Candiotti a Mystery to Giants : Baseball: Dodgers make it two out of three, 2-1, as knuckleballer keeps NL West leaders in check again.

He wasn’t always a knuckleball pitcher, but the quirkiness of the pitch intrigued him. The scary part was, the more Tom Candiotti threw the knuckler, the more he understood it. And that’s a good thing, because nobody else does.

Not San Francisco Giant Manager Dusty Baker, not Matt Williams, not even Barry Bonds.

“I haven’t figured (Candiotti) out yet, so you might want to ask somebody else about him,” Williams said.

Candiotti held the Giants to one run and five hits through 8 1/3 innings Wednesday as the Dodgers won, 2-1, to take two of the three games in the series. He needed a little help and got it from Jim Gott, who induced Royce Clayton to ground into a game-ending double play.

“Huge, huge play,” said Gott, who earned his 18th save.

It is Candiotti’s third consecutive victory and raised his record to 6-5. He has held opponents to one earned run or fewer in 12 of his last 16 starts, compiling a 2.00 earned-run average during that time--but the Dodgers haven’t scored many runs for him.

Wednesday, it looked like more of the same.

“I was nervous today, boy,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “I really wanted this win for Candy. But these games take a lot out of you. They wear you out.”

The game clearly wore down Bonds, who was hitless in the series, the first time he has gone hitless in three consecutive games all season. He grounded out three times and flied out in the ninth inning with the tying run on first base and none out. After that, Bonds didn’t even bother to run to first base. Instead, he turned slowly toward the dugout, flicked off his helmet and walked back to the bench.

“I didn’t see (Bonds) that time, but the at-bat before, I heard him smash his helmet down,” Candiotti said.

But it isn’t only Candiotti’s knuckleball that is bewildering. The Dodgers have dominated the Giants, winning six of nine games and all three series. In the Giants’ last 17 series, the only two they have lost have been to the Dodgers, who have held the Giants to a .230 average, 54 points below their season average.

“The Dodgers are third in the league in pitching, so it’s not like we are getting beat by some slouches, you know what I mean?” Baker said. “The first game we got blown out (15-1 on Monday), and when you are facing Orel Hershiser in a blowout game and he has four or five different pitches that he can get over, your chances of scoring a lot of runs aren’t good.”

Candiotti, who sat next to pitcher Kevin Gross on Monday, believed all the Dodger runs were spent in one game.

“I turned to Kevin and said, ‘Well, it looks like there will be no runs left in the bank for us,’ ” Candiotti said.

The Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the third inning on three singles, a double by Jose Offerman and a sacrifice bunt by Candiotti against Giant starter Bud Black (8-2), who was reinstated from the disabled list Tuesday after recovering from inflammation in his shoulder. The Giants scored in the fourth inning after Will Clark’s line drive to right field was misjudged by Raul Mondesi and was good for a double. Clark scored on a single by Dave Martinez.

After that, Candiotti gave up only one more hit until the ninth inning, keeping the Giants off-balance with knuckleballs. Baker said he thought Candiotti was throwing about six different versions.

“When guys are swinging for the fences, it’s to my advantage,” Candiotti said. “Some of the pitches were in a corkscrew, some of them kind of reversed field and some of them even looked like they rose.”

Williams led off the ninth inning and battled Candiotti to a 3-and-2 count before walking. With a 2-and-2 count, Candiotti threw Bonds a fastball and he fouled it off. “He had fouled off about three pitches, so I changed speeds with my knuckleball and came back at him,” Candiotti said.

Bonds flied out to Eric Davis for the first out. Then Martinez singled to right, putting runners on first and second with one out. That’s when Gott came in.

“I really didn’t expect the double play,” Candiotti said. “Jose did a great job getting it over to first base, and I saw the umpire’s hand go up and I said, ‘Great.’ ”