Dodgers Lose, Drop 2 Out of 3 to Giants

Just when it seemed that life had all but flickered out of the ‘Stick, the Giants reminded the Dodgers that it’s no time to be dancing on anybody’s grave--especially theirs.

Last-place teams may come and go, but rivalries can still burn, baby, burn, as the Giants gleefully demonstrated with a 2-1, 10-inning win over the Dodgers that gave them this three-game series, two games to one, trimming Los Angeles’ lead to eight games over the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres.

“We never play the Dodgers like a last-place team,” said Ron Roenicke, the ex-Dodger who scored Sunday’s winning run when he drew a two-out walk from Tom Niedenfuer, stole second and came around on a single by Dan Gladden.

Roenicke was released by the Dodgers in July, 1983, and has been with three teams since--the Mariners, Padres and now the Giants, who summoned him from the minors last July 3.

“Even when I was still with L.A., no matter how the Giants were doing, they’d play us as hard as any team,” Roenicke said.

The Dodgers hadn’t lost a series to anybody since the end of June. That was 14 series ago.

But this wasn’t anybody, this was the Giants, who may be 39-65 against the rest of the National League but are 6-6 against the Dodgers.

Here, the Dodgers seem to bring out the best--or, depending on your point of view, the worst--in all parties involved, including ex-Dodgers, old-timers, and, of course, the fans, 29,181 of whom showed up at Candlestick Park for this old-fashioned morality play, replete with heroes (Gladden) and villains (Orel Hershiser).

Orel Leonard Hershiser IV a villain? Right, and the Tooth Fairy’s an urban guerrilla. But before this one was over, Hershiser had hit two Giants with consecutive pitches and eventually had a police escort take him to the visitors’ clubhouse.

“It was great,” Hershiser said. “We’re walking out there, and the guy says, ‘Watch out for the bottles.’

“I said, ‘Thanks a lot. I thought that’s what you’re here for.’ ”

In the eighth inning Gladden had taken it in the back from Hershiser, and didn’t like the way the pitch wrinkled his shirt.

One pitch before, Hershiser had nailed his opposing number, Mike Krukow, on the right wrist, knocking Krukow out of the game. That undoubtedly added to Gladden’s state of high anxiety, which plate umpire Frank Pulli tried to defuse by issuing a warning to Hershiser.

“I know he didn’t want to put the winning run on second base,” said Gladden, who took his base only after it appeared he might go by way of the mound.

“I just lost my emotions for a second. No big deal.”

It was no big deal to Hershiser, either, although it caused him to be lifted from a 1-1 game and earned him a round of booing usually reserved for the biggest Dodger Bad Guy of them all, Tom Lasorda.

And, in true Lasorda style, Hershiser tipped his cap to the fans en route to the dugout.

“I thought they were cheering,” he said deadpan afterward. “The fans around our dugout were cheering, and my wife (Jamie) was cheering.”

Hershiser wasn’t the first guy to pitch somebody tight Sunday. They played an old-timers game between the ’71 Giants and Dodgers before this one and, according to one participant, Dodger Eye in the Sky Joe Ferguson, the hitters couldn’t dig in then, either.

“The game got serious after the first inning,” Ferguson said. “The pitches kept coming up and up. Those teams used to battle.”

As these ’85 teams did Sunday, although Hershiser said there was a definite absence of malice on his part. His problem, he said, was the Candlestick mound, which he said kept collapsing underfoot on his follow-through.

“Every pitch I threw I slipped on,” said Hershiser, whose only visible slip had been the home run pitch he threw to Giants catcher Bob Brenly, the first batter in the eighth.

In the sixth inning, Hershiser had requested a little gardening work from the Giants groundskeepers.

“The thing I’m most mad about is I didn’t take the responsibility of bringing the groundskeepers back out,” Hershiser said.

If Gladden was yelling at him, Hershiser said, he couldn’t hear what he was yelling about.

“I don’t think he was thinking about the situation,” Hershiser said. “The pitch was supposed to be a fastball away, and I hit him in the back. I don’t miss that much.”

Then again, Hershiser does lead the staff in hit batsmen with six. And how did that happen?

“I’m tough,” he said with a smile.

As tough as he was, Roenicke was even harder on Niedenfuer, narrowly missing a home run with a foul drive before drawing a full-count walk.

“He fouled off a few good high fastballs and did a good job of laying off the last one,” Niedenfuer said.

“But a walk’s a walk. I’ve only walked 10 or 11 guys in 75 innings (15 in 77) but the one time you do walk a guy you lose the game.”

Niedenfuer said he’d faced Roenicke only once before, in an exhibition game with the San Antonio Dodgers in the strike season of 1981.

“I struck him out, as a matter of fact,” Niedenfuer said.

Roenicke didn’t remember that first encounter. But he recalled enough about Niedenfuer to know he had a shot at stealing second, which he did, just beating Mike Scioscia’s throw.

“I’ve played with all these guys and I know what they can do,” Roenicke said. “He’s a short reliever, and he’s going to go after the hitter.

“The situation was there to steal. With a 1-and-0 count (to Gladden), they’re not going to pitch out.”

Earlier, Roenicke had told reporters that Niedenfuer’s deliberate motion gave him a chance to run. When someone mentioned that to Lasorda, he said with a snort: “Koufax had a slow motion with a runner on base. Put that in your paper, too.”

With the count now 2 and 0, Gladden lashed the next pitch to left, where Pedro Guerrero charged the ball for a long-shot chance at throwing Roenicke out. When the ball rolled under Guerrero’s glove, it became academic.

“When it’s L.A., we have a certain level of intensity I wish we had all year,” said Giant outfielder Chili Davis. “We play other teams with half the intensity we play these guys.

“We play these guys like we’re playing for the world championship.”

No championship this year, Chili. The Dodgers, of course, hope the same won’t be said of them when it’s all over.

Dodger Notes

The Dodgers’ only run came in the sixth inning, when Giants shortstop Jose Uribe threw away a double-play relay, enabling Mike Marshall, who had singled, to score from second. . . . Steve Sax was benched Sunday, four years to the day he made his major league debut and singled in his first at-bat. Sax has made five errors this month, three of them throwing. He entered the game in the eighth inning as part of a double switch with Tom Niedenfuer and walked in his only at-bat in the ninth. . . . Mark Davis, who pitched the last two innings, got the win for the Giants. . . . The three-game series drew 68,924 to Candlestick Park, the largest attendance for a three-game series since Sept. 16-18, 1983. . . . Pedro Guerrero was not listed in the original lineup distributed in the press box Sunday--Terry Whitfield was listed to start in left. But when asked if Guerrero had asked for a day off, Lasorda said: “He told me he wanted to play.” . . . The Dodgers’ next six games are scheduled to be played on artificial surfaces, but when asked if he might give Guerrero some time off to protect his tendinitis-plagued left knee, Lasorda said: “He’s going to be the guy who has to know how his leg feels, but he’s got to be the guy who tells us. He has to be the judge of that.” . . . The Dodgers completed a 19-game cycle against teams in their own division, and were 13-6. They’re 31-23 against Eastern Division teams. . . . Broadcaster Vin Scully flew back here from New York, where he’d done the Red Sox-Yankees game on Saturday, did the Dodger game Sunday, then boarded a plane for Philadelphia. “It’s the blithe spirit,” Scully said, explaining his almost 6,000-mile odyssey in 24 hours. . . . Giants General Manager Tom Haller drew almost as many boos as Orel Hershiser when he played in the old-timers game matching members of the 1971 Giants and Dodgers.