Strawberry Gives Dodgers Quite a Start : Baseball: Three-run homer in the first inning helps team snap seven-game losing streak, 10-5. Gross strong in long relief.

It was more than a home run. It was as if Darryl Strawberry, cornered at home plate by stadium-shaking boos, had pulled out a weapon and fired it.

There was a loud pop. The New York Mets froze. Most of the 48,475 fans froze.

Even teammate Brett Butler, standing on second base, froze.

“I couldn’t run,” Butler said. “I just had to turn around and watch.”

The ball disappeared into the darkness beyond the right-field wall, but the feeling among the Dodgers remained as they rode Strawberry’s three-run home run in the first inning against his former teammates to a 10-5 victory Thursday night.

So much for the Dodgers’ seven-game losing streak, which was not just broken, but shattered by their most powerful game in weeks.

Strawberry started the roll by hitting his second home run in three games at Shea Stadium this year. Gary Carter kept it going two batters later with his first home run against his former teammates since leaving them after 1989.

Kevin Gross then ended it by rushing out of the bullpen and giving up two hits in 6 1/3 innings after starter Tim Belcher nearly lost a 5-0 lead in the second inning. Gross pitched more innings in relief than any Dodger starter has pitched in the past 10 games.

“What this was tonight was a rude awakening,” Lenny Harris said.

Said Tom Lasorda: “What a load off our backs this is. What a load.”

Strawberry compared it to those eight years he played here.

“You get a swing like that, it brings back lots of memories,” he said. “The only thing different this time is, I didn’t get a curtain call.”

Strawberry knew this game was special, though. He called a players-only meeting a couple of hours before the first pitch.

“We needed to talk,” he said. “We needed to get things out in the open so we could deal with them.

“I said, ‘Hey, I know I’m struggling, but I still need a pat on the back, and I’ll still be giving pats on the back.’ We need to stick in this together.”

After Butler had drawn a leadoff walk against Met starter David Cone, and Eddie Murray had lined a two-out single, Strawberry was alone again.

He was standing at home plate with one home run since May 31, and only eight homers in the Dodgers’ first 87 games after averaging 31 homers per season with the Mets.

The boos from the sellout crowd were the loudest Strawberry has heard this year, which is saying something, considering he has been booed by somebody almost every day since March.

“The only thing I thought about with the fans was, ‘If that’s really the way you feel about me after all I’ve done here, fine,’ ” Strawberry said. “But I didn’t get mad.”

That’s not how it looked to others.

“I saw him take a couple of pitches, good pitches to take, and I thought, ‘If he can just get the right pitch here . . . “ Butler said. “Then he hit it and I thought, ‘How fitting, how fitting.’ Especially with all this garbage going around.”

One inning later, Gross must have felt as if he were stepping into trash when he relieved Belcher after Gregg Jefferies drove a three-run triple to center field. He was the fifth consecutive runner to reach base after Belcher retired the first two men of the inning, and his hit made the score 5-4.

“I put everything out of my mind because if I didn’t, I would have been in trouble,” said Gross, pitching for only the second time in 12 days. “I just went out there and fired.”

He stranded Jefferies on third base by retiring Kevin McReynolds on a grounder, then did not give up a hit until Howard Johnson hit his National League-leading 21st homer to lead off the sixth inning.

Gross then did not give up a hit until Garry Templeton’s leadoff single in the ninth, which brought in John Candelaria to finish.

“Kevin went above and beyond the call,” Candelaria said. “Tonight he was the hero in my eyes.”

Gross’ outing was longer and better than any of his seven starts earlier in the year. Belcher’s start was his worst of the year, and the worst of a three-game slump during which he has given up 13 runs in 13 innings.

“Gross did a job just when we needed it,” Lasorda said. “A bad start like that from Belcher could have just wiped out the bullpen.”

Strawberry, whose home run overshadowed a homer by Chris Gwynn and a clinching three-run triple by Alfredo Griffin in the seventh, hopes this game represents another good start.

“I can see myself zoning in at the plate now, I can see myself getting ready to take off,” Strawberry said.