET in Minute Maid…