‘Stuntmen’ No Longer Escaping : Dodgers’ Reserves Reflect the Decline of Club in 4-2 Loss

For their next stunts, Rick Dempsey would like to get a base hit, and Mickey Hatcher would like a break.

The leaders of last year’s famed Dodger bench, nicknamed “the Stuntmen,” have not been walking away from those collisions with brick walls this season. Typical was Saturday’s 4-2 loss to the San Diego Padres before a crowd of 38,421 at Dodger Stadium.

With the Dodgers trailing, 4-0, in the ninth, Hatcher was in the middle of a rally with an RBI single. But upon reaching first base, he turned and limped back to the dugout. Hatcher was still hurt after suffering a strained left hamstring Friday night while chasing vandals who broke a window in his house.

After Jeff Hamilton moved pinch-runner Ramon Martinez to second base with a single, still with none out, Dempsey was called to pinch-hit. He was looking for his first hit in 15 days; he is still looking.

After fouling off four straight pitches from Mark Davis, Dempsey grounded out, and the rally eventually died.

The Dodgers’ three-game winning streak, their second-longest this season, is finished. And with every game in this humorless season, the Dodger Stuntmen become more human.

“You haven’t heard from us as much because we haven’t been in a position to win as many ballgames this year,” Dempsey said. “We aren’t used the same way. The way the ballclub has gone, everything is different.”

Hatcher, who with Dempsey was a leader on the bench last season, couldn’t agree more. Although he is the club’s leading hitter with a .322 average, he has batted only 171 times, half as many as some regulars. And then came Friday night, when he was standing inside his home with friends after the Dodgers’ 6-3 victory over the Padres.

“We hear glass break, and we run outside and there are these kids,” Hatcher said. “We take off after them, and I go hard for about 70 yards and jump a curb and then snapped it (the hamstring). It was amazing.”

Hatcher caught one of the kids and called the police, but will not press charges if the kids replace the window.

“I was young once, too,” he said.

Hatcher nonetheless started in left field in place of the injured Kal Daniels Saturday and played most of the game with no problem. But he had trouble with Padre rookie pitcher Greg Harris, who entered the game with an 0-3 record and a 5.60 earned-run average in his previous three starts.

Harris gave up four hits in 7 1/3 shutout innings before leaving for Davis, who despite giving up the ninth-inning runs registered his major league-leading 29th save, a career high.

The fact that Hatcher was able to single off Davis, driving in the first run Davis has given up in his last 17 appearances, heartened Hatcher. But not much.

“I played nine innings on the leg, so that shows something,” Hatcher said. “But it hurts. We’ll have to see.”

A different part of Dempsey hurts. He is batting .152, down 99 points from last season. He is in an 0-for-13 slump, which, because he is primarily a pinch-hitter, means he hasn’t had a hit since July 21.

And because Dempsey has yet to start two games in a row this season, ending the slump will only get harder.

“Its a tough situation--you have to be aggressive and swing at the close pitches when you get a chance, but when you are slumping, the close pitches aren’t so close,” he said.

“All the dimensions become exaggerated. Hitting can become the hardest thing to do.”

During his bout with Davis Saturday, Dempsey said he saw two hittable pitches but couldn’t quite get the bat around on either one. On his grounder to second, he said Davis threw him a perfect outside pitch that gave him no choice.

“I don’t swing, it’s strike three, but if I swing I barely got a shot at getting the bat on the ball,” he said. “So I barely got the bat on the ball. It’s been that way for me lately.”

The timing could be better. Dempsey’s $420,000-a-year contract expires at the end of the season. He will be 40 next month, but he has said he wants to play at least one more year. That would make him one of a handful of catchers to play in four decades.

“We have good baseball people around here, they know what I’m doing is not easy, they know my defensive contributions,” Dempsey said. “But I need to spend the next couple of months building up my credibility offensively and then see what happens.”

Demspey’s grounder Saturday moved the runners to second and third, and Willie Randolph’s fly ball scored the Dodgers’ second run. But Alfredo Griffin grounded out to shortstop to end the game.

Dodger starter Tim Belcher (8-10) gave up only five hits in six innings, but two were home runs.

Marvell Wynne hit his fifth homer of the season in the fourth inning, and Chris James followed a two-out, full-count walk to Tony Gwynn with his eighth homer in the sixth.

“I was asked about what happened on that Gwynn pitch--well, I just didn’t want to lay a fastball in to him and let him put it in orbit,” Belcher said. “I looked and saw James in the on-deck circle and figured I would take my chances 0 and 0 with him rather than 3 and 2 to the league’s best hitter.

“If somebody thinks it was bad pitch selection, well, you get away with bad pitch selection if you execute those bad pitches. I didn’t.”

Dodger Notes

Kal Daniels missed his fourth consecutive game Saturday because of a sore right knee. Although Dodger vice president Fred Claire has said that the club is not considering placing Daniels on the disabled list, he can’t play a man short much longer. If Daniels is disabled, the leading replacement candidate would be Mike Huff, a former 16th-round draft pick who has hit .328 with 10 homers and 77 runs batted in for triple-A Albuquerque. . . . Second baseman Lenny Harris made a spectacular leaping catch of a Garry Templeton line drive with runners on second and third and one out in the second inning. He then threw the ball behind his back to Alfredo Griffin on second base to complete the double play. “I learned that from Willie (Randolph),” said Harris, who went one for three to give him eight hits in his last 16 at-bats, with four doubles and five RBIs. “I like making those kinds of plays because, the way I hit, everybody is always making those kinds of plays on me.”. . . . Tim Crews gave up another run (unearned) in two innings of relief Saturday. Since the All-Star break, Crews has given up runs in five of eight appearances, although in two of those appearances the runs have been unearned. Dodger stopper Jay Howell has given up a run in one of his last 21 appearances.