BASEBALL / DAILY REPORT : NATIONAL LEAGUE : Pirates’ Smiley Might Stay in Hotel

John Smiley, today’s starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 3 against the Atlanta Braves, can be forgiven if he goes straight from his hotel room to the pitching mound.

While visiting Underground Atlanta after a game last season, he got into an argument and broke his left hand on another man’s face.

Smiley, who still contends that the accident was caused by the door of a taxi, was on the disabled list for six weeks and went 6-7 with a 5.23 ERA after his return.

This season, he became the first Pirate to win 20 games since John Candelaria in 1977. Smiley ended the season with a team-high seven-game winning streak.

“The No. 1 reason he is doing better is, he’s healthy,” Pirate Manager Jim Leyland said. “Number two, he was a little embarrassed by last year. He was not as much a part of our success as he wanted to be.

“So, this year he was on a mission. When you combine that with some ability, good things happen.”

In his career so far, Smiley, 26, has held the Braves’ three top batters to 11 hits in 49 at-bats for a .224 average. He said he should be able to continue that good fortune if he can keep his emotions intact.

“I try to stay in my tunnel vision,” Smiley said.

Said Leyland: “He’s corraled himself more on the mound. That’s important.”

Although there have been many accounts of the origin of the Atlanta Braves’ tomahawk chop, the Braves say it was created by Deion Sanders.

The chop has been used for many years at Florida Sate, where he starred in football. When he joined the Braves this season, a couple of Sanders’ fans from Tallahassee, Fla., began greeting him with that chop.

“It started with Deion, no doubt,” teammate Jeff Treadway said. “I remember looking out of the dugout right after he got here, and a few people in the stands were doing it. Me and a couple of guys started doing it back to them, and next thing I know, everybody is doing it.”

Treadway said the Braves haven’t grown weary of the chop and accompanying chant.

“Because it always kind of rises up out of nowhere and gets louder and louder, it’s pretty eerie,” Treadway said. “It is still amazing to hear and see.”

The Braves are keeping alive a baseball tradition, the kangaroo court, with fines for infractions that are not always laughing matters.

A player is fined for fraternizing too much with opponents, for missing signs and for continuing to play cards or hand-held video games once the team bus has arrived at the clubhouse before a game.

“They are all little things, but they are important to us,” said Mike Heath, an injured catcher who serves as judge.

After raising more than $4,000 in fines, the Braves used the money to hold a team party in New York.

Treadway, the Braves’ left-handed-hitting second baseman who batted .320, probably will see action this weekend after sitting out much of the last few weeks because of a sore right hand. He will undergo surgery this winter for removal of bone chips. Treadway batted .450 against the Pirates during the season. . . . The combined shutout in Game 2 by the Braves’ Steve Avery and Alejandro Pena was the first shutout in the National League playoffs since the Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser beat the New York Mets, 6-0, on Oct. 12, 1988. . . . Ron Gant’s three stolen bases in Game 1 tied an NL series record held by the Dodgers’ Steve Sax (1988) and the Cincinnati Reds’ Joe Morgan and Ken Griffey (both in 1975).