Dodgers’ Play Is Worse Than Bad Old Days : Baseball: Three errors, passed ball in the first inning send Reds winging to 11-1 victory over disbelieving Candiotti.

The biggest embarrassment for the Dodgers wasn’t that their middle infielders nearly knocked each other out in the first inning, causing one of three errors in the first 20 minutes.

And it wasn’t that their gloves had another series of disagreements with the ball in the sixth inning, leading to six more runs.

The biggest embarrassment wasn’t even that everything in Saturday’s game, from Tom Lasorda’s head in his hands to Tim Crews’ stare into the sky, was captured on national television.

The biggest embarrassment during the 11-1 thumping by the Cincinnati Reds came afterward, at the locker of the losing pitcher, in hushed tones.

Tom Candiotti said it was never this bad-- even in Cleveland .

“I know I knock Cleveland a lot, but we usually put a good defense out there,” said Candiotti, who spent six years with the Indians. “I probably had a couple of games like that there, but . . . never like this.”

Few Dodgers have had a game like this, an exercise that featured three errors in the first inning, seven earned runs given up by one pitcher and nine runs that could have been avoided if their defense had caught the ball.

It ended, fittingly, with a joke.

Dwayne Henry retired the Dodgers in order in the ninth inning, even though his uniform pants were clearly unbuttoned and his stomach was hanging out the entire time.

“It’s like, we are in shock,” Brett Butler said.

It was their worst loss since July 6, 1990, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat them, 14-2.

“We picked a really bad day for this,” said Eric Karros, who supplied the Dodgers’ only run against winner Tim Belcher with his eighth homer. “We needed a win after a tough loss Friday; we were on national television. . . .”

His team suffered its third consecutive loss and eighth in 11 games while falling to 7 1/2 games out of first place. This is as far back as they have been all year.

But it was even worse than that.

--It was so bad, the Reds’ first inning supported the classic argument that teams win games up the middle--in reverse.

The Dodgers fell behind, 4-0, after errors charged to the center fielder, second baseman and shortstop and a passed ball by the catcher.

With Bip Roberts on first after a leadoff single, a grounder by Dave Martinez skipped through shortstop Jose Offerman’s legs and into center field.

It was Offerman’s 13th error, most among National League shortstops.

Roberts moved to third and Martinez raced to second when Butler’s throw bounced away from Juan Samuel for another error. Both scored on Barry Larkin’s double.

--It was so bad, the Reds scored two more runs with two out in the first after, according to Lasorda, his two Dominican middle infielders misunderstood each other in Spanish.

With runners on second and third after a double by Reggie Sanders, a walk to Hal Morris and a passed ball by catcher Mike Scioscia, Chris Sabo hit an inning-ending popup to Offerman.

But Samuel crashed into him at the last minute and the ball fell to the carpet, allowing both runs to score.

“The Spanish phrase for ‘I got it’ and ‘You take it’ are similar, and there was a miscommunication there,” Lasorda said.

--It was so bad, against reliever Tim Crews in the sixth inning, the Reds got as many extra-base hits as the Dodgers have had in their last three games combined.

It was only two, but that’s all they needed after Lenny Harris dropped a one-out grounder and Samuel dropped a ball while trying to complete what would have been an inning-ending double play.

“We can’t give teams four, five, six outs an inning,” Crews said.

--It was so bad, Belcher had two hits, half as many as his former team.

“You can have as good pitching as you want, but if you don’t catch the ball, you’re not going to have a good staff,” Belcher said. “The strength of our staff is the defense.”

Although they lead the league with 54 errors, compared to 40 for the Reds, the Dodgers had committed only three in the seven games before Saturday’s. And they had lost a game by more than three runs only once in the last month.

But they should have known something was up after that first inning, when an airplane circled the stadium while pulling a banner.

It read: “Have You Howled At The Moon Lately?”