Dodgers Win Quickly, but Losing Takes Time

A Dodger victory, quite rare these days, should be savored like a vintage wine, not guzzled and discarded into the gutter like a cheap muscatel.

But the Dodgers, who needed only 19 minutes to pull out a 5-4 win Saturday over the Chicago Cubs in the resumption of Friday’s suspended game, had to come back an hour later for Saturday’s regular game--if that term is applicable to this club.

By the end of another long afternoon, in which nary a drop of rain fell on Wrigley Field for a change, the memory of the Dodgers’ earlier triumph had been shredded by a 7-0 loss to the Cubs behind Steve Trout’s commanding pitching performance.

Well, at least, the Dodgers had 19 good minutes Saturday.

“How about that win?” Manager Tom Lasorda bellowed in the clubhouse after the completion of the suspended game. “Our quickest of the season.”

Four hours later, a more subdued Lasorda said: “The winning streak didn’t last too long, did it?”

The Dodgers, 11 games below .500 and 9 games out of first place in the National League West, obviously would rather remember the dramatic way they won the suspended game.

But the shutout by Trout, his second in row, and the three home runs the Cubs hit off Dodger starter Tim Leary would not go away.

First, though, the good news for Dodger fans . . .

When we last left the Dodgers on a rainy Friday, they were clinging to a 4-4 tie with two out in the bottom of the ninth and a runner on third base. At that point, the game was suspended because of darkness.

It resumed in 89-degree heat and oppressive humidity early Saturday with Dodger reliever Matt Young pitching to Paul Noce and Dave Martinez on third base. Young needed only three pitches--all sliders--to strike out Noce and send it to a 10th inning.

The Dodgers, hitting against the Cubs’ All-Star reliever, Lee Smith, didn’t wait long to strike. Steve Sax hit a leadoff single and was sacrificed to second by Dave Anderson. Then, Mariano Duncan bounced a grounder down the first-base line that scored Sax for a 5-4 Dodger lead. The ball died in the outfield grass, and Duncan wound up with a triple, his first since Sept. 14, 1985. What may have been even more improbable than the Dodgers getting to Smith, who has 22 saves, was the manner in which they snapped their five-game losing streak.

Young gave up singles to Andre Dawson and Rafael Palmeiro with one out in the 10th, but the Dodger infield turned an impressive Sax-to-Duncan-to-Franklin Stubbs double play on a hard shot by Keith Moreland to end the game.

“I threw three sliders,” Young said of his matchup against Noce in the ninth. “Each one was a little farther outside. If he was going to beat me, he was going to do it with my (kind of) pitches.”

“The guys turned a great double play for me (in the 10th). It felt funny. After that, I went to the dugout and was getting ready for the next inning. It didn’t dawn on me that it was the last out (of the game).”

Between games, the Dodgers spoke optimistically of sweeping and how it might be the start of a turnaround.

“This makes me happy--my first triple and us winning the game,” Duncan said. “We’ve won one, now we’re ready to go for another one and another one.”

Instead, the Dodgers reverted to recent form and lost for the 10th time in their last 13 games. They are 2-8 on a trip that ends today, barring any further disruptive meteorological phenomena.

There was nothing at all phenomenal in the Dodgers’ performance in Saturday’s regular game. They were shut out for the fifth time in the last two weeks, and their normally reliable starting pitching failed them.

Leary allowed two runs in each of the first three innings, including solo home runs by Ryne Sandberg, Palmeiro and Jody Davis.

After Davis’ third-inning home run landed in the center-field bleachers, giving Chicago a 6-0 lead, the Dodgers finally had enough and pulled Leary, even though most bullpen members have been overworked this week.

But Brad Havens gave another fine outing with 1 scoreless innings. Havens has allowed just 1 run in 18 innings of his last 13 appearances. Rick Honeycutt, Thursday’s losing pitcher, worked three innings and gave up only an unearned run in the sixth. Alejandro Pena pitched a scoreless eighth.

But the damage the Cubs did to Leary in the early innings was enough, because the Dodger offense was anesthetized against Trout, who gave up six hits and pitched out of the only jam he had, in the first inning.

Trout fooled hitters with an assortment of off-speed pitches and occasional fastballs.

“He threw me about 100 change-ups,” Mike Marshall said. “By the time I figured him out, it was too late.”

By the time Lasorda pulled Leary, it was too late for the Dodgers.

“Leary found out that you can’t pitch high in this park,” Lasorda said. “Trout showed him that. (Trout) kept the ball down the whole day.”

The ever-optimistic Lasorda promised that, after the All-Star break, the Dodgers will be resurrected in the National League West.

“We’re going to get a good winning streak going, gentlemen,” he told reporters afterward. “We’ve got to.”