Phillies’ Dykstra Answers the Call : Baseball: He gets two hits and scores a run in a 9-8 victory over Dodgers in his first game after a near-fatal auto crash.

In the seventh inning, from a normally unforgiving Philadelphia Phillies’ crowd, a chant rose. It sounded strangely like forgiveness.

Len-ny. Len-ny. Len-ny.

Lenny Dykstra, standing at home plate, his fingers dancing across the handle of his bat, did not look up. He didn’t need to.

“Out on the field is where I belong,” he said.

He proved it Monday in a 9-8 victory over the Dodgers by getting two hits and scoring the run that put Philadelphia ahead for good in his first game since a near-fatal auto accident May 6.

“The guy is out two months and he gets two hits?” asked teammate John Kruk with a smile. “Come on!”

The Dodgers were just as incredulous after Orel Hershiser and a stumbling team of five relief pitchers blew a 6-1 lead after three innings to give the Dodgers their season-high fifth consecutive loss.

“We had no momentum when we lost four games in Montreal, then tonight we found momentum . . . and had it snatched away from us,” said Darryl Strawberry, who reacted to recent criticism with a triple and a run-scoring single.

Leading the snatchers was Dykstra, who started the sixth inning with a single, stole second with a head-first slide, then scored on Dale Murphy’s single to give the Phillies an 8-7 lead they never lost.

The play ordinarily would have been no big deal, because the Garden Grove native has always been pretty good at causing trouble for other people.

However, on the morning of May 6, in a Philadelphia suburb, he hurt no one worse than himself when he slammed his $90,000 Mercedes into two trees while returning from a bachelor party.

Police said Dykstra was lucky to be alive, although he barely felt so after breaking three ribs, his collarbone and his cheekbone. He also broke good relations with much of the community because he was charged with driving while intoxicated.

Seventy days later, 31,263 fans were at Veterans Stadium to witness his celebrated return. There were reminders of May 6 all night.

Catcher Darren Daulton high-lighted the Phillie comeback with a grand slam in the fifth inning. Daulton was the only passenger in Dysktra’s Mercedes on May 6 and missed more than a month with a broken bone under his left eye.

The game ended when Kruk, whose bachelor party was being attended by Dykstra that night, reached into the first-base seats to catch a foul pop by Eddie Murray with the tying run on first base.

“It’s been a rough first half for all of us. It’s been tough to get through it,” Daulton said. “Tonight was the way it should be.”

Dykstra said that during his long hours of rehabilitation while listening to national criticism of his lifestyle, he could not wait for a night like Monday.

“On the field, I don’t worry about nothing. I don’t worry about nothing. I just play,” he said after making several running catches in center field and improving his average to .307. “Tonight I just tried to play the way I always play.”

Whether he will continue to play so hard off the field is uncertain. His friends can only hope he has changed.

“I talked to Lenny today, and he is just as crazy as ever,” said Gary Carter, Dodger catcher and former Dykstra teammate. “He is going to play the game as reckless as before. I just hope he has learned something. I just hope that whatever he decides to do, nobody gets hurt along the way.”

Nobody in the stadium Monday was hurting more than Hershiser.

He lasted only 3 1/3 innings, his shortest outing in his nine starts since returning to action after shoulder surgery. Of 80 pitches, nearly half were balls (38) and two of the three batters he walked scored.

He allowed three runs, five hits and was saved additional damage when relievers Dennis Cook and Mike Hartley retired Dykstra and Mickey Morandini, respectively, with bases loaded and one out to end the fourth inning.

Hershiser actually threw his hat and glove against the dugout bench after being removed in that fourth inning, and afterward shook his head.

“It wasn’t very nice,” Hershiser said of his night, which raised his earned-run-average to 4.10, and 6.63 in his last four starts. “I wasn’t throwing the ball where I wanted to throw it.”

His opponent once again said it was something else. The Phillies said he just wasn’t throwing the ball hard.

“He is not the same guy,” Daulton said. “Not to take anything away from him or the amazing thing he is doing, but he just doesn’t have the stuff he had. You just have to watch him pitch to tell.”

Explained a Phillie teammate: “Orel’s ball still moves like it always moved, but because he isn’t throwing it so hard, you can watch where it moves. You can pick it up.”

Hershiser insisted that his problems are mechanical, and he hopes to build up his endurance enough to begin working on pitches between starts.

“I used to play catch every day between starts and learn things that way, but I haven’t had that luxury yet while working through my comeback,” Hershiser said. “I hope to start doing more of that soon.”

Hershiser left Monday’s game with a 6-3 lead after Juan Samuel’s first-inning homer and Mike Sharperson’s bases-clearing triple in the second inning.

But Daulton’s blast against Tim Crews gave the Phillies their first lead, and the Dodgers left the bases loaded in the fifth and seventh innings.

Straits became so dire that Tom Lasorda, Dodger manager, moved Murray to third base in the eighth inning for the first time since 1989 because of various pinch-hitting moves.