Giants Beat Dodgers on a Big Hit by Little-Known Laga

There’s a funny, enduring thing about baseball pennant races. They rarely look like pennant races. Coming after seven months of games, they are sometimes tired, sometimes slow, rarely glistening with a Gold Glove or thrilling with a Cy Young.

Look long enough and you’ll realize, penannt races mostly look like guys named Mike Laga. The Dodgers discovered this last year, and the Giants realized it again Tuesday night in front of 20,668 Candlestick Park fans who won’t soon forget.

Trailing the Dodgers, 2-0, in the fifth inning, the Giants had loaded the bases against Orel Hershiser with two out when, to the shock of anyone who can count to four, Matt Williams was removed for a pinch hitter. This was the same Williams who has 16 homers and 43 RBIs in just 74 games, including a grand slam against these Dodgers last month.

The substitute? A 29-year-old career minor-leaguer named Laga, a man blessed with eight big-league at-bats this season.

For a few moments, there was silence. Then there were cheers that Laga will probably hear until October, as he drove a Hershiser pitch against the right-field wall, clearing the bases and giving the Giants a 3-2 victory.

The National League West leaders maintain a five-game lead over San Diego, with just 11 games remaining. And at least on this night, the hero was a guy who will you won’t find anywhere near the names Mitchell and Clark in the Giants media guide.

Laga, if he wasn’t in the section with the other Giants minor leaguers, would be listed in the guide right next to Mike Lacoss in the regular section. Lacoss is the pitcher who tried to give the game away Tuesday, allowing 11 hits in five innings. He was officially the winning pitcher, but was saved by four innings of scoreless relief by Craig Lefferts and Steve Bedrosian.

The loser, for the 14th time in 28 decisions, was Hershiser. He has only himself to blame for the fifth, in which he allowed a leadoff single to pinch-hitter Ken Oberkfell and walks to Brett Butler and Will Clark to cause all the trouble.

And how his teammates tried to offer him more than the four runs they had given him in his previous seven winless starts. They scored half that amount in Tuesday’s first inning, on two infield singles and three bloop singles, featuring RBIs by Mike Marshall and Lenny Harris.

But in the second inning, after reaching first on a surprise bunt single, Mike Scioscia ran the Dodgers out of the rally by unsuccessfully trying to reach third base on an Alfredo Griffin single. And in the fourth, Hershiser failed to get down a good sacrifice bunt after a leadoff single by John Shelby. And in the seventh, Eddie Murray turned a one-out single to right field into a second out by trying, and failing, to turn it into a double.

In the end, Hershiser was left with a 14-14 record, an 0-6 record since Aug. 8, and a bad taste for guys named Laga.

It isn’t like Laga has not done this before. All four of his hits since his September recall have driven in runs. In his first at-bat as a Giant, on Sept. 4 in Cincinnati, he hit a two-run homer to begin a rally from an 8-0 deficit. He later drove in the winning run with a single in a 9-8 victory that many have credited with being the start of the Giants stretch run.

But having jumped from the major leagues to the minor leagues for the last eight years, Laga can be excused for being excited about this. And so the Dodgers likely did not mind, and the Giants fans loved it, when after his double he made like a wide receive in an end zone. He ran in from second base following his removal for a pinch runner with his helmet held high in his left hand, and his left hand pumping.

When the crowd wouldn’t sit, he re-appeared from the dugout and pumped his helmet again. It was enough to collapse the Dodgers for the remaining four innings, which ended on Brett Butler’s diving catch of an Eddie Murray line drive with Griffin on first after a single. Pennant races, you see, can also look like guys named Butler.

Dodger Notes

Mickey Hatcher’s season has likely ended after he left Candlestick Park before Tuesday’s game with what was diagnosed by Giants’ physician Dr. Will Straw as a hernia. Hacther probably suffered it while lifting furniture at his home. Hatcher returned to Los Angeles this morning where he will be examined by Dodger team physician, Dr. Michael Mellman. Hatcher never fully recovered from a strained left hamstring that sidelined him for 15 days in August. He was batting .322 when he came off the disabled list Aug. 21, but since then, he had gone 10 for 48 (.208) to drop his average to .297 in 91 games . . . Mike Davis, who can pinch hit but still can’t play the outfield because of a sore left knee, said he was considering playing for one of the two Dodger teams in the Arizona Instructional League after the season. “I still can’t sprint, and I need to find some way to get this leg better for next season,” said Davis, who has no idea where he will play next season. His contract expires but, because he was a free agent two seasons ago, he cannot be a free agent unless the Dodgers release him. He said he will discuss the situation with Dodger officials in a couple of weeks. “Los Angeles is a great place to play, with emphasis on the phrase, ‘place to play,’ ” Davis said. “I’ve been sitting for two years, and that’s sad. That’s a whole lot of stuff down the drain. More than anything, next year I need to play.” . . . Alfredo Griffin is one of the club’s five Dominican Republic natives who was worried about the effects of Hurricane Hugo on his island. “You get used to those kinds of things happening over there,” he said. “But the island is not in good shape anyway, and every time something like this hits, it gets worse and worse.”