Smoltz Has Rocky Return to Rotation

The season was only in the second inning when John Smoltz called it a day, fans taunting him with tomahawk chops as he trudged to the dugout, his first start in nearly four years a big bust.

Smoltz lasted only five outs, giving up a grand slam to Juan Encarnacion that capped a five-run first inning, and Carlos Delgado had four hits in his Florida Marlins debut to help beat Atlanta, 9-0, Tuesday at Miami.

Making the transition from All-Star closer back to the rotation, Smoltz threw 65 pitches and gave up seven runs, six of them earned and all scoring with two out. A Marlin record crowd of 57,405 jeered when he departed.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” Smoltz said. “Obviously I wouldn’t have thought this was possible. It’s numbing. You want a mulligan.”

By pitching 1 2/3 innings, the former Cy Young Award winner matched his shortest outing as a starter. It happened three other times, most recently on May 3, 1994, also against Florida.

Smoltz said he threw only two bad pitches, one of them a high fastball to Encarnacion. But he’ll go into his second start Sunday with an earned-run average of 32.40.

“If I focused on my ERA right now, I’d be an idiot,” Smoltz said. “I’m disappointed with the results, but not the way I threw.”

Delgado swung at all three pitches in his first at-bat and missed -- Smoltz’s lone strikeout.

He had three singles and a double after that, finishing four for five with three runs batted in.

St. Louis 7, Houston 3 -- Jim Edmonds, Larry Walker and Reggie Sanders homered for the Cardinals at Houston in a season-opening rematch of the 2004 National League championship series.

The Cardinals went ahead, 3-0, in the first and never trailed, ending Houston’s 18-game, regular-season home winning streak, the longest in the major leagues since Cleveland won 18 in a row at Jacobs Field in May and June 1994.

Chris Carpenter, who sat out the postseason because of nerve damage in his right biceps, won by giving up one run and four hits in seven innings. Shortstop David Eckstein went one for five in his Cardinal debut.

Making his third consecutive opening-day start, Roy Oswalt, the NL’s only 20-game winner last season, gave up six runs and seven hits in six innings.

Arizona 5, Chicago 4 -- Luis Gonzalez homered twice, his eighth and ninth career shots off Greg Maddux, and drove in three runs to lead the Diamondbacks at Phoenix.

Russ Ortiz, who signed a four-year, $33-million free-agent contract with Arizona in the off-season, gave up three runs and six hits in five innings to get the victory. He also singled in the go-ahead run in the fifth.

Gonzalez, the lone holdover from Arizona’s opening-day lineup a year ago, hit a two-run homer in the first and a solo shot that tied the score, 3-3, in the fourth.

Brandon Lyon, who sat out all of last season because of elbow surgery, didn’t give up a run in the final 1 2/3 innings to get the save.

Todd Hollandsworth hit a three-run homer for the Cubs.

Maddux, who turns 39 on April 14, gave up five runs and six hits in five innings to take the loss.