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Dodgers

BASEBALL REPORT : DAILY UPDATE : DODGERS

By BILL PLASCHKE
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Roger Craig, the Giants’ manager, began this series hoping that he would not have to see Mike Hartley pitch for the Dodgers.

It’s not just because Hartley started the season with eight strikeouts in five scoreless innings, but because it was Craig who taught Hartley how to throw the split-finger fastball. It is Hartley’s best pitch.

“Funny how that works out,” said Hartley, who met Craig in the winter of 1986 when Hartley was working out at Grossmont College in El Cajon.

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Craig had summoned a group of young Giant pitchers to winter workouts at the college, where Hartley had been throwing regularly. After the Giants’ pitchers left, Hartley was introduced to Craig, who taught him the pitch.

“After that I started using it all the time, and it became my pitch,” said Hartley, who was drafted by the Dodgers from the St. Louis organization the next season.

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Bill Plaschke

Bill Plaschke, an L.A. Times sports columnist since 1996, is a member of the National Sports Media Hall of Fame and California Sports Hall of Fame. He has been named national Sports Columnist of the Year nine times by the Associated Press, and twice by the Society of Professional Journalists and National Headliner Awards. He is the author of six books, including a collection of his columns entitled “Plaschke: Good Sports, Spoilsports, Foul Balls and Oddballs.” Plaschke is also a panelist on the popular ESPN daily talk show, “Around the Horn.” He is in the national Big Brothers/Big Sisters Alumni Hall of Fame and has been named Man of the Year by the Los Angeles Big Brothers/Big Sisters as well as receiving a Pursuit of Justice Award from the California Women’s Law Center. Plaschke has appeared in a movie (“Ali”), a dramatic HBO series (“Luck”) and, in a crowning cultural moment he still does not quite understand, his name can be found in a rap song “Females Welcome” by Asher Roth.

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