Pirates Overrun Dodgers

Those mystic travelers, the Dodgers, continued to hurtle at warp speed into the outer reaches of the National League West Sunday.

A star trek, it isn’t. A team wrecked is more like it.

Beam me up, Tommy, it can’t get any worse than Sunday’s 12-3 battering administered by the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was the Dodgers fifth loss in six games on this trip and 17th loss in 23 games away from home this season.

How bad was it?

“They just beat our brains out,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “They embarrassed us.

“I feel terrible, I feel awful. I don’t know what to say.

“We got beat, and we looked terrible in losing. I don’t like it one bit. Not one bit.”

A description of the damage, bit by bit:

--Jim Morrison, Bill Madlock’s one-time backup on the Pirates, drove in seven runs with a triple in the second, a two-run double in the fourth and grand slam in the fifth. Madlock, meanwhile, went 0 for Pittsburgh, going hitless in a dozen at-bats over the weekend.

--Morrison’s grand slam was given up by a Dodger reliever who looked like Tom Niedenfuer but whose arm is beginning to resemble spaghetti after his fifth relief appearance in six days.

“I have nobody else,” Lasorda said. “I couldn’t put anybody else in there.”

The slam was the second allowed by Niedenfuer in five days after he’d gone through his entire professional career without giving up one. George Foster of the New York Mets had the other, last Tuesday, but at least Sammy Khalifa, the batter who followed Morrison, didn’t have to dodge pitches like New York’s Ray Knight, who took a Niedenfuer fastball in the elbow.

“I didn’t have very good stuff today,” Niedenfuer said. “I could see that in the bullpen.”

--Bob Welch, who hasn’t won in more than a month, walked four Pirates in 4 innings. They all scored, two of them in the Pirates’ three-run fourth, when Morrison’s double was the only hit of the inning. In all, eight Pirates walked and all eight scored.

“I stunk this one up long before he (Niedenfuer) came in,” said Welch, who is 0-4 with a 7.49 earned-run average in the six starts he has made since shutting out the Chicago Cubs on April 30.

“We got to start off a new month fresh and I didn’t help. I am throwing the ball good, I’m not hurt, but there’s no fluidness. It’s all just grind.”

--In the span of six days, the fifth-place Dodgers have lost four games in the standings to the Houston Astros, falling to 6 1/2 games behind after leaving Los Angeles at .500 and just 2 1/2 back.

Losing three straight to the Mets, arguably the best team in baseball, is one thing. Losing two out of three to the Pirates, arguably one of the worst, is another.

“Right now, we’re unbalanced,” Madlock said.

He was talking about the team’s lineup, not its mental state.

“If you could put Pete (Guerrero) in the middle of the lineup, then you could put everybody else where they belong.

“You can tell that the pitchers, too, are unbalanced. They’re tired. Eight walks, eight runs? That’s strange.”

So how do you rectify the imbalance?

“I just work here,” Madlock said. “That’s out of my league.”

The Dodgers, of course, are hoping that the condition is only temporary.

“Anybody who starts off like we have has got to think positive through the ups and downs,” said Greg Brock, whose home run off Pirate starter Rick Rhoden was a rare up in two months of downs. Brock’s fifth home run was his first since May 8; Franklin Stubbs also hit a home run, his seventh.

“We’ve got three or four or five hitters struggling right now and three, four, five pitchers struggling, too,” Brock said. “We have to hope that it ends. I think it will.”

For now, though, it seems people are turning their heads at the sight of the Dodgers. Even the umpires, all four of whom missed seeing Morrison run past Tony Pena on his grand slam.

Pena, who was on first, retreated to the bag to tag up, when Morrison circled past, according to witnesses, all of whom were wearing Dodger uniforms.

Morrison and Pena pleaded innocent.

“He didn’t pass me, he ran straight down the line,” said Pena, who declined to explain why Morrison would be sprinting down the line on a ball hit over the left-field wall.

“He even bumped me with his shoulder as he was running by.”

The umpires pleaded ignorance, for a simple reason--they didn’t see it. Lee Weyer, the first-base umpire, had headed toward second; Dutch Rennert, the second-base umpire, had moved toward third; Fred Brocklander, the third-base umpire, was sprinting to the outfield; and plate umpire Ed Montague was watching the ball for a possible tag-up call at third.

“You have to see it to call it and we didn’t see it,” Weyer said.

“It was an unusual circumstance. When I looked back, he (Morrison) was behind him (Pena).”

Had the umpires judged that Morrison had passed the runner, Pena would have been declared out, Morrison would have been credited with a single and three runs would have scored.

“That didn’t beat us,” Lasorda said. “It had nothing to do with it, except nobody saw it. . . . Just a bad, bad day.”

It was a day that had one indignity left for the Dodgers. On the way to the airport, their bus broke down.

Dodger Notes

Bob Welch’s line Sunday: 4 innings pitched, 7 runs, 6 hits, 4 walks, 4 strikeouts. “I’m not doing things right mechanically,” he said. “I’m fighting myself. I take good stuff out there but don’t stay within myself. I’m pushing the ball up there the whole game, and I’m digging myself a deeper and deeper hole.” Pitching coach Ron Perranoski said Welch is standing up too straight on his fastball. “I’m getting the proper (shoulder) extension on my breaking ball, but my fastball is flattening out, even though I have super velocity,” Welch said. “I know exactly what I’m doing wrong. I don’t think you’re seeing the back side of my numbers. When you see them that means I’m getting a good follow-through.” . . . Alejandro Pena followed Tom Niedenfuer to the mound and pitched three innings, during which he allowed two runs on five hits and walked two. He also struck out five Pirates, including Jim Morrison twice when Morrison needed only a single to hit for the cycle (single, double, triple, home run). “I wanted it (the cycle)) but I started to think with the pitcher,” Morrison said. . . . In each of Welch’s last three starts, Niedenfuer has relieved with disastrous results. On May 22, he gave up a two-run double to Montreal’s Andre Dawson with the bases loaded in a 2-2 tie (the Dodgers lost, 5-2). Last Tuesday, he gave up George Foster’s grand slam with the Dodgers trailing, 3-1. It ended, 8-1. And Sunday the score was 5-2 when Morrison unloaded.