Dodgers send a message that is understandable in all languages

Language barrier? What language barrier?

Today, for the first time since he arrived here last winter, I understand Hiroki Kuroda completely.

So do the Dodgers, who, on a fall evening chilled by the threat of extinction, gathered around his passion and climbed aboard his nerve.

Turns out, Kuroda not only speaks Japanese, he speaks hardball.

For more than six testy innings against the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday, he threw them with cleverness and crankiness.

Then, in a single energizing moment, he threw one with a message.

The ball sailed behind the head of the Phillies' Shane Victorino, missing the player but thumping his team and denting this series.

"It was not a message to them, it was a message to us," Dodgers catcher Russell Martin said. "We will not be pushed around."

Yeah, Kuroda said that.

Judging from the way they whined and wailed and ultimately wilted, the Phillies also understood him completely.

Restraining hitters while finally retaliating for the pitch that nearly decapitated Manny Ramirez in Game 2, the hero called "Hiro" led the Dodger to a 7-2 victory in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.

The Dodgers now trail the series by a more manageable two games to one, and the pitcher now has a new nickname.

"Kuroda is a ninja," Martin said. "Or maybe more like a samurai."

For one night in a Dodger Stadium that echoed with past October glories, he was Big D, he was Bulldog, he was everything that some other Dodgers pitchers haven't been.

From the moment the Phillies began pitching inside last week, Dodgers hitters quietly fumed that their pitchers wouldn't protect them.

"We didn't send a message," Ramirez said.

Kuroda may not speak much English, but somehow he heard.

He may be one of the quiet, forgotten members of the staff, but he had been doing this for 10 seasons in Japan, and he figured it out.

"I didn't think I could hold them down unless I worked both sides of the plate," he said through an interpreter.

Actually, in knocking a few Dodgers knees, Phillies pitchers had been using three sides -- outside, inside and broadside.