Dodgers Just Another Ballclub : Baseball: Braves tell themselves not to let down after big series with Reds. They don’t in 6-2 victory.

The Dodgers looked for tomahawk chops and saw only half-hearted waves of disgust. They listened for war chants and heard yawns.

The Dodgers realized how far they had fallen Friday when the 22nd consecutive sellout crowd at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium acted as if it hardly recognized them during the Braves’ 6-2 victory.

“It was exciting here last year. The fans were out for our blood,” Mitch Webster said. “This year to them it’s like, we’re just one of the pack. Just another team that is coming in here to get beaten by the hometown boys.”

The Dodgers might have had a clue about their reception from the 43,822 fans if they had listened to an informal pregame meeting in the Brave clubhouse.

Coming off a three-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, the Braves warned each other not to let down .

“I thought this couldn’t happen to the Dodgers,” Brave Manager Bobby Cox said.

Welcome to the growing ranks of believers.

--Kevin Gross lost for the 11th time and didn’t get out of the second inning. He walked five and struck out none, throwing 31 balls and 30 strikes.

“Sometimes you just exhaust yourself with frustration,” Gross said.

--Jose Offerman hastened Gross’ demise by throwing away a grounder in the second inning that led to two unearned runs. It was his sixth error in 11 games and league-leading 28th error overall.

“Until you find your rhythm, those guys behind you have got to do the job for you,” Gross said. “But this season they have rarely picked up the pitchers, and we rarely pick them up.”

--The Dodger offense, or lack of same, helped Charlie Leibrandt complete only his second game of the season, and only his second victory against the Dodgers, by managing two hits against him in the last six innings.

Brett Butler, whose 19-game hitting streak was ended by a pitcher against whom he had a .385 average, went hitless in three at-bats with a walk.

Nothing seems to work against a Brave team that has won 75% of its games (45-15) since May 27. They lead the last-place Dodgers by 19 1/2 games.

“They are steamrolling,” Butler said. “About the only thing they did wrong tonight was that, for once in about two months, Terry Pendleton did not drive in a run with the bases loaded.”

Pendleton’s bases-loaded grounder occurred in the third inning, after he had driven in three runs with a single in the first inning and a single in the second.

Since July 24, Pendleton has 12 hits in his last 16 at-bats with runners in scoring position (.750) with 13 runs batted in.

But compared to the Braves’ starting pitchers, he is slumping. Since May 27, the Atlanta rotation is 35-7 with a 2.16 earned-run average and 12 complete games.

“Yeah, but a couple of years ago, these same pitchers for us weren’t that good,” Cox said. “One reason our pitchers are so good now is that we can catch the ball. Defense is everything.”

The Braves, tied for third in the league with fewest errors (69), caught the ball well Friday, and they also did everything else necessary to win.

In the first inning, after hitting a line drive to right field with Otis Nixon on first, Mark Lemke ran to second when Webster tried to throw out Nixon at third. Both runners scored on Pendleton’s single.

Using ballplayer lingo for the rarefied atmosphere of a championship team, Gross proclaimed, “Just by watching them you can tell, the Braves are in the stuff right now.”

The Dodgers also are in the stuff. Only it’s very different stuff.