Strawberry Puts His Foot Down After 7-3 Loss : Baseball: Offerman’s defensive blunder paves the way for Cardinal victory. The Braves remain one game behind.

The Dodgers will wake up this morning in the same spot they have awakened every morning for the last 97 days. They will be in first place, and they will have the room to themselves.

But for the first time since mid-May, they are there strictly by luck. They have become irresponsible tenants for whom eviction seems just not imminent, but proper.

Only by the grace of the Atlanta Braves’ loss to the Philadelphia Phillies did the Dodgers maintain their one-game lead Saturday after suffering an embarrassing 7-3 defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals before 45,962 at Busch Stadium.

Once again, it wasn’t merely that they lost, but how they lost.

With the Dodgers leading, 1-0, in the fifth inning, the game turned on a simple forceout that became a bases-loaded situation when rookie shortstop Jose Offerman pulled his foot off second base before catching the ball. It was Offerman’s second error of the game.

The Cardinals scored seven runs in the next four innings, including two home runs for the team with the fewest home runs in the major leagues.

“That play has got to be made,” said Darryl Strawberry of Offerman’s footwork blunder. “It’s that simple.”

Strawberry did his part in this pennant race, hitting his sixth home run in 28 at-bats Saturday. He had two other hits, including a run-scoring single.

Now Strawberry wants to see everyone else start doing their part. In a lengthy discourse late Saturday, he challenged his teammates’ desire while wondering if there aren’t too many players thinking about contracts instead of curveballs.

“In the middle of a pennant race, you have to really show the desire to win, and right now, this team is just going through the motions,” Strawberry said.

“If you want to win the division, you have to take the division. You have to go out and want to dominate teams. We’re not doing that, And it’s killing us.”

Strawberry even made an admission previously unheard around the Dodgers clubhouse.

“If you won’t get ourselves together, we are not going to win this division,” he said. “That’s just facts.”

Another fact is that the Dodgers have nine veterans who are potential free agents at the end of the season--Gary Carter, Alfredo Griffin, Eddie Murray, Juan Samuel, Mitch Webster, Orel Hershiser, Mike Morgan, John Candelaria and Jay Howell.

Fred Claire, Dodger executive vice president, has steadfastly refused to begin negotiations with anyone, saying: “That is not where our interest is at this time. Our interest is only in this season.”

Strawberry did not criticize the mandate, but said his teammates have not reacted well to it.

“Thinking about that stuff is killing a lot of guys over here, and could be killing our ballclub,” Strawberry said.

“I’ve been through it before, and I know what it’s like. But I know that you’ve got to forget about it and think only about what you can do to help the team win. Because that’s how you succeed, when the team wins.

“Right now, there’s a lot of confusion, a lot of wondering about the future when we should be worrying about the pennant.”

Strawberry said that worse yet, this sort of attitude plays directly into the hands of the Braves.

“The Braves signed a couple of long-term free agents last year, and the rest of them are young guys who aren’t worrying about that stuff,” he said.

“They are only thinking about beating us, thinking about hopefully getting a miracle. We are thinking too much about other things.”

When asked about the possible problem, Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said: “The players better start worrying about the numbers in that standings if they are going to worry about numbers.”

Here are some numbers that create concern:

--The Dodgers have lost 19 of their last 24 road games. They rank fifth in the West with a 29-33 road record.

--They have lost 14 of 18 games on artificial turf. They are 12-21 on artificial turf.

--Jose Offerman has committed six errors in 19 games since replacing injured Alfredo Griffin, who probably won’t be back for at least another week.

After Offerman was pulled off the base on the throw from first baseman Eddie Murray on Ozzie Smith’s grounder Saturday, he missed a diving attempt at Todd Zeile’s sharp grounder. That bases-loaded single scored two runs against starter and loser Mike Morgan (10-8) to give the Cardinals a 2-1 lead they did not lose.

The Cardinals had only their 12th multi-homer game of the year when Milt Thompson hit his fourth homer in the sixth inning against Morgan, and Ray Lankford hit his third homer in the seventh inning against Kevin Gross.