Martinez Hit Hard, but Dodgers Earn Split : Baseball: Mets come away with 9-8 first-game victory. In second game, Hartley gives L.A. a 2-1 win in his first major league start.

The Dodgers, pushing aside the disappointment of a first-game loss by their best pitcher to the New York Mets, rebounded to split a doubleheader Tuesday.

After Ramon Martinez was hammered for seven runs in a 9-8 loss in the opener, rookie emergency starter Mike Hartley threw six strong innings and the Dodgers’ defense mopped up in a 2-1 victory in the second game.

“How about that, we lose with Martinez and we win with Hartley!” said Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda after his team eventually silenced a crowd of 46,004 at Shea Stadium. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

The second-game victory was enough to convince the Dodgers they are still in the National League West race, although the first-place Cincinnati Reds won again.

That meant the Dodgers lost one-half game in the standings, falling to 8 1/2 games back with two games remaining on his 15-game trip.

“We knew we had to win that second game to stay in this race,” catcher Rick Dempsey. “That’s all there was to it. After that first loss, we absolutely had to win. And we played like it.”

Hartley, making his first major league start, became mentally ready by spending the period between games in the bullpen.

“I tried not to think about what I was going to do,” admitted Hartley, who had not started a professional game since 1986.

Then, looking more relaxed than anyone on the field, he held the Mets to two hits through six shutout innings.

By the time rookie Dave Walsh was summoned to face Darryl Strawberry to start the seventh, the Dodgers led 2-0 on a run-scoring grounder by Lenny Harris that went under second baseman Gregg Jefferies’ glove for an error, and a run-scoring single by Dempsey.

Five pitches later it was 2-1, as Strawberry sent a pitch by Walsh over the right-field fence for his 27th home run.

Then in the eighth inning, against reliever Jay Howell, it really became interesting. Kelvin Torve started the inning with a single to left. Mackey Sasser hit a slow grounder to second baseman Juan Samuel, who didn’t appear to have time to throw out Torve at second base. But he tried anyway, and his flip to Griffin beat Torve’s slide by an instant.

Daryl Boston then lined a ball down the right-field line. Sasser rounded third and, even though there was only one out, he was sent home by third base coach Chuck Hiller. Hubie Brooks made a perfect throw to Samuel, who made another perfect throw to Dempsey for the easy tag out.

Minutes later the inning ended when Dave Magadan hit a high hopper that third baseman Lenny Harris stabbed, caught, and strongly threw from the third base line to get Magadan at first.

Lasorda left the dugout and ran halfway to third, screaming and pumping his arms. Howell gave up only a leadoff single in the ninth and picked up his ninth save.

“Was that a great play by Harris or what?” Dempsey asked. “That was all arm. He had no choice but to wing it, and man, he winged it.”

Said Harris: “I was out there the whole game, waiting for a ball like that to be hit to me. When I saw it I knew, I don’t catch this, we got extra inning. I just got it and threw it.”

He wasn’t the only one on target. Hartley was starting only because the Dodgers were short of pitchers because of the doubleheader, but he could easily have allowed no hits in his six innings.

The first hit against him was a first-inning line drive by Magadan that bounced off Hartley’s glove and rolled to the left side of the infield. The other hit was an easily handled fly ball to left field by Orlando Mercado in the sixth inning that fell untouched because Chris Gwynn had fallen down while slipping on his approach.

‘Nobody was more surprised than me,” Dempsey said. “I didn’t know he could throw that hard, for that long.”

Hartley, whose previously longest appearance this year was five innings, said: “That’s pretty much the best I could expect from myself. And if anything, that first game might have given me the edge. It might have gotten the hits out of their system. Maybe they were tired of running the bases.”

The Dodgers were stunned in the opener, not by Mets, but by Martinez. The Dodger starter picked an unfortunate time to throw his worst game of the year, giving up seven runs on five hits in 4 1/3 innings with only two strikeouts, the fewest of the season for the National League’s strikeout leader.

It was only three fewer runs than he allowed in the course of his six-game win streak, which was snapped, and more than twice as many as he has allowed in all but four previous starts.