Battery Charge Sparks Dodgers : Baseball: Martinez becomes NL’s first six-game winner with help from a key play by Scioscia in an 8-3 victory over Expos.

The Dodgers should have not been surprised that they were rescued from a late-inning disaster Monday by a cross-check at home plate by Mike Scioscia.

The guy has only done it about 1,200 times.

In the eighth inning of the game in which he became the all-time Los Angeles Dodger leader in games caught, Scioscia stopped former amateur hockey player Larry Walker in a home-plate collision to prevent the tying run from scoring and lead the Dodgers to an 8-3 victory over the Montreal Expos.

“Maybe it took me 1,200 times to get it right,” said Scioscia with a smile after leading the Dodgers to their sixth victory in nine games.

His heroics, which came before a Dodger Stadium crowd of 26,495 after the Expos attempted a double steal on a strikeout by Ron Hassey, made Ramon Martinez (6-1) the National League’s first six-game winner. Martinez gave up two runs and six hits in 7 1/3 innings.

About the only thing Martinez didn’t do was add to his league-leading list of three complete games, for which he apologized.

“I’m sorry, but I guess I am human,” he said in all seriousness. “Sometimes, I just get tired.”

The Expos, like many other teams, are probably wondering if Scioscia is human.

They thought they had fooled him in the eighth inning after Delino DeShields homered against Martinez and Andres Galarraga hit a two-run single against reliever Jay Howell to close the gap to 4-3.

With Galarraga on first base and Walker on third and two strikes on Hassey, Galarraga broke for second base. Hassey swung through a fastball for strike three, and as Scioscia came up throwing to second base, Walker broke for home.

Instead of risking a tag at second, Juan Samuel caught the ball on the base and returned the throw to Scioscia, who blocked the 210-pound Walker as he attempted to slide into the plate and made the tag to end the inning.

Scioscia credited Samuel, saying, “He executed it perfectly. You can never risk tagging a runner at second on a double steal. He did exactly what he had to do.”

Samuel said: “I was just doing what I was supposed to do.”

Buck Rodgers, the Montreal manager whose team saw its six-game winning streak end, preferred to credit Scioscia.

“If Samuel makes the tag (at second), we’re out,” he said. “Samuel gives us a break . . . but Scioscia blocks the plate. I don’t know if (Walker) would have been out or safe, but you just can’t slide into Scioscia. He blocks the plate better than anybody in baseball.”

The Dodger offense, which had scored four runs in the sixth inning on a two-run double by Eddie Murray and a two-run home run by flu-sufferer Kal Daniels, was inspired to score four runs in their half of the eighth on a wild pitch by reliever Steve Frey and Chris Gwynn’s three-run pinch-homer, his first homer this season.

Gwynn is hitting .500 in 10 pinch at-bats this season with six runs batted in, but the homer made for an even more interesting statistic. This was the first time that both he and brother Tony, an outfielder for the San Diego Padres, had hit major league homers on the same day.

“I’m just going to keep doing whatever I can do, for however long it takes for me to get a job somewhere,” Gwynn said.

Nobody celebrated the game as happily as Martinez, who has been the most dominating pitcher in the National League in the last 11 months.

Since June 1, 1990, he is 21-4. In his last 14 starts, he is 11-1. He is among the league leaders with 39 strikeouts and an earned-run average of 1.72.

“We keep getting good pitching; there is no reason that with this offense, we shouldn’t win most of our games,” said Daniels, who was sidelined for three days because of flu and said he nearly passed out after taking batting practice Monday.

“About all I can do right now is hit,” Daniels said.

That was good enough in the sixth inning against starter Oil Can Boyd.

With two out, Samuel hit a broken-bat single to center field and stole second. Darryl Strawberry walked. Murray doubled against the right-field wall to score two runs.

Daniels then lined a two-run home run, his third, down the right-field line.

“It was nice, because it was one time this year when we got a bunch of hits back-to-back,” Daniels said. “That’s what we have to do.”

What ended as a night of achievements also began that way.

Before the first pitch, Scioscia was honored for catching his 1,200th game for the Dodgers. In the fourth inning, Orel Hershiser was honored in absentia when the Dodgers announced that he had thrown five scoreless innings in a rehabilitation start for triple-A Albuquerque against Phoenix.

Anybody want to take a bet that Hershiser returns to the roster for the May 27-29 series against Houston at Dodger Stadium?