Strawberry Gets Revenge With Homer : Baseball: His three-run shot in the 10th inning helps lift the Dodgers to a 6-2 victory over the Astros.

With their bags nearly packed for this weekend’s showdown in Atlanta, the Dodgers discovered and added one missing item Thursday.

The Atlanta Braves will recognize it as a swagger.

Two innings after pointing his bat and shouting at the Houston Astro pitcher Al Osuna, Darryl Strawberry settled a grudge with a three-run home run in the 10th inning that led the Dodgers to a 6-2 victory before 10,146 at the Astrodome.

Strawberry then loudly made an announcement.

“I’m not settling for second place!” he shouted in the dugout, according to bystanders. “We’re going to win this thing!”

After winning six of eight games on this trip, the Dodgers will face the first-place Braves today looking and sounding like a team in a championship race.

“We’ve been lacking a little bit of extra cockiness that sometimes you need,” said Jim Gott, who pitched two scoreless innings Thursday. “Now, I think we have that.”

Kal Daniels, who homered after Strawberry in the 10th inning, was not smiling.

“When we go into Atlanta, they are all going to have their tomahawks out,” he said. “But we’re going to have our tomahawks out, too.”

Remaining half a game behind the Braves with 21 remaining, the Dodgers found that new emotion through Strawberry, whose infield single led to two fourth-inning runs that tied the game, 2-2.

The score was still tied when Strawberry faced Osuna in the eighth inning. Earlier this season, buoyed by a 1.63 earned-run average against the Dodgers and upset at what he considered demeaning remarks by Strawberry, rookie Osuna challenged the Dodger veteran.

Strawberry remembered the challenge when Osuna threw three consecutive pitches near his head. Then Strawberry waggled his bat at Osuna with a warning.

“I kind of told him to watch out,” Strawberry said. “I don’t like people coming in tight on me after remarks about me have been made.”

Said Osuna: “There was no message in those pitches. I didn’t know what (the bat waving) was all about.”

Strawberry drew a walk, waited two innings, then exacted his revenge on Osuna’s first pitch to him in the 10th after Osuna walked Brett Butler and hit Lenny Harris on the right hand.

“I called the home run, because I could see this thing was getting personal,” said pitcher Bob Ojeda, who allowed two runs in six innings. “And when you get personal with Darryl, you (had) better just walk him,”

Agreed Strawberry: “When somebody tries to get personal with me, something always happens. Something fires up inside me.”

This time it was his bat, which sent a low fastball into the right field seats about 400 feet away. It was Strawberry’s 23rd home run and his first since Aug. 24.

It also was his sixth home run in Houston, tying an Astrodome record for home runs by a visiting player in one season.

But more important for the Dodgers, it gave Strawberry 13 runs batted in in the first eight games of this trip.

“All during the early season, when Darryl was struggling with his shoulder injury, we would hear him say, ‘I’ll be ready when it’s Showtime, I’ll be ready for Showtime,’ ” Gott said. “We kept hearing it and hearing it . . . and now that it’s Showtime, we are seeing it.”

After Gott held the Astros hitless during the seventh and eighth innings, Roger McDowell picked up his fourth victory in his last seven appearances.

McDowell was in trouble in the ninth inning, after Casey Candaele singled and moved to second base on a bunt. But McDowell may have been aided by a not-so-veiled threat.

With two out, rookie Andy Mota, son of Dodger coach Manny Mota, stepped to the plate.

“I told Manny that if his boy got a base hit, he was fired,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said with a smile.

Mota lined to second baseman Juan Samuel, solidifying McDowell’s role this weekend in replacing injured Jay Howell.

If McDowell is on the mound, he can’t bother Lasorda in the dugout.

Throughout the early innings, much to his disbelief, Lasorda heard McDowell doing turkey calls from the end of the bench.

“I’ve never heard those noises during a baseball game before,” Lasorda said.

But the Dodgers, who have shown such looseness throughout the year, now are showing a different side. When is the last time you have seen six Dodgers arguing with an umpire?

That happened in the sixth inning, after Candaele appeared to trap a two-out, bases-loaded fly ball by Samuel. Dutch Rennert, the third base umpire, ruled it a catch.

“You’re darn right we all argued,” Lasorda said. “I can’t tell you the magnitude and importance of this game.”

And now it’s time for the real important games.

“It’s going to be a dogfight,” Strawberry said. “And we’re going to show them enough fight.”