Young Almost Lets Dodgers Pull One Out : Baseball: Pitcher comes on in relief and quickly turns 6-1 lead into 6-5 game. Mets hold on for 7-6 victory.

Anthony Young sat facing his locker, his back to reporters, his head hung in despair. It had been nearly an hour since the New York Mets finished off a 7-6 victory over the Dodgers on Saturday. A victory--not a loss--that Young had pitched in as a reliever.

Young’s part in the victory, though, wasn’t good. He had nearly cost his team the game, giving up four consecutive hits in the eighth inning, turning a 6-1 Met lead into a 6-5 game.

It was the first time Young had pitched in relief this season since he became a starter June 1, and it appeared to be a chance for Manager Dallas Green to try to boost the sagging spirits of a young pitcher who has lost 26 games in a row.

“He’s trying to fight himself out of it, and it seems like no matter what he does, his luck goes the other way, “ said new Met General Manager Joe McIlvaine. “I asked him if he goes to church and told him he needs to start going more often.

“But the thing is, you know that he is going to win eventually, and after waiting with him this long, you would hope it would be here and not somewhere else when he starts winning.”

As always, Young was polite to reporters, answering briefly--but answering--what few questions there were. There’s not much to ask a player who is 0-12 on the season, and 0-26 dating to last season.

Young had jogged in from the Met bullpen in right field during the eighth inning, taking the ball and a 6-1 lead from Bret Saberhagen. He was given a hero’s welcome from the crowd of 33,666 at Shea Stadium, who had watched Saberhagen have his best outing since coming back from elbow surgery--shutting out the Dodgers for seven innings.

There was one out in the eighth, with Lenny Harris on first base, when Young delivered his first pitch to Henry Rodriguez, who drove it off the tip of second baseman Jeff Kent’s glove.

Young then got two strikes on Tom Goodwin, who hit Young’s next pitch through the hole at shortstop to load the bases. Jose Offerman followed with a bloop single that dropped in short center field, scoring Harris and Rodriguez and cutting the Mets’ lead to 6-3.

Young was barely back on the mound when Offerman stole second base. On a 3-and-1 pitch, Cory Snyder hooked a line drive through the gap in right-center, which eluded a charging Bobby Bonilla and scored two more runs to put the Dodgers within 6-5.

Young walked toward the first base line, and waited as Green walked toward him from the dugout. Green patted him on the back, and they walked to the mound together, where reliever John Franco took over.

But as Young left the field, the hero’s welcome was gone. He walked off to a mixture of boos and applause. He walked into the dugout, said nothing to anybody, and kept walking, all the way to the clubhouse.

After Franco finished up for his fourth save, Green said that he pitched Young in relief because that probably will be his role from now on.

“I am trying to find somebody to get the job done, that’s all,” Green said. “And Anthony pitched a pretty good ballgame his last time out.”

In Young’s last outing, against the San Diego Padres on Wednesday, he retired 23 consecutive batters before giving up a home run in the eighth inning, losing, 2-0.

Saberhagen (5-7), who had given up only three hits in seven innings, faced only two batters over the minimum 21 during that time before his arm stiffened.

“It’s frustrating, because I would like to be able to finish a game like that,” said Saberhagen, who earned his first victory this season against a non-expansion team.

For the third consecutive day, the temperature reached 100 degrees. But about 4 p.m, about the time that Pedro Astacio (7-5) had given up back-to-back walks in the third inning, about the time that Ron Perranoski was making his second trip to the mound to pull Astacio, the skies over Shea Stadium began to darken.

A bolt of lightning flashed in the sky over the bullpen, and a sudden wind kicked up. The cool breeze was soothing relief from the sweltering heat, but Astacio’s performance during the first two-plus innings was no relief for the Dodgers. Astacio gave up five runs in the first inning, including two-run home runs to Jeromy Burnitz and Todd Hundley.

“It’s been a long trip,” Eric Karros said. “With (Don) Drysdale’s death, the way we lost in the 20 innings, then the doubleheader and the heat and the fact that we are 5-5 on this trip, I think we have played well considering the circumstances.”

Anthony Young can relate to that.