Red-Hot Braves Smoke Reds

No matter how hard they rally or how close they come, the Cincinnati Reds almost always are left with the same depressing realization.

They simply cannot beat the Atlanta Braves.

Bret Boone hit a two-run homer and Brian Hunter added a three-run shot as the Braves built a six-run lead Wednesday night and held on for an 8-7 victory.

Cincinnati was 1-8 against Atlanta this season and 5-24 over the last three years. The Reds haven't won a series from the Braves since September 1996, dropping their last eight.

"I'm glad to see them get out of town," Reds manager Jack McKeon said. "They give us a tough time. Every once in a while, you run across a club where everything goes right for them and everything goes wrong for you. They're out of the way now and we can get on with the rest of our schedule."

The Reds have lost seven of their last 10 games overall, leaving them stuck 1 1/2 games behind Houston in the NL Central. The Mets beat the Astros 9-5 later Wednesday.

The only consolation for the Reds was that they won't have to play the Braves again not in the regular season, anyway.

"That's one of the things about baseball you can't explain, when a team has your number like that," third baseman Aaron Boone said. "But if we play the way we know we can over the last month of the season, you've got to love the fact that we might have another shot at them."

The last time they met in the postseason was 1995, when they played in te NL championship series. The Braves swept them, of course.

"It's nice to be on the other side of it," said Braves reliever Mike Remlinger, who pitched for the Reds from 1995-98. "From being on the other side of it, I know when I pitched against the Braves I always tried to be on top of my game. I think everybody feels that way. Whether they try to do more than they should or they're tight, I don't know."

One night after Greg Maddux shut the Reds out for seven innings despite a chipped bone in his pitching wrist, the Braves turned a season-high four double plays and made a late Cincinnati rally come up just short.

Terry Mulholland (8-7) turned a 7-1 lead over to the bullpen in the seventh, when the Reds went on to score twice and load the bases with none out. Remlinger got Sean Casey to hit into a run-producing double play and struck out Greg Vaughn to keep the Reds at bay for the moment.

Aaron Boone's solo homer off Remlinger cut it to 7-5 in the eighth. John Rocker earned his 31st save in 36 chances despite giving up an RBI double to Brian Johnson in the eighth inning and a solo homer to Casey in the ninth.

Scott Williamson's bases-loaded wild pitch to Ryan Klesko gave the Braves what turned out to be the deciding run in the top of the ninth.

"It's not that we're blowing people out," said Bret Boone, who was traded to the Braves along with Remlinger last November in the Denny Neagle deal. "We're just finding a way to win every night. Tonight was a good example."

Boone put the Braves ahead to stay with a two-run homer to center in the third inning off Ron Villone (7-5).

Atlanta pulled away by scoring five runs on five consecutive hits to open the sixth inning. Hunter, in a 1-for-13 slump, hit his sixth homer off Scott Sullivan to make it 7-1.

The Braves have been the nly barrier that the Reds couldn't overcome this season. They'd won eight consecutive series the best streak in the majors as they headed to Atlanta late last month for a series they described as a measuring stick.

They lost all three games at Turner Field from Aug. 23-25, then split a four-game series in Montreal before returning home and losing another series to Atlanta.

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