Dodgers Simply Can’t Win : Baseball: At least not when they are playing in Montreal, where they are 0-5 this season after a three-hit, 6-0 loss to the Expos’ Boyd.

To understand how the Montreal Expos have treated the Dodgers here this season, one need only to follow the Saturday night flight of Hubie Brooks’ bat.

In the seventh inning of the Dodgers’ 6-0 loss, while swinging and missing against Oil Can Boyd, Brooks lofted his bat into the box seats behind the Dodger dugout.

The bat brushed a 4-year-old boy, but did not injure him. A concerned Brooks jogged to the dugout and, upon learning that the boy was fine, pulled out a new bat and yelled into the crowded seats that he wanted to trade.

He wanted to give a new bat for his old bat, with which the hot-hitting Brooks was comfortable. Brooks made the offer and waited. The Dodgers and Expos waited. Home plate umpire Gerry Davis waited.

But the game bat was nowhere to be found. Brooks sat in the dugout, and everyone kept waiting in one of baseball’s first bat delays.

“That the boy was OK, that was my first concern--but my second concern was the bat, all I wanted was my game bat,” Brooks said.

Said Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda: “I told him, ‘Hubie, that bat may be halfway to Quebec City by now.’ ”

Umpire Davis finally ordered Brooks back to home plate with a new bat. Two pitches later he flied out to center field--at the same time that a fan leaned over the railing and handed down his game bat.

“Never happened to me before,” Brooks said.

The Dodgers, who fell to 6 1/2 games behind the National League West-leading Cincinnati Reds, have been frustrated here all season. They are 0-5 at Olympic Stadium and have been outscored, 33-8, and outhit, 53-25. They have committed 11 errors in those five games.

In losing their second consecutive game and ensuring only their second three-game series loss since the All-Star break, the Dodgers got only three hits against Boyd. The former Boston Red Sox star, making his first start against the Dodgers, gave up his fewest hits in a complete game since 1985 while getting his third shutout of the season.

In Friday’s 5-2 loss here, a grounder bounced off the chest of Dodger second baseman Juan Samuel. On Saturday, Samuel’s replacement, Lenny Harris, dropped a potential double-play ball while attempting a relay throw to first.

Four pitches after that fifth-inning play, Tim Wallach hit a two-run triple. Three batters after that, Mike Fitzgerald hit a two-run, bad-hop double over third base for a four-run inning that sealed the victory.

The Dodger clubhouse was closed for more than 12 minutes afterward, but not because Lasorda was having a meeting. He wasn’t even in the clubhouse. He remained in the dugout for those 12 minutes and brooded.

“So we lost a game on the Reds that we gained on them--we’ll just get it right back,” he said later.

If the Dodgers lose the series finale today, this stadium will enter the Dodger record books as one of only four times in Los Angeles franchise history that the Dodgers have been swept in a season series at an opponents’ park.

“I’ve seen this happen before, but I just don’t know why,” said Brooks, who has gone hitless in six at-bats here after entering on an eight-for-13 roll.

Boyd offered a guess.

“Some teams play terrible in some places, and just nothing is going to change it,” said Boyd, who is 8-5 with a 3.02 earned-run average. “You might play horrible in a place for 100 years, and ain’t nothing going to change it.

“It’s like me when I go to San Francisco to pitch. I already know I hate it there, and I know I am going to have trouble there, so I do. Some places, you are in trouble even before you get there.”

While Boyd was retiring 25 of the first 27 batters, Dodger starter Mike Hartley was falling behind most hitters. In the fourth inning he paid for it when Andres Galarraga hit a 2-and-0 pitch 25 rows deep into the left-field seats for a homer that was measured at 475 feet. That gave the Expos a 2-0 lead, which they expanded in the next inning after Hartley, who had given up a single to Delino DeShields and walked Dave Martinez, left the game.

Against reliever Jim Poole, recently recalled from double-A San Antonio, Tim Raines grounded to third baseman Mike Sharperson. Harris took Sharperson’s throw at second for one out, but the ball slipped out of his hand while he attempted to make the throw.

“I couldn’t have gotten him anyway,” Harris said. “I was just trying to throw it so he would have to run it out. He was going to beat it out anyway.”

Said Lasorda: “That was the difference in the inning. They could have had no runs instead of four runs.”

Dodger Notes

Besides Jim Poole, the other three new arrivals from the minor leagues appeared in the game. Darren Holmes pitched two scoreless innings, Jose Vizcaino struck out as a pinch-hitter and Darrin Fletcher caught an inning. . . . Kal Daniels returned to the lineup after being sidelined for three consecutive starts because of a pulled muscle in his back.

Pat Perry, the left-handed reliever who had been on the disabled list since June 11 because of tendinitis in his left shoulder, was activated after throwing well in a 61-pitch simulated game Friday. He should be available for action today. “I wanted to get some September innings under my belt, show them I can pitch and that I’m healthy,” Perry said. In six appearances this season, he has a 9.53 earned-run average. . . . Ray Searage, the other veteran left-hander, threw well on the side and said his elbow continues to improve. He could be active by the end of the upcoming weeklong home stand.

If the Dodger and Cincinnati Red starting pitchers make their scheduled starts between now and next Friday, the matchups for next weekend’s series will be the Dodgers’ Jim Neidlinger vs. Jose Rijo Friday, Fernando Valenzuela vs. Tom Browning Saturday and Ramon Martinez vs. Danny Jackson Sunday. The three Red pitchers have been undefeated against the Dodgers this year, going 5-0 with a 3.14 ERA in seven starts and one relief appearance. In five starts against the Reds, those three Dodgers have gone 2-3 with a 3.41 ERA.

Although Orel Hershiser tossed the ball lightly on the sideline both Friday and Saturday, and his rehabilitation remains ahead of schedule, Dr. Frank Jobe said Hershiser will not pitch batting practice this season, as once hoped.