Dodgers Win Laugher, Even for Herzog, 8-3 : L.A. Follows Bouncing Ball to Pull Within 3 of Padres

Tom Lasorda reached for the aspirin in the fourth inning Saturday.

“I’ll tell you how bizarre a game that was,” the Dodger manager said. “I took a couple right after Saxie was picked off first.”

And Lasorda managed the winning side in an 8-3 victory over the Cardinals before a crowd of 33,852 at Busch Stadium--a victory that, coupled with San Diego’s 8-7 loss in Pittsburgh, moved the Dodgers within three games of the first-place Padres.

If St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog had taken this one seriously, he’d have needed a full bottle of aspirin. But Herzog could only laugh, and you can be sure most of a regional TV audience was laughing along with him.

“We don’t get to do too many Triple-A games,” NBC broadcaster Joe Garagiola cracked in the elevator on his way to the airport afterward.

On any level, they don’t play too many games like this one, which featured, in succession, Mariano Duncan’s bunt double, Ken Landreaux’s inside-the-park home run and Pedro Guerrero’s ground-rule double. And that was just the first inning.

“This is a game for ‘Bloopers,’ ” Herzog said. “You’re going to see a lot of Dodgers and Cardinals on ‘This Week in Baseball.’ ”

Cardinal right fielder Andy Van Slyke, who played Landreaux’s artificial-turf bounce into a home run, decided that this game deserved a show of its own.

“We played like a bunch of clowns, a juggling act,” Van Slyke said. “They should have put a tent over the infield and called it ‘Circus Game of the Week.’ ”

There were plenty of acts to go around, such as:

--Dodger pitcher Bob Welch attempting to score on a wild pitch to the backstop, only to have the ball bounce all the way back to Cardinal catcher Tom Nieto, who made the tag at the plate.

“A one-in-a-million play,” Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia said.

--A fifth inning in which the Dodgers gave the Cardinals six outs to score three unearned runs, only to have the Cardinals give one out back with that old standard, the sacrifice-fly double play.

“They tried to give the game to us,” Herzog said, “but we continuously kept bleeping it up.”

--Scioscia hitting a ball off the top of the right-field wall in the sixth and getting thrown out at second, and hitting a ball just over second and circling the bases to score in the seventh, finishing with a fadeaway slide worthy of Ty Cobb.

“That was no fadeaway,” Scioscia said. “That was a fall down.”

Actually, Scioscia’s pratfall came later, in the ninth inning, when he hit a ground ball, took two steps toward first and ended up on his face.

“I tripped over my bat,” Scioscia said. “Believe it or not, I was running hard--I just couldn’t get up.”

Count Steve Sax among the skeptics. “He just passed out,” Sax said.

--A complete game from Welch, his first since last July 28, even though he was involved in a fifth-inning collision with Cardinal runner Steve Braun. It looked something like a guy retrieving a penny from a gutter just before being run over by a bus.

Braun was the bus, and he left tread marks on Welch’s right arm after Welch dropped a throw at first and forgot to get out of the way.

“He kicked me right in the elbow,” said Welch, who already has no shortage of pain there because of a bone spur that constantly is aggravating the ligament.

“But maybe he kicked the spur up into the right spot,” Welch said.

Almost everything the Dodgers hit, it seemed, wound up in the right spot. With everyone in the starting lineup having at least one hit, the Dodgers collected a season-high 16 hits, including three home runs--two by Landreaux and one by Guerrero. It was Guerrero’s 20th of the season, tying him with Dale Murphy of the Braves for the league lead.

“I feel like I didn’t even swing the bat,” Guerrero said of his third-inning blast off Ricky Horton, one of four Cardinal relievers who followed starter Kurt Kepshire.

“It seems like I hit it so easy. . . . Either I have bleeping power or the ball is jumping.”

On an artificial surface made even springier by the July sun, there were more bounces than in your average game of 8-ball. No one got a better bounce, though, than Scioscia, when he lifted a pop fly into shallow left-center field off Bob Forsch in the seventh.

Center fielder Willie McGee went for the catch and didn’t get it. Left fielder Braun, arriving a split-second later, crossed paths with McGee, and the ball bounced over both fielders.

Braun finally retrieved it and threw toward third, where Terry Pendleton kicked it into short left field. Scioscia, who at first glance thought he was going to have to beat Pendleton in a footrace to the bag, kept going when Pendleton muffed the throw.

“Sure I was running out of gas,” Scioscia said. “I was definitely out of gas. . . . But I knew nobody was there (to retrieve the ball).”

Scioscia’s turn around third was wide enough that somebody in the Dodger dugout could have handed him a drink--or an oxygen tank. Third base coach Joe Amalfitano, who had just waved home Greg Brock, was startled to see Scioscia steaming his way.

“There was no way I was going to throw up my hands and stop him,” Amalfitano said. “I just said a few Hail Mary’s.”

Prayer was put to a stern test, but Scioscia arrived safely with the Dodgers’ eighth run. And that put the team well out of reach of the Cardinals, who had closed to within 5-3 in the fifth after two Dodger errors and a blown double play, only to have McGee called out for leaving second base too early on Tommy Herr’s sacrifice fly.

“Who knows what would have happened,” Scioscia said, “if McGee wasn’t doubled off with their best hitter (Jack Clark) coming up?”

Better that the Dodgers never know, Amalfitano said.

“These kind of days,” Amalfitano said, “you want to win and get out of there.”

Dodger Notes This was Ken Landreaux’s first two-homer game since July 30, 1982, when he connected off Atlanta pitchers Rick Mahler and Steve Bedrosian. Landreaux, who had just one home run in the last two months, has six this season, and his average has climbed to .243 after a .167 April. “We know he has the talent,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said, repeating one of his favorite themes. “It’s a matter of him applying it. He can be as good as he wants to be.” Landreaux says he had one previous inside-the-park home run, when he was with the Minnesota Twins. “The bases were loaded that time,” he said. “I hit a ball off the top of the fence in right-center field and it caromed to left field.” . . . Steve Sax, who had three hits Saturday, now has seven in three games against the Cardinals, raising his batting average from .226 to .249, as high as it has been in a month. He made an error when Mariano Duncan’s toss to second went off his glove, he fumbled a ball just long enough to sabotage a possible double play and he was also picked off. About his hitting, Sax said: “I don’t feel any different than I did at the start of the year. They’re just starting to fall in.” . . . Pedro Guerrero also had three hits, raising his average to .306. Asked if he’s had a similar hot streak in his career, Guerrero said: “In 1977, the year I broke my leg (in Albuquerque), the first month I thought it was amazing the way I hit the ball. No home runs, just doubles and singles. I used to stand at the plate more spread out, I didn’t have much power.” . . .Duncan’s bunt double in the first inning was his third of the season. On this one, the Cardinals chose to let it roll down the third base line, hoping it would cross into foul territory. Duncan easily beat catcher Tom Nieto’s hurried throw to second. “Someday, Mariano is going to do the most unbelievable thing you’ll ever see,” Lasorda said. “Bunt for a triple.” . . . St. Louis rookie Vince Coleman, the league’s leading base-stealer, missed the game with a jammed wrist and isn’t expected to play today. . . . Mike Scioscia, on pitcher Bob Welch: “He’s a tough guy. It’s not easy to pitch when you play as hard as he did, when you get beat up the way he did. He was dirtier than I was.”