Cardinals Win, and Jones Plays His Last

ATLANTA — Chipper Jones was driving to the ballpark Friday when he turned to his parents and told them that, for once, he felt none of the nerves that always have churned at the dawn of a postseason with the Atlanta Braves.

There would be no distraction, he said, from reflecting about the highs, mediums and lows of a Hall of Fame career that could end just hours later.

“I’m one of those guys who likes to look out the front windshield, not the rearview mirror,” he observed at a pregame news conference.

For Jones, that windshield became bug-splattered in baseball’s inaugural wild-card game.

The St. Louis Cardinals, who seem to heat up when the winds start to carry a chill, carried their late-season roll into the playoffs, winning, 6-3, at Turner Field through some fault of the Braves’ beloved ringleader and a dollop of umpiring controversy.

The Braves threatened with two runners in scoring position and one out in the eighth inning when Andrelton Simmons sent a lazy pop-up into short left field. The ball was dropped, but the infield fly rule was invoked, much to the consternation of Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, who ranted at the umps that the ball had sailed beyond the customary zone for which the rule is applied.

A normally even-tempered Atlanta crowd pelted the field with liquid containers, causing a 19-minute delay. When play resumed, a walk that filled the bases was followed by Michael Bourn’s strikeout.

While slugger Albert Pujols (relocated) no longer casts a long shadow from the batter’s box and manager Tony LaRussa (retired) from the dugout steps, St. Louis, the defending World Series champion, commence a best-of-five set Sunday with the Washington Nationals at home in the National League Division Series round.

Though he was the esteemed elder in Friday’s game, Jones, 40, had reason to be coping with a deeper caldron of emotions than any other player. Having announced his intention to retire after the season, he felt a double dose of looming finality entering the knockout game.

Jones bowed out with a 1-for-5 night, his farewell at-bat a broken-bat infield hit with two outs in the ninth that breathed life into the Braves.

Jones’s forgettable night was compounded by a throwing error that established an unwanted template for Atlanta. Two subsequent misfires by infielders enabled St. Louis to accumulate six runs after only three hits.

The outcome not only pulled the shade on Jones’s remarkable run of 19 seasons, but another that lasted an incredible 23 games.

The Braves could have lengthened their streak of wins on starts by pitcher Kris Medlen to two-dozen, one made all the more implausible by it beginning two years ago before he underwent Tommy John surgery. Medlen then worked extensively out of the bullpen, including some this season, and would have remained in the role if not for injuries to two starters.

Winning pitcher Kyle Lohse yielded two runs in nearly six innings, a contrast to his previous encounter with the Braves in late May that became both a low point and a blessing.

Torched by five runs in five innings of a 10-7 loss, he altered his delivery out of concern that pitches were being tipped off. Rather than bringing hands to chest before delivery, he now extends them overhead. Whether the impact was real or illusory, Lohse has been stifling since, and his 0-3 career record and 7.13 earned-run average in previous playoffs were rendered moot.

He and Medlen opened the game equally bullish, each striking out two in the first inning.

Braves right fielder Justin Heyward kept it scoreless in the second, using every bit of his 6-foot-5 frame for a leaping catch at the fence to deny Yadier Molina an apparent home run.

Baseball’s postseason is defined partly by turning little-known players into impactful ones, and this year’s wasted little time in doing so.

Braves catcher David Ross, pressed into duty because of the six-time all-star Brian McCann’s shoulder injury that has depressed his output, lofted a two-run homer in the second inning. Throughout Medlen’s oppressive stretch, such a lead has often been sufficient.

A fielding faux pas by, of all people, Jones was vital in the visitors assuming a 3-2 lead in the fourth.

Jones, whose glove work enhances his credentials for Cooperstown, collected a one-hopper by Matt Holliday on what seemed an inevitable double-play grounder. But his errant throw to second base veered into right field.

Allen Craig followed with a double to the wall in left field, leveling the score. Yadier Molina’s groundout pushed Craig to third, and he touched home on David Freese’s sacrifice fly.

Holliday’s homer in the sixth put the Braves in a 4-2 hole, dashing the home team’s hope of turning over a late lead to its meritorious relief staff.

Instead, St. Louis padded its advantage to 6-2 in the seventh on wayward throws by second baseman Uggla and shortstop Simmons after each gathered up ground balls.

Atlanta drew to within 6-3 in the seventh when Jose Constanza tripled and scored.

The Braves’ eighth bubbled with potential, but, with the infield fly call, petered out.

Jones dug into the batter’s box dirt with two out in the ninth to an ovation that he recognized by doffing his helmet. As fans chanted his first name and popping flashbulbs turned the scene into a light show, he stroked a grounder that seemed destined to become the last out but became an infield hit.

Jones wound up at third after a double, but the game ended on Uggla’s groundout.

Drop in Jobless Figure Gives Jolt to Race for President

The jobless rate abruptly dropped in September to its lowest level since the month President Obama took office, indicating a steadier recovery than previously thought and delivering another jolt to the presidential campaign.

The improvement lent ballast to Mr. Obama’s case that the economy is on the mend and threatened the central argument of Mitt Romney’s candidacy, that Mr. Obama’s failed stewardship is reason enough to replace him.

Employers added a modest 114,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, but estimates for what had been disappointing gains in July and August were revised upward to more respectable levels.

Unemployment fell to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, crossing what had become a symbolic threshold in the campaign. Mr. Romney was deprived of a favorite line of attack, mocking the president for “43 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent.”

The new numbers may have less economic than political import, since they represent only one month of data that can be quite volatile and give little indication that the plodding recovery has accelerated.

“We’ve been amazingly resilient thus far in the face of all these headwinds,” said Ellen Zentner, the senior United States economist for Nomura Securities International, referring to global obstacles like the slowdown in China and domestic ones like the looming expiration of tax breaks. “But it’s awfully hard to see getting significantly above that growth range given that these headwinds are still in place.”

Still, an energized Mr. Obama seized on the statistics as he campaigned in Virginia and Ohio, seeking to regain his footing after a listless performance in the first debate this week. Mr. Romney, whose muscular showing in Denver had emboldened his campaign, scrambled to play down the report, saying it merely confirmed that millions of Americans had given up looking for work.

 In back-to-back rallies in Virginia, the president declared, “This country has come too far to turn back.” His Republican challenger then insisted, “We don’t have to stay on the path we’ve been on. We can do better.”

Some Romney backers, led by the former chief executive of General Electric, John F. Welch Jr., suggested that the White House had massaged the Labor Department data to make it more favorable. The Obama administration, economic experts and some Republicans dismissed that notion as a groundless conspiracy theory.

The jobs report was preceded by other signs of growing economic strength, including a jump in consumer confidence, the strongest auto sales in four years, rallying stock prices and, at long last, a stabilization of housing prices.

According to the monthly survey of employers, the bulk of the gains came from service jobs, particularly in education and health care. Though government downsizing has been a drag on the recovery, government over all added 10,000 jobs in September, the third consecutive month of gains.

The nation’s employers have added an average of 146,000 jobs a month in 2012, just ahead of the numbers that are considered necessary to absorb new workers into the labor force. “This is not what a real recovery looks like,” Mr. Romney said in a statement.

Areas of weakness included manufacturing, one of the bright spots that Mr. Obama has showcased throughout the re-election campaign. It lost 16,000 jobs after a revised 22,000 drop in August in the face of a global slowdown. The number of temporary jobs, usually considered a harbinger of future growth, fell 2,000. Speaking to a rain-soaked crowd of 9,000 at Cleveland State University, Mr. Obama said, “Today’s news should give us some encouragement. It shouldn’t be an excuse for the other side to talk down the economy just to try to score some political points.”

“We’ve made too much progress to return to the policies that led to this crisis in the first place,” the president said to cheers.

The nation now has nearly the same number of jobs as when Mr. Obama took office in January 2009. Since the economy stopped hemorrhaging jobs in February 2010, there has been an increase of more than 4.3 million. A mere 61,000-job increase would allow Mr. Obama to claim a net gain in jobs over his tenure.

The White House has already made that claim based on one measurement. In an annual recalibration last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said 400,000 more jobs were added in the 12 months that ended in March than previously thought. Such revisions are common, but the adjustment process is slow — that new benchmark will not be incorporated into the monthly jobs figures until early next year.

Mr. Romney, on other hand, said the lower rate spoke to a nation short of hope. The rate, he asserted, would be about 11 percent if the same percentage of people were looking for work now as on the day Mr. Obama was elected.

“If you just dropped out of the labor force, if you just give up and say, ‘Look, I can’t go back to work, I’m just going to stay home,’ if you just drop out altogether, why, you’re no longer part of the employment statistics, so it looks like unemployment is getting better,” Mr. Romney said at a farm equipment dealership in Abingdon, Va.

That was true in August, when the rate dropped to 8.1 percent, from 8.3 percent. But this time, the statistics showed that more people were working, not that discouraged job seekers had stopped looking for work.

The jobs report is based on two surveys, one of businesses and one of households, that can present different pictures.

While the survey of businesses showed mediocre growth, the household survey had a whopping increase of 873,000 people working in September. The household survey is much more volatile and prone to sampling error, but it captures aspects of the labor market that the business survey does not, like self-employment and household workers. Economists said that this month’s household survey probably overstated the improvement, but that its credibility was bolstered by an unexpectedly robust rise in consumer confidence.

The polling firm Gallup pinpointed the improvement in consumer confidence last month to the first day of the Democratic National Convention and attributed it almost entirely to increased optimism among Democrats, while confidence among Republicans remained at low levels. But Gallup could not say whether politics or economic conditions had driven the change.

The employment gains were not spread equally. While for older workers, the unemployment rate was the lowest in years, the unemployment rate for black men improved only 0.1 percentage point and the portion of all black men with jobs actually fell, to 57.5 percent.

There was no movement between August and September in a broader measure of underemployment, which includes the jobless who have stopped looking for work and those who work part time but would like to work full time. That stayed at 14.7 percent, though it is down from 16.4 percent a year earlier.

And 4.8 million people are in the group that has had the toughest time finding work — those who have been unemployed for longer than six months.

Sarah Thurman, a civil engineer in Kansas City, Mo., has been looking since May 2010. “The smaller firms are starting to post job openings, and that hasn’t been like that for over two years, but there’s so many of us without jobs that there’s so much competition,” she said. “I’m hearing from the headhunters that it’s going to be opening up, it’s going to be opening up — but when?”

Like Republicans and Democrats, consumers and businesses have divergent views of the economic situation. Consumers have brightened along with the better outlook for employment, calmer stock markets and whispers of rising home values.

Business leaders have been hanging back, more focused on a global slowdown and domestic concerns. They say they are uncertain what the election will mean for the business climate and are waiting in part for a resolution of the host of tax increases and budget cuts that will be set off at the end of the year if Congress fails to act.

The discrepancy between consumers’ mood and companies’ outlook can be easily explained, economists said. “Businesses are much more forward-looking,” said Ms. Zentner at Nomura.

In a survey of 400 chief financial officers conducted this summer, Grant Thornton, a management consulting firm, found that only 37 percent foresaw the possibility of adding workers while 18 percent said they expected to shrink over the next six months.

Harry Kazazian, the chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a maker of camping equipment based in Alabama, said the election, the fiscal cliff and rapidly shifting regulations had put him in a cautious mood.

With sales on the rise, Exxel has slowly resumed a capital investment plan that it suspended three years ago. “We’re moving forward, but we’re doing it in steps rather than being much more aggressive and putting ourselves out there,” Mr. Kazazian said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if things start turning the other way, meaning down.”

But at a Walmart in Atlanta, shoppers were loosening the reins a bit, buying what they described as small indulgences like scented candle oil and seasonal beer.

Michael Peacock, 43, said that although his house was in foreclosure, he could sense enough activity in his chosen field, online marketing, that he could afford to turn down some work outside his specialty. “I’m not superconfident in the economy. But in my line of work, things have been getting better. There seems to be some improvement.”

John H. Cushman Jr. contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 5, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the increase in jobs since February 2010 and the number of jobs needed for President Obama to claim an increase during his tenure. More than 4.3 million jobs have been added since February 2010, not more than 400,000, and an increase of 61,000 jobs, not 62,000, would allow Mr. Obama to claim a net gain. The earlier version also misidentified the city where Sarah Furman lives. She lives in Kansas City, Mo., not Kansas City, Kan.

With Steve Jobs Tribute, a Home Page Reflects Apple’s Founder Again

On most days, Apple.com is like any other corporate home page — a billboard, a news hub for corporate goings-on and a launching pad for an online store where people can buy stuff. Every once in a while, though, it turns into something unlike any other big company’s home page.

Friday was one such day, when Apple’s home page featured a video tribute to Steven P. Jobs, the company’s co-founder and former chief executive who died a year ago to the day. The 105-second video consisted of still black-and-white images of Mr. Jobs with audio of him announcing Apple products like the iPhone and describing Apple’s corporate philosophy. The music on the soundtrack is Bach’s Prelude No. 1 in G Major for Cello, played by Yo-Yo Ma, who was a friend of Mr. Jobs.

The home page take-over made it modestly more difficult for Apple customers, most of whom were probably unaware that Friday was the anniversary of Mr. Jobs’s death, to buy Apple products. After the video finished playing and a letter from Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, appeared, regular links to Apple’s online store and product pages were displayed.

Apple isn’t alone in using the platinum online real estate of its home page to make a big statement with its customers. Amazon, for instance, periodically wipes all of the normal product pitches from its front door to replace them with letters from its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, including one in July about an education and training program to help Amazon workers improve their skills.

Under Mr. Jobs though, Apple’s home page occasionally became a showcase for events and people that had very little to do with Apple’s business.

In 2007, after Al Gore, the former vice president and an Apple board member, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work bringing attention to climate change, Apple devoted most of its home page to celebrating the event. “We are bursting with pride for Al and this historic recognition of his global contributions,” a message on the page said.

When people that Mr. Jobs admired died, Apple.com was made over in similar fashion. That happened when George Harrison of the Beatles and Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who was featured in Apple’s “Think Different” advertising campaign, passed away, both in 2005.

All of the tributes bore the unmistakable imprint of Mr. Jobs, without whose approval such radical changes to the Apple home page would have been unthinkable. Even after his death, his influence on the site still shows.

FBI: Friendly fire likely in border shootings

WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators believe that the fatal shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie was the result of friendly fire.

In a Friday night statement, the FBI said that while an inquiry was continuing, "there are strong preliminary indications that the death of.. Ivie and the injury to a second agent was the result of an accidental shooting incident involving only the agents.''

The shootings on Tuesday about five miles (eight kilometers) north of the border near Bisbee left one agent dead and another wounded.

Ivie was shot and killed after he and two other agents responded to an alarm triggered by a sensor aimed at detecting smugglers and others entering the U.S. illegally.

The other agent was shot in the ankle and buttocks but was released from the hospital after surgery. The third agent was uninjured.

"While it is important to emphasize that the FBI's investigation is actively continuing, there are strong preliminary indications that the death of United States Border Patrol Agent Nicholas J. Ivie and the injury to a second agent was the result of an accidental shooting incident involving only the agents," FBI Special Agent in Charge James L. Turgal Jr. said in a statement.

Turgal said the FBI is using "all necessary investigative, forensic and analytical resources in the course of this investigation." He did not elaborate.

A federal law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said Friday that it appears the agents, while responding to a tripped ground sensor near the U.S.- Mexico border early Wednesday, became disoriented and were caught in their own fire.

David Klinger, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis and an expert in police shootings, said investigators trying to determine whether friendly fire occurred in a shooting involving law enforcement would compare the ballistics of officers' guns with bullet slugs that were either recovered from or passed through an officer's body.

The officers involved in the case and any known witnesses also would be asked to provide accounts of such a shooting during interviews with investigators. And investigators would try to establish where officers and witnesses were positioned at the time of the shooting, Klinger said.

After a meeting of border governors Friday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer stood by the criticism she leveled earlier this week in response to the shooting in which she said a political stalemate and the federal government's failures have left the border unsecured and Border Patrol agents in harm's way.

"It's the federal government's responsibility to secure our border, and they need to do that, and then we can deal with all the other issues that have come about because our border hasn't been secured," said Brewer, who plans to attend Ivie's memorial service Monday in Sierra Vista.

The Border Patrol couldn't immediately comment on the frequency of friendly fire shootings at the agency, but such incidents appeared to be extremely rare.

Neither George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, nor Kent Lundgren, chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, had ever heard of any friendly fire incidents in the Border Patrol.

"I know of absolutely none in the past, and my past goes back to 1968," Lundgren said, citing the year he joined the Border Patrol. "I'm not saying it never happened. I'm just saying I've never heard of it."

McCubbin has served in the Border Patrol since 1985.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came to Arizona on Friday to express her condolences to Ivie's family and meet with law enforcement authorities in southern Arizona about the investigation.

Turgal also said in the statement that the FBI "extends our deepest sympathy and condolences to the family, friends and co-workers of Nicholas Ivie and to our partners in the United States Border Patrol."

Ivie's death prompted a massive search for potential suspects in the remote corridor, a popular transit area for human smugglers and drug traffickers, and near where fellow Agent Brian Terry was slain in a gun battle with smugglers in 2010.

Terry's shooting helped expose a botched gun trafficking operation in which federal investigators allowed 2,000 firearms to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartel operatives and other criminals.

Authorities intended to track the guns into Mexico. Two rifles found at the scene of Terry's shooting were bought by a member of the gun-smuggling ring being investigated. Critics of the operation say any shooting along the border now will raise the specter that those illegal weapons are still being used.

Twenty-six Border Patrol agents have died in the line of duty since 2002.