Dodgers Go Out on Loss but on Top

Despite a 10-4 loss to the Cubs Sunday afternoon in a game that threatened to drag on through the All-Star break--the teams had a combined 29 hits and 27 men left on base--the Dodgers began their three-day hiatus in first place, a half-game ahead of the San Diego Padres in the National League West.

What concerns Manager Tom Lasorda, however, is where the Dodgers will stand in the event of an unscheduled interruption--like a strike.

A stoppage in play, not to forget pay, is hardly an idle possibility. The players’ union is meeting here today to set a strike date, and even baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth predicted, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that there was a “fairly good chance” of a walkout.

The last time the Dodgers were in first place at the All-Star break was in 1981, when the break lasted 61 days owing to the last player strike. Play stopped June 11, when the Dodgers were a half-game ahead of Cincinnati. They didn’t start playing again until Aug. 10.

The Dodgers were declared champions of the so-called first half and wound up World Series champions, beating Houston, Montreal and the New York Yankees on the way to the title. They haven’t been back to the World Series since.

“It’s a funny thing,” Lasorda said, “but I made a speech in spring training in ’81 and made a statement that nobody realized what impact it would have.

“I told the players: ‘I don’t know if there’s going to be a strike, I have no idea. The only thing I ask is that you be in first place when it happens.’

“Who knew that would happen?”

Whether it happens again, who’s to say? But Lasorda would prefer that the Dodgers take no chances. And that’s why, despite the hammering they took Sunday from the Cubs’ Ryne Sandberg (two home runs and a double) and Keith Moreland (an RBI single, a triple and a three-run homer), the Dodgers took the long view of an 8-3 trip that shot them from four games behind San Diego on July 3--the day they left Los Angeles--to their current vantage point.

“The team’s played very well--everybody’s real pleased with what we’ve been able to do, especially on this trip,” pitcher Rick Honeycutt said. Honeycutt had a somewhat harsher view of his abbreviated outing Sunday--2 innings, five runs, seven hits, two walks and a throwing error. “I stunk,” he said.

“The situation would have even been better if we’d won today,” Honeycutt said. “That would’ve been seven in a row, and we’d be a game and a half ahead.

“But we’ve been playing well, even with Pete (Guerrero) and Moose (Mike Marshall) out. When those two guys get back, that can only help us more.”

The Dodgers could have used the help Sunday, when they fell behind, 5-0, after three innings, Cub pitcher Steve Trout driving Honeycutt from the game with a bases-loaded single for two runs.

Then, Cub catcher Jody Davis charged that Candy Maldonado had some illegal help when he homered off Trout to start the fourth. Davis claimed to have spotted a suspicious mark on Maldonado’s bat, leading the catcher to believe that it might have been corked. The Cubs immediately confiscated the bat, which disappeared into their dugout, and announced their intentions to have the league office inspect it.

“They’ll probably send it to Washington and have it investigated by the FBI,” Lasorda said sarcastically.

When Sandberg, who sent a ball onto Waveland Avenue in the first inning and doubled to start the third, both hits off Honeycutt, put one in the left-field bleachers off Jerry Reuss in the fourth, there was some thought that Lasorda might conduct an investigation of his own.

Asked why he didn’t, Lasorda said:

“You know why? I didn’t want to make a farce of the game like they (the Cubs) did. Here’s a guy (Maldonado), for criminy’s sake, who’s hitting .190. I could have impounded Sandberg’s bat, but for what?”

Maldonado, whose home run just barely made the basket above Wrigley’s ivy-covered walls, said of losing his bat: “They can have it. But the problem is, I don’t hit too many home runs.”

This one was Maldonado’s third homer of the season, and it would have been far more useful had it come in the first inning, when he grounded out with the bases loaded. After the bat was confiscated, he struck out the next two times up before reaching on a squibber down the third-base line in the ninth.

“There was nothing wrong with Candy’s bat,” catcher Steve Yeager said. “And nothing wrong with Sandberg’s bat or Moreland’s bat, either.”

The Dodgers tried to take the bat out of Sandberg’s hands, walking him his next two times up. But that strategy lost its usefulness when Moreland followed an intentional pass to Sandberg in the seventh by hitting a homer off rookie Dennis Powell, giving the Cubs a 9-3 lead.

“We should have walked Sandberg and Moreland every time and pitched to the rest of them,” Honeycutt said.

By then, of course, Honeycutt’s strategy was merely prolonging the Dodgers’ departure for home.

“Big plans, man,” Lasorda said, when asked what he was doing over the break.

“I’ve got to clean the garage. I said to my wife (Jo), do you realize we’re in first place, the job we’ve done, and you want me to clean the garage? She said, ‘Make up your mind now.’ I dread thinking about it.”

And what was contained in the garage?

“If I told you what I had in my garage, you’d try to break in,” Lasorda said.

Dodger Notes

Mike Scioscia, Jerry Reuss and Rick Honeycutt will be the Dodger representatives at today’s meeting of the players’ union, scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at an airport hotel. “We’ll come up with some type of (strike) date,” Honeycutt said. “In past negotiations, the way they (the owners) operate, we give them a date to go by and they get together and start working. It’s like with negotiating contracts; they pressure you until the last minute.” . . . Pedro Guerrero took a plane to Minneapolis Sunday night to attend the All-Star Game, even though back spasms will keep him from playing. Just to make sure Guerrero doesn’t play and aggravate his condition, Manager Tom Lasorda said, “We shipped his stuff but did not ship his glove, nor did we ship any of his bats.” . . . Mike Marshall, out since undergoing an appendectomy June 20, hopes to return when play resumes Thursday. Lasorda said Marshall asked to be activated for the weekend but doctors were against it. . . . Mariano Duncan did not start for the third straight game because of a sore knee but singled as a pinch-hitter in the fourth. . . . Enos Cabell started the game in right and was shifted to third, where he made his first error as a Dodger on Leon Durham’s grounder in the fourth. . . . Dodger publicists could not find an instance, dating back to 1961, in which the Dodgers had swept four games from the Cubs here. . . . Vice President Al Campanis stuck a whipped-cream pie in Jay Johnstone’s face before the game. “He’s been getting everybody else,” Campanis said. “I told him I was going to get him.”

DODGERS / All-Star Break Checklist

Year Record At Break GB Finish 1958 33-42 8th 8 7th / 21 Behind Milwaukee 1959 43-37 3rd 1/2 1st / Won by 2 games 1960 41-38 3rd 8 4th / 13 Behind Pittsburgh 1961 49-35 2nd 5 2nd / 4 Behind Cincinnati 1962 58-31 1st + 1/2 1st (tie) / Lost playoff 1963 50-33 1st +3 1st / Won by 6 games 1964 38-39 5th 10 6th / 13 Behind St. Louis 1965 51-38 1st (tie) 0 1st / Won by 2 games 1966 47-36 3rd 5 1st / Won by 1 1/2 games 1967 34-37 7th 15 8th / 28 1/2 Behind St. Louis 1968 41-44 7th 13 7th / 21 Behind St. Louis 1969 53-47 2nd 1 4th / 8 Behind New York 1970 51-35 2nd 10 2nd / 14 1/2 Behind Cincinnati 1971 49-41 2nd 7 2nd / 1 Behind San Fran. 1972 47-42 3rd 8 1/2 3rd / 10 1/2 Behind Cincinnati 1973 63-37 1st +5 1/2 2nd / 3 1/2 Behind Cincinnati 1974 63-34 1st +5 1/2 1st / Won by 4 1975 49-42 2nd 12 1/2 2nd / 20 Behind Cincinnati 1976 47-39 2nd 6 2nd / 10 Behind Cincinnati 1977 59-33 1st +9 1/2 1st / Won by 10 games 1978 50-36 2nd 2 1st / Won by 2 1/2 1979 36-57 6th 17 1/2 3rd / 11 1/2 Behind Cincinnati 1980 46-34 1st (tie) 0 2nd / 1 Behind Houston 1981 xxxx xxxx xx Strike year 1982 46-42 3rd 7 2nd / 1 Behind Atlanta 1983 47-31 2nd 1 1st / Won by 2 games 1984 45-43 3rd 6 1/2 4th / 13 Behind San Diego 1985 48-37 1st + 1/2