Van Slyke: Through the Pain, a Blessing : NL playoffs: His back hurts and he is having a poor series, but he goes into Game 6 knowing things could be worse.

ATLANTA —  It is difficult making the world smile with five pounds of ice strapped to your back, when all you want to do is lie on the floor with your feet in the air.

Late Sunday night, Andy Van Slyke tried.

So what does it mean that your Pittsburgh Pirates have forced the National League Championship Series back to Atlanta for a sixth game?

“It means that we have a chance to win at least one more game, and it means that we get at least two more days of meal money,” Van Slyke said. “Not necessarily in that order.”

It took trainers nearly five minutes to unwrap all the ice from Van Slyke’s body. It took Van Slyke nearly that long to walk across the room to his locker.

Any possible reasons for Barry Bonds’ sudden aggressiveness?

“Maybe he beat somebody up before he came to work,” Van Slyke said.

When his Pirates take the field at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium today for Game 6, trailing the Braves, 3-2, Van Slyke will be smiling.

He might joke with a ballgirl or, as he did Sunday night, he might stand in center field and imitate members of a between-innings dance team.

But these days, the laughter comes with a price.

Last spring, Van Slyke learned that he has three degenerative disks, one slightly bulging, in his back.

At the same time, his son Jared, 3, nearly drowned in an accident that still makes him think.

“This has been maybe my toughest year, mentally and physically,” Van Slyke said. “Going onto the field has been the easy part.”

He is not suffering from disk herniation, as was Darryl Strawberry, so there can be no back surgery. But there has been constant pain.

Van Slyke cannot even put on his uniform without taking “nearly a baker’s dozen” pain pills.

He is most comfortable lying on the floor. He uses a special lumbar supporting pad when he drives his car . . . when the pain subsides long enough for him to get behind the wheel.

“I have a headache in my back every day,” Van Slyke said before the playoffs. “I just hope that headache doesn’t eventually decapitate me.”

Yet he missed only two games during the season because of the condition.

It is this quiet strength, from a player known mostly for base hits and laughs, that has inspired the Pirates, who are trying to become the first National League team to overcome a 3-1 playoff deficit and win a series.

“We watch Andy, and, while he never says anything, we know what he is going through,” teammate Jay Bell said. “Things like that have set the tone for this team.”

Van Slyke is having his fourth consecutive poor playoff series, batting .238 with two runs batted in, but his seventh-inning fly ball gave the Pirates their victory in Game 3.

And the patchwork team was stabilized throughout the regular season by his All-Star numbers, particularly when Barry Bonds was injured in June. Van Slyke led the league in doubles with 45, tied for the league lead in hits with 199 and finished second in batting average at .324.

Typical of his approach, the back problems actually made him a better overall hitter. After adjusting his swing, he hit .297 against left-handers, more than 100 points higher than his .195 against them in 1991.

“My back didn’t give me a choice but to stop trying to hit home runs,” he said.

He hit 14 homers, his lowest total in three years.

His career playoff average has settled at .185, but not once has Van Slyke used the back as an excuse.

“I just talked to him on the phone the other day, and there is no way that all the talk about his bad postseason isn’t playing on his mind,” said Tom Lawless, Van Slyke’s friend and former teammate with the St. Louis Cardinals. “But Andy won’t say a word about his back. He won’t let anybody know unless he can’t get out of bed that day.”

After what happened at his in-laws’ condominium complex near Bradenton, Fla., last spring, Van Slyke doubts that he will ever encounter pain to match the mental anguish he went through.

Van Slyke was relaxing after a workout when he heard two words that he can still hear seven months later. His son A.J., 8, ran to him from a nearby community swimming pool after being dispatched to round up sons Scott, 5, and Jared.

“Jared’s drowned!” A.J. cried.

Van Slyke remembers running out the door and 400 yards to the pool, where the boys had been swimming with their grandfather and uncle.

Jared apparently slipped unnoticed into an adjacent hot tub when he was noticed by Scott, who saw him under the water and thought he was a toy. When Scott finally realized it was his brother, he saved his life with a scream.

“My first thought was, ‘God, I know he’s yours, but please, please don’t take him now,’ ” Van Slyke recalled.

When Van Slyke arrived, Jared had been pulled from the water and his uncle, Raymond Griffiths, was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

The boy was turning blue and his eyes had rolled back, but he was saved.

The next day, after Jared was released from the hospital with no ill effects, Van Slyke returned to work and quit worrying about his back.

The proximity of disaster finally overwhelmed him several months later, when he learned that the young son of infielder Tim Hulett of the Baltimore Orioles was struck by a car and killed.

“I went up in my hotel room and I finally cried,” Van Slyke said. “That could have been me. . . . It reminded me that every day I can play is a blessing.”

And if the Pirates sweep this two-game series from the Braves and advance to their first World Series since 1979, well, Van Slyke will be one of the few who is not surprised.

“It’s happened before, and we trust it can happen again,” Van Slyke said. “We can have our guts ripped and then, 10 minutes later, we can walk into the clubhouse as winners.”