Dodgers’ Lights Dimming : Baseball: Scoreboard’s bad news about Reds in San Diego is mere prelude to day that ends with L.A. five games behind.

Thirty minutes into Sunday’s game, while walking through the Dodger dugout, Manager Tom Lasorda heard the commotion and glanced at the scoreboard.

He turned away, took a few steps, then stopped and looked over his shoulder at the scoreboard again.

It had not changed. In bright lights was this second-inning score: Reds 4, Padres 0. Lasorda turned, shouted something and threw out his hands in disgust.

“Yeah,” he said afterward, “that was me.”

Little happened to change Lasorda’s mood. The Dodgers lost to the San Francisco Giants, 6-2, while Cincinnati was completing a four-game sweep of San Diego, 9-2. The Dodgers fell to five games behind the National League West-leading Reds with nine games to play.

The Reds’ magic number is five, meaning any combination of Red victories and Dodger losses that equals five will end the Dodgers’ hopes for a second division championship in three years. The Reds will play their final nine games at home, while the Dodgers will play only three of their final nine at home.

And while the Dodgers must still play the Giants three times in San Francisco, the Reds’ opponents will be Atlanta, Houston and San Diego.

“They don’t play San Francisco anymore? Oh, man,” said Dodger shortstop Alfredo Griffin. “Man, that makes it tough.”

Said Mickey Hatcher: “We’re not expecting miracles. But we’re sure hoping for some.”

Although the players are trying to remain optimistic, in the fifth inning the fans loudly unleashed their frustration by booing their former hero, Kirk Gibson.

With the Dodgers trailing, 4-0, Gibson allowed a leadoff fly ball by Mike Kingery to drop in front of him for a single. The boos still were being heard when the next batter, Will Clark, bounced a single in front of Gibson.

Gibson could not cleanly handle the ball and did not attempt to throw out Kingery as he took third base. And suddenly it seemed as if the entire stadium was booing.

“It’s disappointing, it’s discouraging,” said Gibson, who will probably leave the team as a free agent after the season. “I’ve been booed before. It probably won’t be the last time either. They are entitled to do it, and who better a person to do it to than me? I can’t think of a better person.”

Gibson, who went hitless in four at-bats with two strikeouts to drop his average to .263, added, “The plays that were made on both plays were the proper plays. If I dive for the (first) ball and miss it, then I open the inning with a double. The second was a hit-and-run. I had to come up clean and throw, and I just didn’t.”

By the time Gibson became the featured attraction, however, the game and the season were virtually over.

“Sometimes we just think about all that has happened this year, and think, ‘We could have been in first place!’ ” Griffin said. “We think about that, and it hurts.”

Even before the first Red-Padre score was flashed Sunday, even before the Fan Appreciation Day sellout crowd had found its seats, the Dodgers trailed, 2-0.

Against Jim Neidlinger, making his worst major league start of the season, Brett Butler led off the game with a single. He stole second. Kingery walked. A grounder later, Matt Williams singled in a run and Kevin Bass knocked in another with a fly ball.

Two innings later, the Giants scored two more runs on doubles by Butler and Williams, an error by first baseman Eddie Murray when Will Clark knocked the ball out of his glove and a grounder by Bass.

The score was 4-0, Neidlinger was replaced by the first of five relief pitchers and it grew no more pleasant. Rookie John Burkett pitched his second complete game of the season for the Giants, giving up eight hits.

“We didn’t go through the motions today,” said Roger Craig, Giant manager.

Afterward, bitter over winning two out of three games this weekend and still losing 1 1/2 games in the standings, at least one Dodger wondered about the Padres’ effort against the Reds.

“What happened down there was very surprising,” Kal Daniels said after the Reds outscored the Padres, 34-12. “The Reds just walked all over them. Maybe they just decided to throw it in.”

Said Lasorda: “I thought the Padres would at least split that series. They split it, and we’re still OK. To beat somebody in a four-game series, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

At least there was no question as to the Dodgers’ task as they traveled to Houston after the game.

“We need to win every game--it’s that black and white,” Neidlinger said.

On Sunday, it was all black.

Dodger Notes

Mike Hartley threw off a mound for the first time since suffering an injured left side Sept. 11 in San Diego. He said he still felt some pain. . . . The sellout crowd of 45,241 increased the Dodgers’ season total to 2,925,853. That leaves them 74,147 short of 3 million with three home dates remaining.

Jamie McAndrew and outfielder Henry Rodriguez were honored before the game as the club’s minor league player and pitcher of the year. McAndrew, 23, was a combined 17-6 with a 2.17 earned-run average at Class-A Bakersfield and double-A San Antonio. Rodriguez, who was not considered one the organization’s top prospects at the beginning of the season, was voted the Texas League’s most valuable player after batting .291 with 28 homers and 109 runs batted in for San Antonio.