Giants Tied for Top by Beating Dodgers

Dodger fans were finally rewarded Thursday night with something they had spent the season searching for: a game that counted.

A crowd of 36,409 had a chance to experience playoff fever even with their team 21 games behind. With the San Francisco Giants entering the game trailing the Atlanta Braves by one with four games to play, Dodger Stadium was the place where the race in the National League West could be decided.

With the Dodger defense letting down with three errors and a few other misplays, and the L.A. offense getting only four singles, the Giants beat the Dodgers, 3-1, to move into a tie with the Braves, who lost to Houston.

Bill Swift (21-8) gave up one run and two hits in seven innings to become the third pitcher in the league with 21 victories. Tom Candiotti (8-10) took another loss despite pitching well.

For the Dodgers, who had beaten the Giants this season in six of nine games, it was a chance to get revenge for all those times the Giants have ruined their chances to advance to postseason play, among them 1951, 1962, 1982 and 1991, the latter fresh in the minds of many of the players who watched the Giants beat them in consecutive games the last weekend of the season to give the Braves the division title.

“I’ve received telegrams and faxes from all over the country from people who want us to beat the Giants, that’s all I have heard, people who remember ‘82, who remember ‘91,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “(Giant manager) Dusty Baker played for me for a long time and he helped make it possible for me to manage a World Championship team. What am I going to do, say I want to knock Dusty out of it? No way. But I can tell you that my players will play this team as hard as they play any team.”

Instead, the Dodgers pretty much gave the game away. The Giants scored their first two runs in the fourth inning on a leadoff walk to Barry Bonds, two Dodger errors and a single by Kirt Manwaring. Up until that point, Candiotti, who had an 0.74 earned-run average in 24 innings against the Giants this season, had given up two hits and struck out four. He had two outs when Jose Offerman booted a grounder by Royce Clayton after a bad hop and Cory Snyder’s throw from right field on Manwaring’s line drive hit Clayton and skidded past into the Dodger dugout.

Then in the eighth, after the Dodgers had closed to 2-1, Brett Butler came up short after diving for a line drive by Matt Williams that bounced by for a triple. Williams scored on Willie McGee’s infield single.

Candiotti left the game for a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning, after giving up three runs--one earned--seven hits and striking out six. But by the end of the game, when reliever Rod Beck was one out away from earning his 46th save--after Williams turned a shot by Eric Karros into a double play--the fans were on their feet, cheering for the Giants.

“I think Will Clark said it best a couple of years ago, when he said that if his team can’t win the division, then who cares who does,” Butler said. “But there is a renewed enthusiasm for a series like this.”

The Dodgers need more than enthusiasm if they are going to avenge the damage to Ralph Branca, who gave up the home run--the Shot Heard ‘Round the World--in 1951 to Giant Bobby Thomson, which sent New York to the World Series. Thomson was here Thursday night and sat in the Giants’ owners’ box, along with Willie Mays. In 1962, the Giants’ rallied for four runs in the bottom of the ninth inning in the third game of the tie-breaking playoffs. The Dodgers hated Joe Morgan when he was with Cincinnati and detested him more as a Giant in 1982, when he homered against Terry Forster to kill the Dodgers hopes for tying the Braves for the division title on the last day of the season.

All of these Giant spoilers--with the exception of 1991--happened on Oct. 3 of their respective years. This year, Oct. 3 falls on Sunday.