L.A. Ends First Half in Big Hole : Dodgers Welcome Break After Losing 5 of 6 on This Trip

He used to be the first man out of the dugout. Now he is the last one to leave.

Tom Lasorda, accustomed to jumping on the field to celebrate wins, stayed in his seat again Sunday, sitting motionless for 10 minutes after another Dodger loss. Alone, staring at an empty infield as workers moved around him to pick up bats and empty water buckets, Lasorda sat.

Later, from his Wrigley Field clubhouse office, he stated what had already been made very clear.

“This kills me,” he said. “It just kills me.”

He was talking not just about this game, but the season’s first half, which ended appropriately for the Dodgers Sunday in an awful 11-4 loss in front of 35,533. Lasorda had also sat in the dugout after Friday’s 6-4 loss here, but Sunday he sat longer.

In order to fully comprehend what has happened to his world champions, he said he would have needed to sit there all night.

“In spring training, if you had told me that this would happen to us, I would have said you’ve got to be crazy,” Lasorda said.

What happened Sunday started with Fernando Valenzuela, who gave up six runs in the first three innings, three of them thanks to two Dodger errors, all six of them after he had two outs. It continued with an Orel Hershiser balk that led to one run--yes, he came out of the bullpen. Then there was poor Dodger fielding that led to a couple of more runs.

It ended with the Dodgers still trailing just 7-4 in the seventh inning and Jose Gonzalez on third base and Kirk Gibson hitting a grounder to the right side of the infield to score him . . . except Cub first baseman Mark Grace didn’t play it by the book and threw home.

Catcher Damon Berryhill swiped at Gonzalez as he slid past. And despite strong opinion otherwise, home plate umpire Frank Pulli ruled that Gonzalez had been tagged out. And the Dodgers only managed one infield hit the rest of the game.

“Grace never should have gone to the plate and he gets away with it because the guy behind the plate misses the call,” Lasorda said. “And that’s the game.”

And so much for this first-half ending trip through 90-degree heat of St. Louis and Chicago: Six games, five losses, a .235 batting average (48 for 204), a 6.43 ERA (35 runs in 49 innings), and four errors. What once was an isolated infection in their hitting has spread to everything.

The Dodgers are 40-47, in fifth place in the National League West, closer to last-place Atlanta (four games ahead) then first-place San Francisco (11 games behind).

This is not even their worst All-Star break record in the last three years, as they were 39-49 at the break in 1987. But since coming to Los Angeles in 1958, the Dodger have never been under .500 at the break and come back to finish higher than third place.

“The Miracle Braves of 1914, the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff (1951 New York Giants), that’s all we have to think about right now,” Lasorda said.

But at the moment, he can think about having fun as the National League All-Star manager, right? Lasorda paused.

“Put it this way--it won’t be very joyous,” he said of Tuesday’s game in Anaheim. “The game is something special . . . but I’m just not very happy right now.”

Sunday wasn’t exactly the best warmup act. After Valenzuela gave up a two-run home run in the second inning by Berryhill, the only ball hit hard among five hits against the Dodger starter, things got weird in the third.

After Jerome Walton singled and Ryne Sandberg walked, Andre Dawson looped a ball to left that fell in front of a charging Gibson. It was enough to score Walton, but then when Gibson ran over the ball without picking it up, Sandberg also scored.

Gibson has already been having troubles at the plate. Last year’s MVP is hitting .223 with eight homers and 24 RBIs as he finished the first half in a nine-for-78 slump (.115).

His error got the trouble started. Lloyd McClendon’s grounder then bounced around third baseman Jeff Hamilton’s legs for another error, moving Dawson to third. After a walk to Vance Law, Berryhill lined a ball to center field to score two more runs. An inning later, Valenzuela was gone.

“No comment, please,” said Valenzuela, who fell to 4-8 but only worsened his ERA from 3.86 to 3.98 because, of the six rans against him, just three were earned.

After the Dodgers put together three runs in the sixth inning on four consecutive two-out singles--with RBIs from Hamilton, Anderson and pinch-hitter Mickey Hatcher--things turned for the worse in the eighth.

Anderson, subbing for a sore-necked Willie Randolph at second base, fumbled a possible double-play ball that could have ended the inning with only one run being scored, and then allowed a grounder to go under his glove for two more runs as the Cubs totaled four runs to finish the beating.

“High grass, bad infield . . . but hey, Ryne Sandberg wins Gold Gloves here, so it must have been me,” Anderson admitted.

Afterward Dodger Vice President Fred Claire said everyone must take the blame.

So will there be changes during the All-Star break? Maybe a couple of new hitters must show up?

“If you think I’m going to clean house on Thursday, no,” Claire said. “To change 90% or whatever of this club wouldn’t be practical. We simply have players not performing to their career numbers. We have to believe they will come around.”

And until then? Earlier Sunday Claire had surmised: “The All-Star break is coming at a right time. A good time.”

Dodger Notes

Sunday’s nine-inning game took 3:30, the longest game of the season for the Cubs, but no big deal for the Dodgers, who have also been the opponents in the longest game of the season for the Houston (7:14) and San Diego (5:21). The Dodgers have played four other games in excess of four hours. . . . Poor Tracy Woodson. The former Dodger infielder was sent to triple-A Albuquerque last Monday after recovering from his straight right upper leg muscle. In his first game there Thursday, the opposing Vancouver team walked off the field because their parent Chicago White Sox had been reportedly late with paychecks, and Albuquerque won by forfeit. In an impromptu workout after the forfeit, Woodson promptly reinjured himself. . . . Cub Manager Don Zimmer, whose two-year contract expires at the end of the season, was given a new contract Sunday for an undisclosed number of years. Including Sunday’s win, his 1 1/2-season record with the Cubs is 124-124.