Futile Finale Typifies the Dodgers’ Season : Maldonado Hits 2 Homers, Including Grand Slam, as Giants Win, 11-2 By

In 1966, the Dodgers won 95 games and the National League pennant. The next season, they lost a club-record 89 games and finished eighth.

They didn’t finish first again for another seven seasons, until 1974.

In 1985, the Dodgers won 95 games and the National League Western Division. Sunday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, they lost their 89th game, 11-2 to the San Francisco Giants, matching the club record set 19 years ago.

The makings of a trend?

The Dodgers hope not. A repeat would almost certainly mean an end to their seasons of three million fans or more. It took a crowd of 40,939 Sunday to put the Dodgers over three million paid admissions for the fifth straight year and seventh time in their history--3,023,208, to be exact, a drop of 241,385 from a year ago, when they had one more home date.

The Dodgers managed to finish out of last place by a half-game when Atlanta lost in Houston.

The biggest losers among the Dodgers Sunday were:

--Second baseman Steve Sax, who finished second in the National League batting race to Montreal’s Tim Raines, .334 to .332.

--Pitcher Orel Hershiser, who was knocked out in a six-run seventh and finished a .500 pitcher (14-14) after leading baseball in winning percentage (.864) last season with a 19-3 record.

--Dodger Vice President Al Campanis, who watched from his private box while ex-Dodger Candy Maldonado drove in six runs with a grand slam home run in the seventh off Hershiser and a two-run shot off reliever Balvino Galvez in the ninth.

“I don’t think I had anything left to prove--I had shown before what I can do--but this was the sweetest,” said Maldonado, who finished the season with 18 home runs and 85 RBIs, exceeding his career totals with the Dodgers (11 homers and 53 RBIs in three-plus seasons).

Maldonado, who started the season as a premier pinch-hitter and wound up as a regular, led the Giants in RBIs--and had 25 more RBIs than Bill Madlock, who led the Dodgers with 60. He had nine hits in the three-game series.

Campanis had long championed Maldonado, but last winter traded him to the Giants for catcher Alex Trevino, who was an able fill-in for Mike Scioscia.

Maldonado, however, was voted the Giants’ MVP by teammates. He leaped on home plate with both feet after the grand slam, which helped to make a 20-game winner of Mike Krukow. Later, he stood at the plate and watched his blast off Galvez.

“I didn’t mean to show anybody up,” Maldonado said. “I just wanted to enjoy every second of it.”

There was no joy left for Hershiser, who had never lost to the Giants before Sunday (he was 6-0) but brought on his own undoing by throwing wildly on Krukow’s game-tying squeeze in the seventh, then walking Mike Aldrete to force in the go-ahead run just before Maldonado unloaded.

Hershiser finished the season with a 3.85 ERA, almost double the 2.03 ERA he posted last season. He doesn’t figure to come close to the $788,000 raise he won in arbitration last winter.

Sax needed to go 3 for 3 or 4 for 5 to overtake Raines, who sat out the Expos’ game Sunday. Sax blooped a single to right his first time up, flied to right in the second, reached on Luis Quinones’ throwing error in the fifth and was credited with a sacrifice bunt in the seventh.

Officially, then, Sax was 1 for 3, which left him with the highest average by any Dodger since Tommy Davis hit .346 in 1962. For the second straight season, a Dodger finished runner-up in the batting race. Pedro Guerrero was second to Willie McGee of the Cardinals (.353 to .320) in 1985.

“Give Raines a lot of credit, he deserved it,” Sax said. “I’m thrilled to have been in the race with him, and that it came down to the last day.

“Would I like to have Raines on our team? Yeah, I’d like to have him. I know they (the Dodgers) are interested. Everybody’s interested.”

Raines is eligible to become a free agent this winter.

The Dodger season, fittingly enough, ended with Dave Anderson grounding into a double play. The Dodgers also made 2 errors to give them 181 for the season, 11 short of the club record of 192 set in 1962, but almost 40 more than any other National League team.

“I hate to see this season end, I really do,” Manager Tom Lasorda said.

He may be the only Dodger who did.