Dodgers Merely Old Hat to This Kid

This is one of those baseball games everybody watches because it means so much. Then afterward everybody tells you how little it means.

The winners say: “There’s still a long way to go.” The losers say: “There’s still a long way to go.” The crowd goes home.

Nothing of importance was settled here Friday night. There wasn’t much joy in Dodgerville, the home team having spent most of the night chasing the Braves, but still, facts are facts. Atlanta got the first laugh in The Series You’ve All Been Waiting For.

Pitching for Atlanta was Steve Avery, who--Peter O’Malley notwithstanding--has owned the Dodgers this season.

It was pointed out, quite unnecessarily, to the manager of the Dodgers beforehand that Avery had not lost a game against them.

Tom Lasorda donned his ultra-grim game face.

“Has he lost a game this season?” Lasorda asked.

“Yes.”

“Has he beaten everybody?” Lasorda asked.

“No.”

“OK, then,” Lasorda said.

Translation: Steve Avery was not Superpitcher. He was not invincible.

Trouble is, the Dodgers can’t seem to figure out how to vince him.

Whatever Avery is doing to them out there, he looks like Sandy Koufax.

The young Brave--brave young?--left-hander took a two-hitter into the sixth inning at Dodger Stadium, where 53,476 fans in the stands (51,067 of whom paid and 67 of whom came from Georgia) were very well-behaved and never once chanted: “Stee-eeve! Stee-eeve!”

Avery also broke up Tim Belcher’s no-hitter, singling in the fifth inning to fill the bases. The kid pitches, he hits . . . if he can talk, Ted Turner will let him cover wars for CNN.

The Dodgers got out of that jam, because Lonnie Smith, the Designated Otis, obliged them with a double play.

However, in the sixth inning, with a Brave on base, Ron Gant hit another of his Rongantuan home runs.

Gant squeezed the bat with those blacksmith arms of his and tattooed the horsehide to left-center. (Love that baseball lingo.) The only thing that could have kept the baseball from clearing the fence was if Gant’s swing had crushed it into dust.

Rounding first base, Gant got an excellent view of the ball going, going, gone. He promptly demonstrated his popular impression of Mike Powell doing the long jump in Japan, leaping about 29 feet in the direction of second base.

With Avery on the mound, the two runs looked huge. For that matter, so did Avery.

That’s why it killed the Dodgers to waste their next chance to score, particularly because it was only the sixth inning and most of Dodger Stadium’s fans were still in the park. Some of them got so excited, they put down their cellular phones.

It was a manager’s dream scene: Brett Butler on base with Darryl Strawberry, Eddie Murray and Kal Daniels due up.

Forget it. Avery is only 21, but this kid has ice water in his veins.

He struck out Strawberry.

He made Murray pop out, foul.

And then he got Daniels to pound one into the ground. The ball went for an infield single, but so what? The Dodgers’ 3-4-5 guys failed to get the ball out of the infield.

Well, Juan Samuel could have made the Dodgers well. Had Sammy slammed one into the left-field palms, the crowd would have gone wild and 50 producers in the box seats would have stopped him on his way back to the dugout to option the story of his life.

Instead, the only palm Sammy slammed one into was the right-field center of David Justice’s mitt.

Would the Dodgers go scoreless in Game 1 of The Series You’ve All Been Waiting For?

Lasorda put his thinking cap atop his game face. What to do? In the seventh inning, he sent up Eric Karros, the new kid in town who stepped right into Kirk Gibson’s uniform number. Against Cincinnati the other day, Karros got a hit nearly as clutch as Kirk’s. Not this time. He struck out.

Avery looked tough out there. He, Charlie Leibrandt and Tom Glavine this weekend bear the heavy load of carrying Atlanta’s pennant ambitions on their shoulders. About the only thing this left one wondering was: Doesn’t this team have any right-handed guys with shoulders?

Two more games, coming right up.