Dodgers Follow Bouncing Ball and Win, 1-0

Jose Gonzalez hit a sinking line drive toward second baseman Jose Lind, as straight as the Dodger season has been long. Lind opened his glove and prepared to make the play that would send this scoreless game into extra innings.

But as the ball bounced, it struck something. The Pittsburgh Pirates will tell you it just hit a bad spot on a terribly hard infield. The Dodgers prefer to think of it as a tiny chunk of justice.

Gonzalez’s ball shot up, hit Lind in the shoulder and ricocheted into right-center field as Eddie Murray scored from second base to give the Dodgers a 1-0 victory Saturday before a crowd of 33,692 at Dodger Stadium.

Call it a red-letter win. As Murray sprinted across the plate, as Mike Marshall rounded second base with his fists pumping, as Gonzalez reached first with his hands clapping, Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said he could only think of the calendar.

“As soon as that ball got past the second baseman, I said, ‘It’s July now,” Lasorda said. “I said, ‘June is over, it’s time for July.’ ”

For the Dodgers, who had a 12-17 record in June, ending the month with five consecutive losses and in fifth place, Saturday’s game indeed represented a new start.

Marshall was in right field for the first time after missing all of June with lower back problems. He responded with one of the game’s biggest at-bats.

Tim Belcher was on the mound for the first time since his dugout confrontation with umpire Ed Montague early Wednesday morning. He responded with a scoreless inning of relief for the win.

And back, too, was the Dodger good fortune that had so abruptly abandoned them sometime after last Oct. 20.

“Today was just one game, and we can’t get too excited, but . . . “ said catcher Rick Dempsey, who threw out two would-be base-stealers in a rare start. “We all know we’ve had more than enough opportunity to win every game we’ve lost. Maybe this is the start of taking advantage of those opportunities.”

Said coach Joe Ferguson: “Days like today make you believe the world really isn’t coming to an end.”

After Dodger starter Tim Leary had held the Pirates to four singles in eight innings, and after the Dodgers had blown what few chances they had against Pirate starter John Smiley, the game came down to the ninth inning.

Kirk Gibson started the Dodger half by striking out against Smiley, leaving him with five hits in his last 50 at-bats, but Murray followed with a single to center field. Up stepped Marshall, who had gone 0 for 3 and looked as impatient as a man who hasn’t played in a month.

After knocking two foul balls down the left-field line, he settled in to watch two close pitches that were balls.

“And then I started thinking about a walk,” said Marshall, who earlier in the day had beenactivated from the 21-day disabled list, replacing Mariano Duncan, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a sore left hamstring.

“I’ve played so much baseball in my life, I’ve seen so much pitching, even though I haven’t played in a while, it came back quick,” Marshall said. “He missed on a couple of close pitches, and I thought if I waited him out, I might get on.”

Two pitches later, with a full count, Marshall indeed walked.

Jeff Hamilton then popped up for the second out, bringing up Gonzalez, who earlier had been denied an extra-base hit when Barry Bonds made a diving catch of his third-inning line drive. This time, Gonzalez wasn’t going to be denied. On the first two pitches, he swung for the fences. Both pitches were high and away. He missed them both.

From the dugout, Lasorda was shouting for Gonzalez just to put the ball in play. Gonzalez finally heard.

“I tell myself to relax,” Gonzalez said, and on the next pitch he used a nice, easy swing to rap the ball toward Lind.

It was a lucky break for the Dodgers for two reasons. If the ball is caught or fielded successfully, the game goes into extra innings. If the ball merely goes through for a single, the game also likely goes into extra innings, as center fielder Andy Van Slyke possesses one of baseball’s best arms and could have easily made a play on Murray at the plate.

“That’s why I was cheering when the ball hit the ground and hit (Lind),” said Marshall, who was running just ahead of the hit. “That was the only way we had a chance.”

Later, the Pirate coaches weren’t cheering the hard Dodger Stadium infield that caused thebounce.

“Beautiful ballpark, rotten infield,” pitching coach Ray Miller said.

Added infielders coach Tommy Sandt: “It’s no major league infield. It’s like concrete. It’s worse than AstroTurf.”

All of which made little difference to Leary, who improved his earned-run average to 2.89, even though his record remained 6-5. Even happier Saturday was Belcher, who improved to 5-8 with a 3.25 ERA after making his fourth relief appearance since his transfer from the starting rotation.

And how about the fact that for only the 19th time this season, Gibson, Murray and Marshall were in the same starting lineup.

The Dodgers have won just eight of those 19 games when all three played, but during those games, the trio combined to hit .282, an average better than any of them currently have individually. In the 19 games they also combined for six home runs and 32 runs batted in.

“You have to realize we have a lot of talent on this club,” Ferguson said of his team, which moved within 8 1/2 games of the first-place San Francisco Giants. “Now we’ll see what happens when all of it is put together.”

Dodger Notes

The return of Mike Marshall and the emergence of Jose Gonzalez has moved outfielder Mickey Hatcher, who has been starting against left-handed pitching, to the end of the bench. And Hatcher, who didn’t bat against left-hander John Smiley Saturday despite a .307 average, isn’t happy about it. “They are treating me like an old broken-down ballplayer, and I don’t appreciate it,” said Hatcher, 34, one of last season’s World Series heroes. “It would be different if we were tearing the cover off the ball. But we aren’t. That’s what makes it so frustrating and hard to watch, when I know I could be making a difference. I will play when I am told, I will do what I am told, but I don’t like it.”

In moving Mariano Duncan to the 15-day disabled list, the Dodgers had to switch Chris Gwynn (stress fracture in his foot) from the 15-day list to the 21-day disabled list, as a team can only have two players on the 15-day list at the same time. Tracy Woodson is already on the disabled list with a strained leg muscle and is due back in the middle of next week, sooner than Gwynn, who thinks he still could be a couple of weeks away. “Some days I wake up and it’s improving, other days it’s regressing,” he said of the fracture. “To guess when I would come back is still a stab in the dark.” For Duncan, this is his second stint on the disabled list this season, as he missed 15 days in early June with an injured right hand.