Dodgers Get Shot in Foot : Baseball: Sharperson hit by grounder in ninth as frustrating trip ends with 4-1 loss to Mets.

The Dodgers’ longest and most important trip of the season ended Thursday with Tom Lasorda screaming from the dugout while his players were stunned into silence, their fortunes impaled by a single spike.

Trailing the New York Mets by three runs in the ninth inning, the Dodgers’ were cost a one-out rally when a grounder by Juan Samuel glanced off the bottom of teammate Mike Sharperson’s right cleat as he ran from second to third base.

The ball went into left field and Sharperson crossed home plate, but seconds later he was ruled out for interference by plate umpire Terry Tata. Samuel and pinch-runner Jose Gonzalez, who had advanced to second and third, were returned to first and second.

Moments later, Hubie Brooks flied out to center field, and the Mets completed a 4-1 victory before 41,715 at Shea Stadium.

Lasorda, the Dodger manager, left the dugout while shouting at Tata, “You cost us the game! You cost us the game!”

It was the cry of a man whose team, with an 8-7 record on a trip through four cities, had just spent two weeks going nowhere.

The Dodgers left home trailing the Cincinnati Reds by nine games, and they return trailing the Reds by nine games, with 45 remaining. They gained only in that they moved into a second-place tie with the San Francisco Giants.

The Dodgers will begin a 10-game home stand tonight against the Montreal Expos. They do not play the Reds again for three weeks, until Sept. 8 in Los Angeles, when they begin their final six games against each other.

By then, they may realize that Sharperson’s spike cut deep.

“We have played good ball,” Lasorda said. “We could havecome out of this trip pretty well. . . . I just wish we had won this one.”

Said Kal Daniels: “You know, we should have won three out of four in Atlanta (they won two of four), at least three games here (they won two of four), and we should have swept Cincinnati in three games (they won two of three). I mean, we could have done a lot of things on this trip. But there were some strange occurences.”

Remember when Brooks forgot the number of outs in a 2-1 loss in San Francisco on the third game of this trip? Or how about Tim Crews throwing a wild pitch to cost them a 1-0 loss to Cincinnati in the fifth game of the trip? Or remember when the Braves scored two runs without a hit for a 3-2 decision in the eighth game?

The happenings in the final game fit right in, ending with Samuel’s ninth-inning grounder. It came against Met reliever John Franco after Sharperson and pinch-hitter Mickey Hatcher had walked.

Against Ron Darling in the second inning, Sharperson had given the Dodgers a 1-0 lead with his first career home run in 446 at-bats. He followed with two singles, but the ninth inning changed his day, if not his week.

Samuel slapped the ball between second and third just as Sharperson was running there.

“I saw the ball, but if I stopped, they would have had me out, so I had to go for it,” Sharperson said.

Just as the ball crossed underneath him, it ricocheted to the right, bouncing off shortstop Howard Johnson’s glove and into left field.

“I never felt anything, but when I looked at the replay and saw the ball move, I guess it must have hit me somewhere,” Sharperson said after spending 15 minutes staring in silence. “Only explanation is, it hit my cleat.”

Met third baseman Dave Magadan confirmed: “It hit one of his spikes.”

And for a third opinion, Tata said: “The ball hit him; you could clearly see it ricochet. The other umpires didn’t see it, so I called it.”

Lasorda asked Sharperson if the ball hit him, and without having seen the replay, Sharperson said no. Then when Lasorda realized that the plate umpire had made the call, he lost his cool.

“I have never seen the home plate umpire make that call, I’ve never seen that happen in this game,” Lasorda said, arguing that the ball could not have hit his runner if second-base umpire Dutch Rennert and third-base umpire Greg Bonin did not see it. “How can he call it from back there? How can that be?”

There was another postgame question that, even though it has been asked many times this season, was just as pressing: What is wrong with Tim Belcher?

In completing one of the worst trips of his career, the Dodgers’ starting pitcher gave up four runs in 5 1/3 innings. He gave up at least four earned runs in all three starts on this trip, totaling 12 earned runs in 12 1/3 innings. Only two other times on this trip did a Dodger starter allow more than three runs in a game.

With a 9-9 record and a 4.00 earned-run average, Belcher is admittedly becoming the staff’s weak link.

“I’m not helping us, and I know that,” Belcher said. “I’ve got to do 1/25 of my share of the work. I’ve got to start pulling my load.”

He could have helped himself when Daryl Boston started the Mets’ fourth-inning, go-ahead rally by blooping a ball behind Belcher. It was too far away for second baseman Lenny Harris to catch, but Belcher made no move for it, and the ball dropped for a single.

“I saw Belcher put his head down as soon as the ball was hit, but I was back there pointing at him to get it,” Harris said. “I’ve never seen a single like that before. I’ve only heard about it.”

Magadan then made the Dodgers pay by lining a drive down the right field line for an RBI double to tie the score.

One out later, the Mets went ahead for good on what looked like another routine fly ball, this one by Johnson to left field. But the ball died in the wind, and Kal Daniels, who did not get a good jump, futilely attempted a diving, backhanded catch. The ball hit his glove and fell into the grass, and Johnson ended up on second base with another RBI double. It was all the Mets needed.

Dodger Notes

The Mets rested both Darryl Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds for one of the first times in recent memory. . . . The Dodgers will not move Tim Belcher to the bullpen, considering that his problems only increased when he moved there briefly last season. . . . Tim Crews was removed from the game after one inning of relief because of a cramp in his hip. Crews said he worked out the cramp after trainers joined him on the mound with one out in the seventh inning, but he was removed anyway because the Dodgers didn’t want him to become injured.

The hitting star of the Dodgers’ 15-game trip was Hubie Brooks, who batted .412 with four home runs and 12 runs batted in. Lenny Harris batted .318. Eddie Murray batted .300 with two homers and 17 RBIs.