Welch Can Celebrate a 6-3 Win : A 5-Run Dodger First Lifts Pitcher to Only Victory Since April 30

Since no one else waits for the Fourth anymore, the Dodgers might as well have shot off their fireworks Thursday night, too.

The cause for celebration may not have been as grand in Dodger Stadium as it was in New York Harbor, but the Dodgers will take what they can get.

Besides, tonight, when the fireworks are scheduled to go off, they may be back in last place.

But Thursday night, the Dodgers took the measure of another last-place team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-3, before a crowd of 30,722.

And Bob Welch, who hadn’t won in more than two months, became the man to end the Dodgers’ six-game losing streak. That in itself should have been worth a Roman candle or two, as Welch made a five-run first inning--the Dodgers’ biggest outburst of the season--hold up through an often-perilous, 11-hit complete game.

With Cincinnati losing, the Dodgers moved a half-game ahead of the Reds into fifth place, 7 1/2 games behind San Francisco.

“I’m my own worst enemy, there’s no doubt about that,” said Welch (4-6), who had five losses, six no-decisions and a 5.72 earned-run average to show for his 11 starts since shutting out the Chicago Cubs on April 30.

“A lot of times, I got to fighting in between starts, got too wound up looking forward to my next start, and started pressing, gripping the ball too hard.

“The whole thing to pitching is a little dance-step rhythm, and I’ve been in and out of it. It would be there one game, gone the next.”

Welch was something less than Baryshnikov on the mound Thursday night as the Pirates had base-runners in every inning. Joe Orsulak had four hits, while ex-Dodgers R.J. Reynolds and Sid Bream had a home run and an RBI single, respectively.

But Welch knew how to whirl out of trouble. He didn’t walk a batter until the ninth, and with right fielder Reggie Williams and third baseman Jeff Hamilton making fine defensive plays behind him, he was able to close out the Pirates before they closed him out.

“Every time out there has been a battle,” he said.

“Sometimes, we’ve come up short when I’ve pitched well; other times, I’ve gotten hit. But you take your lumps and keep battling.

“We’ve got a lot of baseball left, and I’m the last guy to throw in the towel and give up this early.”

It helped, of course, that the Dodgers got to Pirate starter Rick Reuschel early, scoring their five first-inning runs on five hits, two walks, a hit batsman and a balk.

Franklin Stubbs, who didn’t drive in a run on the Dodgers’ winless five-game trip, knocked in two with his first-inning double, which followed a walk to Ken Landreaux and a single by Williams.

Stubbs, who had eight hits in three games against the Braves here least week and reached base 11 times in 14 plate appearances against Atlanta, singled in the second off Reuschel and sent Pirate right fielder Orsulak to the wall with a fourth-inning drive. He lined out hard again in the sixth.

Hamilton, whose first big league home run was washed out in Cincinnati Tuesday, doubled in his first Dodger Stadium at-bat to score Alex Trevino, whose two-out bunt single had scored Stubbs and kept the first inning alive.

After Hamilton’s double, the Dodgers loaded the bases when Craig Shipley was hit by a pitch and Welch beat out an infield roller. Plate umpire Joe West then called Reuschel for a balk, saying he’d stepped back off the rubber with the wrong foot.

“That was a first,” said Reuschel, who has been pitching in the big leagues since 1972.

“I’d gotten on the rubber but I hadn’t taken a sign or anything. With the count 3-and-2, I wanted to go into a stretch.

“I thought I stepped back with my right foot. Maybe I didn’t.”

It is the Dodgers’ hope, of course, that Thursday night’s win represented a step forward, however tentative.

“The big inning really helped us,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “Like I told the team, I got a good feeling that things are going to start going our way, that we’re going to start getting the breaks, that we’re going to have a winning streak.”

Dodger Notes When he wasn’t extolling the virtues of his new video cassette, “The Dodgers Way to Play Baseball,” Vice President Al Campanis was insisting that he isn’t losing any sleep over his ballclub. “I’m not worried,” he said. “It would be a different situation if we were getting blown out, but we’re not. It’s got to be frustrating to the team and the fans, though, that these things are happening. Our two allies are momentum and morale. And what’s momentum? Winning. We win a couple of games in a row, before you know it we’ll be thinking we can win.” . . . Campanis indicated that left-hander Dennis Powell may be back soon. Powell, recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his left elbow, was a 4-2 winner for Albuquerque Wednesday night, giving up two runs on seven hits in six innings. “He’s a probable,” Campanis said. “We’ve got to have some restraint. We can’t panic. If we bring him up before he’s ready, that would just compound the problem.”