Who’s on First? Twice, No One as Dodgers Lose : Baseball: L.A.’s fielding blunders during the fifth inning help the Expos score their sixth consecutive victory.

It wasn’t quite the homecoming Delino DeShields anticipated when he climbed out of a taxi in front of Olympic Stadium on Monday night. For the first time in more than a week, DeShields was able to play all nine innings without physical injury, but the mental anguish he and the Dodgers suffered during their 10-5 loss to the Montreal Expos was bad enough.

“It was an ugly, ugly game,” third baseman Tim Wallach said.

The Expos extended their winning streak to six, which is not unremarkable, considering the Dodgers had won only four of the 24 games they had played here the last four seasons. But it is the demoralizing way the Dodgers lost this one that will provide some haunting memories.

The Dodgers gave the Expos six outs in the fifth inning, and the Expos appreciated the generosity, scoring five runs to take a 6-3 lead.

It started when Kevin Gross, who said his shoulder felt as good as it has all season, said he got “vapor locked” and failed to cover first base on a routine grounder in the fifth inning. Sean Berry had led off with a double and starter Ken Hill grounded to Eric Karros, who made a good stop on the ball and would normally have flipped the ball to Gross for the out. But Gross wasn’t close to the bag.

“That was just a terrible play,” Gross (0-1) said. “I didn’t see the ball come off the bat and I thought Hill hit it into the stands. Then I turn around and see Eric with it and I was just standing there vapor locked.”

Hill was safe on first and Berry advanced to third. Mike Lansing, who is 10 for 24 since asking the Expos to play Van Halen’s “Right Now” instead of Bon Jove’s “Dead or Alive” before he bats, followed with a line drive that scored Berry.

That was it for Gross, who was replaced by Omar Daal, and the inning got worse. Cliff Floyd hit a grounder to the right of the mound and Daal fielded it, looked Hill back at third and made a perfect throw to first base, but no one was covering. Two runs scored, putting the Expos ahead, 4-3.

“I caught the ball and thought Eric was at first base,” Daal said. “Nobody told me not to throw it.”

Karros had come in to help field the ball and DeShields was about 5 feet from the bag.

“The ball was hit right to the pitcher and for some reason the first baseman thought, well, the ball was hit right to the pitcher,” Manager Tom Lasorda said. “It’s hard to say who should have been there, the pitcher had the ball and nobody was there, and he assumed somebody is going to be there.”

Karros saw it differently. “It was a bouncer and Omar is a left-handed pitcher and we have a guy on third and if it gets by him we are in trouble,” Karros said. “I was the guy out there.”

DeShields saw it another way. “I probably should have been there, but I didn’t expect (Omar) to throw it with a guy on third,” DeShields said. “I don’t think we lost the game on that particular play.”

Darren Dreifort replaced Daal and, after a groundout, picked off Larry Walker, who had been intentionally walked. But the Dodgers faltered again when Moises Alou hit a hard grounder that Jose Offerman made a good stop on, but bounced his throw to first under Karros’ glove, and Floyd scored. Alou scored on a double down the left field line by Darrin Fletcher before Wil Cordero flied out.

“We can’t continue to make mistake after mistake,” said Wallach, who was hitless in four at-bats. “We have to forget about this one and get back to playing solid baseball and bear down. Everybody needs to take care of their job and that’s how you do it, period.”

The Dodgers scored three runs in the first inning against Hill (5-1) on a two-run triple by Henry Rodriguez and a grounder by Mike Piazza. DeShields led off the game with the first of three consecutive singles, but the joy of scoring the first run in front of his former hometown crowd was long lost by the end of the night. His head still hurts from the concussion he suffered more than a week ago, and he said he feels like he is in slow motion in the field. “I’m just trying to play through it,” DeShields said.