Dodgers Win After Catch by Marshall, 5-4

The last time the Dodgers were here to play the Phillies, Tom Lasorda called Mike Marshall into his office for a private audience, which he also held separately with three other players--Bill Russell, Pedro Guerrero and Mike Scioscia.

“Tommy talked to me about being one of the leaders here,” Marshall said. “I was kind of honored he picked me.

“It’s kind of tough for me because, even when things are going good, I’m usually quiet and reserved. But he laid it on the line.”

Lasorda, in his job description, said nothing to Marshall about running into walls. But Tuesday night at Veterans Stadium, with the game on the line and one out in the ninth, Marshall did just that, crashing into the right-field fence as he made a leaping catch of pinch-hitter Tim Corcoran’s drive with two runners on, then converting it into an inning-ending double play.

The catch sent Marshall to the bench with a sore right knee and sent the game into extra innings, and the Dodgers won in the 11th, 5-4, on Mariano Duncan’s tainted triple off the leg of Phillie left fielder Greg Gross.

Duncan’s hit scored Steve Sax, who the night before had found a pig’s head in his hotel-room bed but who on this night narrowly avoided being fitted for a pair of horns belonging to another beast, genus capra , or goat, for a base-running blunder in the sixth.

Marshall’s catch also kept the Dodgers from losing three games in a row for the first time in 7 1/2 weeks. The win went to an exhausted Tom Niedenfuer, while the save--in a cameo emergency role--went to Rick Honeycutt, his first in 10 seasons of professional baseball.

“I didn’t think there was any way that ball would be caught,” Lasorda said of Marshall’s play.

“He hit the wall running at full blast. If he had stopped or hesitated or thought about the wall, he wouldn’t have caught it.”

Lasorda may have believed that Marshall never gave the wall a thought, but the right fielder said that from the moment the ball was hit into the corner, he knew he was going to encounter severe turbulence at the end of his flight, a long one because he was shaded to right-center.

“I knew I was going to get crunched,” Marshall said, “but I had no choice.

“As I was running, I wasn’t thinking about what to do if I got close to the wall, about maybe knocking the ball down.

“It was just, ‘Go all out and catch it, no matter what I had to do.’ ”

Niedenfuer, worn out by a prolonged duel with the previous batter, Greg Gross, that ended only after Gross had fouled off eight pitches and then lined a 3-and-2 single to left, was resigned to another foul finish when Corcoran connected.

“I thought it was out of here,” Niedenfuer said. “I was just watching the ball.

“I thought, ‘Well, maybe it’ll just hit the fence, but the game’s over, anyway.’ Then Mike kind of flew across the sky.”

Any more landings like that, and Marshall will be grounded by the FAA. His right knee made contact with the wall first, then his head, followed by the rest of his 215-pound frame. But when he came back to earth, the ball was still in his glove, and Marshall still had enough presence to fire a strike to relay man Sax.

With Luis Aguayo, the runner on second, already around third and halfway to the parking lot, all Sax had to do was flip the ball to Duncan at second to complete the double play.

Marshall remained seated on the warning track, allowing the throbbing in his right knee to ease to at least limp level, then was escorted off the field by Lasorda and trainer Bill Buhler.

“I had a good angle on the ball,” Marshall said. “It helped me having to run that far, because I was almost facing the wall when I leaped.

“I was a little lucky, because I got the ball in my glove just before I hit the wall. That’s the hardest I’ve ever hit a wall--I’m just glad it gives as well as it does. In Dodger Stadium, I probably would have been hurt a little more.”

The best catch Marshall ever made?

“It wasn’t the best,” he said, “but it was the most important.

“We’ve been struggling the last three days, and it was important to get a win and get back to the way we were playing.”

With the win, the Dodgers maintained their eight-game lead over the San Diego Padres in the National League West, while Cincinnati dropped nine behind.

“If we stay consistent, nobody should catch us,” Marshall said.

No one has been more consistent than Dodger starter Bob Welch, who was going for his ninth straight win. But he was gone before the sixth, the victim of a Dominican strongman whose last name was not Guerrero.

This one came in a smaller package--the Phillies’ 5-foot 11-inch Juan Samuel. The Phillie second baseman tripled in a three-run first and hit his fourth homer in four games, and 14th of the season, with the bases empty in the fifth.

But a wild pickoff throw by Phillie starter Kevin Gross and a botched double play--Gross’ throw went into center field when no one covered--helped the Dodgers back to a 4-4 tie in the sixth.

With runners on first and third and just one out, the Dodgers might have broken the tie then and there. But Sax, the runner on first, was caught in a rundown by Phillie reliever Larry Andersen after Andersen had faked a throw to third.

That was embarrassing enough. More embarrassing was this: Andersen had shown Sax precisely the same move on two previous pitches. And in the first inning, Kevin Gross had tried to pick off Ken Landreaux the same way.

Sax, dubbed Piggy by his teammates after an anonymous prankster had given him a new pillowmate (the prankster may not remain anonymous for long: Lasorda had dined on roast pig the day before in his hometown of Norristown, Pa.), had little to squeal about.

“On that play I’ve got to steal,” Sax said. “As soon as I see him (Andersen) pick his leg up, I go. I can’t wait until he goes home.”

But whatever roasting might have awaited Sax ended after he singled off Kent Tekulve in the 11th and went all the way home on Duncan’s ball when Greg Gross charged it, then couldn’t stop in time to keep it from caroming off his leg.

“A mistake in judgment,” Gross said, “and it cost us the game.”

Said Sax: “I’m just relieved we won. I’ve forgotten about all that.”

Dodger Notes

Mike Marshall, on Tom Lasorda’s request that he take a more vocal leadership role on the Dodgers: “Maybe it helped me. Even if I was going bad, he told me to come back to the bench and yell for the next guy, fire things up. Tommy realized it was better for me than worrying about my last at-bat, to be more of a motivator and forget about things. Tommy’s pretty smart. A lot of things he does, people just look at the surface, but it goes a lot deeper than that.” . . . Despite his sore right knee, Marshall thought he might be able to play tonight. “My knee buckles on me,” he said. “It’s something I’m living with. It fills up with fluid and becomes stiff and sore.” . . . Lasorda chose to go with Rick Honeycutt, scheduled to start Saturday in Montreal, in the 11th instead of long relievers Carlos Diaz and Bobby Castillo, after using up Ken Howell and Tom Niedenfuer. “I went to Honeycutt because I felt he was capable of throwing ground balls,” Lasorda said. Honeycutt said he had had one other good chance for a save in the big leagues. “It came my first year in Texas,” Honeycutt said. “It was the last day of the season and I had struck out the last four batters, but they brought in Enrique Romo for the last out. He had a chance to set some kind of save record for an expansion club. That really ticked me off.” . . . Steve Sax said he discovered there was the head of a roast pig in his bed when he reached over for another pillow. “I felt something hairy” he said. “It scared the hell out of me. It had an apple in its mouth and everything.” . . . Dodger third baseman Enos Cabell, expected to be a witness in a Pittsburgh drug trial next month, according to the New York Times, said he had no knowledge that he would be part of the proceedings. The newspaper, in its series on cocaine and baseball, said that Cabell is expected to be a witness in the trial of Curtis Strong, a Pittsburgh man charged with drug-trafficking in a grand jury investigation. “If it happens, it happens--if it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” said Cabell, who had testified before the grand jury while still a member of the Houston Astros. Cabell said he had not read the newspaper’s report. “Beyond that, I have no comment,” he said. . . . Cabell missed his sixth game with a strained abdominal muscle. “I can run good, but when I took ground balls, it hurt off and on,” he said. “I can deal with that. But it hurts every time I swing.” . . . Against the Cubs at Chicago last weekend, Phillie second baseman Juan Samuel had 10 hits in 15 at-bats in three games, with three home runs and five RBIs. Samuel, runner-up to New York Met pitcher Dwight Gooden in last season’s Rookie of the Year balloting, has made only six errors in his last 75 games and has 12 errors overall. He committed 33 errors last season. With his first-inning triple against the Dodgers, Samuel became the first major leaguer this season to reach double figures in doubles, triples and home runs. He also became the first major leaguer ever to have double figures in those categories in each of his first two seasons in the big leagues. . . . The Phillie mascot, the Phanatic, pummeled a mannequin clothed in Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda’s jacket during the fifth inning. . . . The last Dodger pitchers to win nine straight games were Rick Rhoden and Don Sutton, both in 1976.