Dodgers Are Fit to Be Tied, and Braves Make It Happen : Baseball: Los Angeles gets three hits in 2-1 loss to Cubs. Atlanta beats Montreal to get even.

With 37 games left, trapped in a pennant race they neither wanted nor expected, the Dodgers no longer can bear to watch.

After getting only three hits against tender-shouldered rookie Frank Castillo in a 2-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs Tuesday afternoon, the Dodgers were asked if they would check the Atlanta Braves’ score when they arrived in Los Angeles Tuesday night.

After all, if the Braves defeated the Montreal Expos, the Dodgers would lose sole possession of first place for the first time in 101 days.

The answers were mainly variations of: Get serious .

“When I get home tonight, I’m going to have a nice dinner with my wife,” third baseman Lenny Harris said. “I stay home and think about the Braves, I’ll go crazy.”

Pitcher Bobby Ojeda, who will start tonight at Dodger Stadium against the Pittsburgh Pirates, said he would see a Brave score only by accident.

“I’m going to watch CNN when I get home . . . but because I care about what’s going on in Russia, not what’s going on with John Smoltz,” Ojeda said. “Having been in these things before, I know, not until everything is finished can you get real excited or real down.”

That attitude will be tested tonight when Ojeda takes the mound for a team that no longer stands alone.

In case none of the Dodgers really did watch the late news after their long flight home, Atlanta defeated Montreal, 3-2, to pull into a first-place tie. Both teams are 69-56.

Not since May 17, when the Braves led the Dodgers by percentage points, have the Dodgers seemed so human. There is finally no escaping the fact that the National League West title will not come without a fight.

“We now know that from here on in, every game has like, instant impact,” Ojeda added. “And it’s just getting to be September. It’s just beginning.”

The Dodgers will be pleased to know that 21 of those final 37 games are at home. They completed a 1-4 trip with Tuesday’s defeat, giving them 21 losses in their past 27 road games.

What made Tuesday’s loss worse was that, for once, the home team actually thought the Dodgers had the advantage. It was because of their stirring 4-3 comeback victory over the Cubs Monday night.

“After they won a game like that, then came back with their ace pitcher (Ramon Martinez) today, we knew they were going to be pumped up,” Cub shortstop Shawon Dunston said. “We figured we were in for a real tough one.”

It was as easy as the swing Dunston used to line a one-strike pitch from Martinez into the left-field bleachers for a home run in the fifth inning. Coming after Luis Salazar’s single to left field, it was was one of only six hits in seven innings against Martinez, who pitched through occasional pain in his bruised right biceps.

But with an unfamiliar face on the mound for the Cubs, and with Darryl Strawberry trying too hard to carry the struggling Dodger offense, it was enough.

Castillo, 22, is a former sixth-round draft choice who was in double A last year. Helped by Dodger hitters who swung hard at his many off-speed pitches, he threw his fourth complete game in 11 major league starts, as many complete games as the rest of the Cubs’ staff combined.

Castillo was making his first start since Aug. 10 because of a strained right shoulder--and his first start against the Dodgers--yet he gave up only three singles, and one of those was a grounder to Dunston in the hole at shortstop.

After striking out Strawberry on changeups in the seventh inning, Castillo finished the game by getting Strawberry into hitting a grounder to second base.

Strawberry’s over-aggressiveness also put the Dodgers in trouble in the second inning, when they scored their only run. They could have had more, but with none out, he tried to go from first to third on Eddie Murray’s bloop single to center field. Strawberry was thrown out by Chico Walker.

“That’s my game, trying to make something happen,” Strawberry said. “If he doesn’t make the perfect throw, I’m in there.”

The attempt befits an offense that averaged only 2.2 runs a game on this trip while getting only seven hits in 35 at-bats with runners in scoring position, a .200 average. Kal Daniels, Juan Samuel, Mike Scioscia and Jose Offerman each batted .222 or less during the trip, helping to frustrate a starting pitching staff that gave up 11 runs in 30 innings--a 3.30 earned-run average.

“Sometimes I think there is nothing more (the pitching staff) can do,” Martinez said.