Scioscia’s Surprise Home Run Helps Beat Cubs

Treating it with the same disdain they would a White Sox fan if one were to show up in their midst, the Wrigley Field bleacher bums in right field heaved Mike Scioscia’s home run ball almost all the way back to the infield Monday, where second-base umpire Billy Williams pocketed it.

Scioscia looked puzzled when asked if he’d retrieved it from the umpire.

“No,” he said. “Was it momentous, or what?”

Maybe not when compared to the last home run surrendered by Cub reliever Lee Smith. That one came in the National League playoffs, when Steve Garvey applied the crusher to haunt this generation of Chicago Cub fans.

But for the Dodgers, Scioscia’s two-run, game-tying home run in the ninth inning of a game they would win in the 10th, 5-4, on three singles and an error, came as an exhilarating jolt, if not a total shock.

“On the bench, I said, ‘Just one time, Mike, hit one out of there,’ ” Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda said while devouring one of at least a dozen pizzas that surfaced in the Dodger clubhouse after the game.

“That’s all I kept hoping for.”

Scioscia does not hit home runs. He had five last season, which matched his career high. Dodger Vice President Al Campanis, thinking that with less weight Scioscia might have more power, asked the catcher to drop a few pounds over the winter. Scioscia tried to comply. He said he even took his honeymoon cruise last winter on the “S.S. Dietetic.”

But while that may have done wonders for his waistline, it did nothing for his warning-track power. He had no home runs in spring training and none in April.

Asked if he remembered what pitcher gave up his last home run, Scioscia replied: “Frank Gorty.” If the name’s unfamiliar, it should be. Scioscia was talking about a kid he faced in Little League.

So that’s why the thought of swinging for a home run never occurred to him when he came to the plate with Mike Marshall on first and none out in the ninth with the Dodgers trailing, 3-1.

Marshall, who is leading the team in homers, was on base only because the ball he hit traveled slightly further than the barrel of his bat. The ball cleared the head of shortstop Shawon Dunston and landed in shallow left field. The bat ended up in the third-base box seats.

“I don’t think I ever come to the plate thinking about a home run,” Scioscia said.

Under the circumstances, the thought would have been laughable. Consider the evidence: The Cubs, defending National League East champions, came into the game with a 10-2 record at Wrigley Field. They were 12-0 in games in which they led after six innings.

Smith, the Cubs’ massive (6-6, 225-pound) bullpen terror, had produced numbers equally impressive. He had six saves in six save opportunities, a 1.42 earned-run average, and had struck out 21 of the 49 batters he’d faced, or 43% of the souls unfortunate enough to have to stand in against his 95 m.p.h. fastball.

Giving up Garvey’s home run hasn’t done anything for his personality, either. Smith said he no longer talks to opposing hitters. “They keep my old lady from going to the mall,” he said.

But after Smith pitched out of a second-and-third, none-out situation in the eighth by striking out Mariano Duncan, Ken Landreaux and Pedro Guerrero in succession, Scioscia may have cut short another shopping spree when he nailed a Smith fastball.

“I closed my eyes when the ball was about here,” Scioscia said, motioning with his hands about belt high. “Then I just put out my bat.”

And the Dodgers were back into a game that the Cubs could have put away long before if they hadn’t left a dozen men on base. Thirteen Cubs went down on strikes, including ex-Dodger Davey Lopes four times. Bobby Castillo, who relieved starter Orel Hershiser, struck out five in three scoreless innings that gave the Dodgers their chance to play catchup.

“I threw him a fastball,” Smith said. “If I’d thrown him a breaking pitch, and he’d hit it out, I would have second-guessed myself.”

With Smith out of the way for a pinch-hitter, the Dodgers finished off the Cubs and left-handed reliever Ray Fontenot in the 10th. Candy Maldonado lined a single to center, and Landreaux, after fouling off two bunt attempts, grounded a hit to right that sent Maldonado to third.

With the infield in, Guerrero sent a ball toward short that took a bad hop and skidded through the legs of a charging Shawon Dunston. The rookie was charged with a tough error, with Maldonado scoring to make it 4-3. Marshall followed with a bouncer up the middle just out of Dunston’s reach for another run.

It turned out to be needed. Ken Howell, the Dodgers’ answer to Smith, gave up the first home run Ron Cey has hit in 86 at-bats against his ex-teammates in the bottom of the 10th, but then set down the last three Cubs for his second win.

“Something good was bound to happen,” Landreaux said, mindful of the Dodgers’ two losses in Pittsburgh last weekend, one a blowout, the other a blowup.

“Lee Smith is going to get his share, and we’re going to get our share.”

And every summer solstice or so, Scioscia will get his, too.

Dodger Notes

The Dodgers are 7-0 in games in which Orel Hershiser has appeared, six starts and one relief outing. “I just had a bad, inconsistent fastball today,” said Hershiser, who was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the fifth after a yield of three runs, six hits and two walks. “I had a real good curveball, which is why I had all those strikeouts (six). But I made a mistake with (Leon) Durham on that double he hit for an RBI. I could have gotten out of there with less runs but I just didn’t finish them off.” Last season, Hershiser pitched a two-hit shutout here with a gale blowing out of Wrigley Field. “Today the wind was blowing sideways, instead of straight out,” he said. . . . Steve Sax, who had three hits Monday, has six hits in three games since returning to the starting lineup. He has been caught stealing both times that he has tried, once by Cubs’ catcher Jody Davis, in the first inning Monday. . . . Shortstop Larry Bowa, the unhappiest Cub, has told team vice president Dallas Green he wants to be traded. Said Bowa, who lost his starting job to rookie Shawon Dunston: “I feel like the 26th man on a 25-man club.” . . . Al Oliver, whose pinch-hit single in the fifth accounted for his 1,300th career RBI, said he pulled his left hamstring while running out a double in Sunday’s 3-2 loss at Pittsburgh. “It’s good that I caught it when I did,” Oliver said. “It should be about three or four days.” Oliver said he’ll be available to pinch-hit, “but never with less than two out.” . . . In a rare sighting, groundskeepers were spotted cutting the grass at Wrigley Field after Monday’s game. Last week, when the Giants were here, Duane Kuiper said the infield grass was so high it looked like a cornfield. . . . Tom Brennan, a Chicago native, is scheduled to pitch today against Dick Ruthven (0-1). . . . Dodger Stadium fans haven’t seen Mike Scioscia hit a home run since July 20, 1982, when he connected off Charlie Lea of the Montreal Expos.