Eighth-Inning Rally Gives Cubs 6-3 Win

The team with an abundance of good starting pitchers might want to look for a place to store them. Maybe the disabled list. Maybe the equipment room.

Anywhere but the bullpen.

A couple of days after moving one disgruntled starter out of the bullpen and moving another starter in, the Dodgers realized Monday night that this may not be such a swell idea.

New reliever Tim Leary broke a 3-3 tie for the Cubs when he loaded the bases in the eighth inning and then walked Curtis Wilkerson on four straight pitches to force in the go-ahead run, leading to the Cubs’ 6-3 victory before 39,914 at Dodger Stadium.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Leary said afterward, and with good reason.

In the seventh inning, he came on in relief of Dodger starter Ramon Martinez, coincidentally the pitcher who replaced Leary in the rotation despite Leary’s 3.18 earned-run average in 17 starts.

Leary retired the Cubs in order in the seventh. But in the eighth, as starters are wont to do in uncomfortable situations, he fidgeted.

He started the inning by walking Lloyd McClendon. Then he allowed a single by Mark Grace, whose three-run home run in the first inning had caused the Dodgers to play catch-up. After Damon Berryhill bunted the runners to second and third, Leary intentionally walked Mitch Webster to load the bases for Wilkerson, who entered the game hitting .129 against right-handed pitchers such as Leary.

“I was looking for anything in the strike zone, anything to drive,” Wilkerson said, shrugging. “But I didn’t get it.”

Not even close. Leary, who averages only 2 1/2 walks per nine innings, threw four consecutive balls, all of them high and wide. And with Cub jaws dropping as quick as Dodger spirits, Wilkerson trotted to first, McClendon trotted home, and the game was essentially over.

“It’s an amazing thing when a guy throws four straight balls like that with the bases loaded, balls way out of the strike zone,” Cub Manager Don Zimmer said. “There’s no explanation for it.”

Said Wilkerson: “Anything close, I’m swinging. . . . It was surprising.”

On came reliever Ray Searage, and the Cubs added two more runs in the inning, on a run-scoring fly in a rare pinch-hit performance by Andre Dawson and on a run-scoring single by Domingo Ramos.

And so the Dodgers, 2-3 since the All-Star break, are 13 games behind the first-place San Francisco Giants, with the season’s second half looking more like the first half every day.

The Cubs scored before the game was 15 minutes old, on Grace’s 400-foot, three-run home run off Martinez, who certainly wouldn’t have imagined that kind of flight on his flight here from triple-A Albuquerque Sunday morning.

The Dodgers countered with runs in the first, third and sixth innings to tie it, although they blew twice as many chances. In the first, off Cub starter Scott Sanderson, Eddie Murray followed Willie Randolph’s single with a run-scoring double. In the third they teamed up again, with Randolph hitting a single to center, being balked to second, and scoring on Murray’s single, giving Murray a team-leading 51 RBIs.

They finally tied it in the sixth, against reliever Steve Wilson, when Jeff Hamilton followed Jose Gonzalez’s pinch single with a double to left.

But at that point, they were more frustrated than happy, having left runners in scoring position in four of the first six innings. In all, the Dodgers scored three runs on 11 hits. The Cubs scored six runs on six hits.

“We don’t care, we’ll take that kind of win any time, any place,” Ramos said.

Lost in the late-inning mess was the early-inning mess of Martinez, who had been up with the big league club once before this season, but only for a short time. That time he was recalled from Albuquerque June 4 to help the Dodgers’ weary pitching staff after their 22-inning game in Houston a day earlier. He threw a six-hit shutout against the Atlanta Braves June 5, and was sent back down the next day.

This time, in only six innings, Martinez managed to throw 90 pitches. You’d throw that many, too, if you walked five, struck out five, hit one batter and allowed another one to drive the ball 400 feet. Allowing three runs on three hits, he was never boring.

Dodger Notes

Cub outfielder Andre Dawson missed his second consecutive start Monday with swelling and pain in his right knee, which was surgically repaired May 11. He will probably not start today, either. Dawson said the knee, “felt pretty close to how it felt before the surgery.”

Parting Shot Dept: In a story appearing Monday in the Dallas Morning News, St. Louis’ Pedro Guerrero ripped a pregame ceremony at Dodger Stadium April 28 in which he was honored by his former teammates with a framed photographic collage of his Dodger accomplishments. “I didn’t want to be a part of it, but my wife talked me into it--she begged me,” said Guerrero of the ceremony. Of the gift, he said: “They were seven pictures I had in my house already and when they sent it to me it was broken. I just threw it away. They had nights for other players and gave them lots of things. They just wanted to do that to show me up. To make me feel embarrassed because of what I said in spring training.” In 12 games against the Dodgers this year, Guerrero has hit .363 with game-winning RBIs in two of the Cardinals’ nine wins.

Pitcher Orel Hershiser remained home Monday with the stomach flu, but told a club spokesman that he still planned to make his scheduled start against Chicago tonight. “We’ll have to see how weak he is,” pitching coach Ron Perranoski said of Hershiser. . . . Sore-shouldered pitcher John Tudor continues to work out with the team, but is still as many as two weeks away from picking up a baseball. . . . Jose Gonzalez, in a four-for-38 slump that has dropped his average from .369 to .272, was benched for the second consecutive game Monday. Franklin Stubbs played left field and Kirk Gibson moved to center. “What can I say?” said Gonzalez, who had made 12 consecutive starts before Sunday. “Every time I put on this blue uniform, I am happy. I wait and hope to get my chance again.”

In a minor league deal, the Dodgers acquired outfielder Billy Bean from the Detroit Tigers’ triple-A Toledo team for minor league outfielders Domingo Michel of triple-A Albuquerque and Steve Green of Class-A Vero Beach). Bean will be sent to Albuquerque. Bean hit .315 with four home runs and 29 RBIs for Toledo.