Belcher Suffers Leg Injury, Says Mound Is Faulty : Dodgers: Pitcher strains muscle after releasing pitch in first inning of 10-4 victory at Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati Reds’s season wasn’t the only thing falling apart on the Riverfront Stadium field Monday.

So, too, was the pitching mound.

Dodger pitcher Tim Belcher blamed the mound for the strained right groin muscle he suffered during the first inning of the Dodgers’ 10-4 victory before 18,389.

The Dodgers maintained their half-game lead over the Atlanta Braves, but they have lost their hottest starting pitcher for this weekend’s series at Atlanta.

“There was not much swelling, but we won’t know anything until (today),” said Charlie Strasser, the Dodgers’ assistant trainer. “Right now, we don’t know any more than anybody else.”

On his second pitch to Mariano Duncan, the Reds’ second hitter in the first inning, Belcher injured himself while landing on a rocky mound that one teammate called “a cliff.”

Belcher, who was visibly angry, finished the inning, then started the Dodgers’ second inning with a ground-rule double to right.

He ran so uneasily to first base it was obvious something was wrong. After the inning, trainers wrapped his leg, but the pain remained, and so Kevin Gross was rushed to the mound.

Gross eventually got the victory despite giving up four runs in three inning. This because Darryl Strawberry hit a bases-clearing double in the fifth to break a 4-4 tie.

But afterward, all anybody wanted to discuss was Belcher and the mound. Even Belcher, who departed the clubhouse early because his family was attending the game, left a statement.

“(On) no fewer than three separate appearances at Riverfront Stadium, I have either strained or pulled a groin in my right back leg,” Belcher said in the statement. “It doesn’t seem to be bad, but missing one start, one inning, one pitch because of a poorly designed mound is too much.”

Belcher said he plans to phone Bill White, the National League president, today to complain not just about the Riverfront Stadium mound, but all mounds.

Belcher’s teammates agreed that the Riverfront Stadium mound was one of the worst in the National League, particularly on nights after the Cincinnati Bengals have played a football game here.

The Bengals played the Houston Oilers Sunday night, and the Dodgers think that in the stadium crews’ rush to replace the mound, they cracked it.

“Their mound was hard as a rock, and there was big chunks of dirt everywhere,” said Gross (9-10), who will be Belcher’s replacement if Belcher is unable to make his scheduled start Friday in Atlanta. “I even tore the seams on a new pair of cleats tonight it was so bad.”

Said Orel Hershiser: “The mound has been brutal here before. All of our pitchers have complained about it.

“Sometimes after football games, it’s like there is a huge hole there. So when you are coming down after pitching, you aren’t sure where you are landing. It’s like coming off a cliff.”

Without Belcher, the Dodgers could also feel as though they are falling off a cliff. Lately he has been their best pitcher, with a 1.48 earned-run average in his last eight starts. Overall he is 9-8 with a 2.58 ERA and has allowed more than three earned runs in only five of his 29 starts.

Against Atlanta, only Ramon Martinez has been more effective. Belcher is 5-2 with a 2.33 ERA against the Braves in his career. In three starts against the Braves this season, he is 1-1 with a 2.05 ERA.

“To have this happen to somebody like Tim, who has such great stuff and is on such a great roll. . . . The good thing is that he may have caught it in time,” Jim Gott said. “He got out of there early enough where everyone is hoping he can make it back for Atlanta.”

Not that the Dodgers didn’t celebrate their sixth victory in eight games here this season.

They were happy just to finish it, because it featured 37 players, 22 hits, 12 walks, and one matchup between the Reds’ Paul O’Neill and Gross that lasted 3 minutes 20 seconds.

O’Neill ended the third-inning encounter by hitting a two-and-two pitch over the right-field wall for a three-run homer to give the Reds a 4-3 lead.

The Dodgers tied the score on Strawberry’s RBI single in the fourth, then clinched it on Strawberry’s double against left-hander Norm Charlton in the fifth.

By the time the game ended--3 hours 40 minutes after it started--Strawberry was already thinking about this weekend.

“I really think everything is coming together for me at the right time,” said Strawberry. “It looks like I’m going to be going into Atlanta swinging the bat well. It’s a good time to get hot.”

Strawberry later added an RBI grounder to give him five RBIs, three fewer than his total in the previous 17 games.

If there were doubts that the Reds have given up hope of repeating their 1990 World Series championship, this game erased those doubts. Randy Myers started the game by walking four of the first six batters, accounting for two runs. Two innings later, he walked three of the first five batters, accounting for another run and Myers’ departure.

STILL THE SAME: Atlanta stayed within half a game of the Dodgers with an 8-3 win over San Francisco. C6