Reds Go Quietly for Ojeda : Dodgers: He gives up nine hits for a 6-0 victory. Davis beleaguers his former teammates.

Eric Davis is suffering from a sore neck, but it doesn’t hurt him so much that he can’t look back and wink.

The Cincinnati Reds learned this Monday when Davis pestered his former teammates with a double, two singles and a hard slide into second base during the Dodgers’ 6-0 victory.

“No matter what Eric says, you know he was up for tonight, just to prove a point,” Brett Butler said. “Tonight was for Eric, in a word, satisfaction.”

The only thing more impressive than Davis’ first game against his old friends was Bob Ojeda’s first shutout and complete game since July.

One minute Ojeda, who gave up nine hits, was stranding five runners on base in the first four innings. The next minute he was causing Joe Oliver to break his bat over his knee in frustration after a strikeout.

The game ended with Ojeda, having thrown 143 pitches, facing his last hitter with runners on first and second. Bip Roberts grounded into a double play, causing Ojeda to stare at the ground and sigh.

“The double play was a beautiful thing,” he said.

The Dodgers improved to 7-7 with their fourth consecutive victory and second consecutive errorless game, both firsts for this season.

“We were really playing bad last week, but we looked up and saw we were just two games out,” Ojeda said. “We thought, ‘This is as bad as we can play, and we’re still right there?’ So we stuck together and got through it.”

The Reds, so beset by injuries that only half of their starting position players had been in the opening-day lineup 14 games ago, lost their fourth consecutive game.

“I don’t know what to say,” Red Manager Lou Piniella told reporters before the game. “We’ve got to suck up our guts and win some games until we get people healthy.”

The Reds probably miss Davis, whom they traded to the Dodgers with Kip Gross last winter for Tim Belcher and John Wetteland.

Davis has never said that the Reds were wrong to give up on him after he spent his entire 12-year professional career with them.

But before 31,068 at Dodger Stadium, he played as if he wanted to prove that.

He doubled into the left-field corner during the first inning as the Dodgers scored twice against Greg Swindell, who had his first bad game in the National League.

During the third inning, Davis hit a two-out single, but was stranded on first. His first two hits came on 0-and-2 counts.

During the fifth inning, Davis singled to left field to load the bases, then set up another run by sliding hard into second baseman Bill Doran on a one-out double-play attempt.

The throw to first base was late, scoring one run, then Darryl Strawberry sneaked home when first baseman Dave Martinez held the ball to argue the call.

Davis leads the Dodgers with a .395 average and has three home runs and nine runs batted in, all despite a slightly herniated disk in his neck.

“The only time it doesn’t hurt is when I play with my kids, because they rub it,” he said.

It hurt so much he recently sat out three games, then left Monday’s game during the eighth inning when the pain increased. If he gave his approval, the Dodgers could quickly put him on the disabled list.

But he says he does not want to stop playing, and that has nothing to do with this week’s appearance of the Reds.

“I’ve been playing too long to not want to show the Reds I can still play,” Davis said. “I’ve accepted the trade. It’s time to move on.”

He added, “I’m a different type of human being. I don’t look at one pitcher or one team. I just look at playing the game as hard as I can.”

He has won believers in the Dodger clubhouse.

“Any time a guy is traded, you might hear that he was a baby, that he would not play hurt, and so on,” Butler said.

“Eric hasn’t shown that at all. He has worked all the time.”