Reds Out of Order; Dodgers Win : Baseball: Lasorda protests but withdraws it after 6-4 victory moves L.A. 2 1/2 games up.

After his team had once again made the ninth inning an adventure Saturday night, Manager Tom Lasorda had little to say about the Dodgers’ 6-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds at Riverfront Stadium.

Instead, showing reporters the evidence--the Reds’ official lineup card--Lasorda talked about which Cincinnati player he thought should have come to the plate in the second inning after he reported the Reds for batting out of order.

Cincinnati Manager Davey Johnson had a little more explaining to do, such as why he let Jeff Brantley pitch to Brett Butler in the eighth inning with the bases loaded when left-hander Tim Fortugno was warmed up. Fortugno had struck out Butler the night before on three pitches. But Johnson, too, talked about the batting-order incident and the protest he filed--Johnson thought the umpires were wrong, too.

Butler didn’t have any explaining to do, though he spent the game trying to get an explanation about the umpires’ action.

“The umpires said, ‘Why do you want to know,’ ” said Butler, whose two-out single broke a 2-2 tie in the Dodgers’ four-run eighth-inning rally. “I said, ‘Who knows, I may be a major league manager some day.’ ”

On a night when the Dodgers took a 2 1/2-game lead over the San Francisco Giants in the National League West, the principal subject of conversation was the baseball rule book. The official lineup card, which was given to plate umpire Gerry Crawford before the game (and used by Lasorda), had Brian Dorsett batting seventh and Bret Boone eighth. The lineup on the Reds’ dugout wall had Boone batting seventh and Dorsett eighth, their usual order.

Lasorda said he noticed the change before play started, but waited to say something until either of the involved players had gotten on base, which Dorsett did in the second inning with a walk--after Boone had led off the inning by grounding out.

As pitcher John Roper, the Reds’ ninth batter, walked to the plate, so did Lasorda, who told Crawford the Reds had batted out of order. Crawford thereupon pointed at Dorsett, standing on first base, and told him to go to the dugout. Then he called Roper, who had not had a pitch thrown to him yet, out, and said the next batter should be the one who follows Roper in the order, leadoff man Barry Larkin.

Lasorda, who said later that he recalled a similar situation when Ron Cey and Dusty Baker were on his team, protested. “I wanted Boone to come back and hit in (his listed) spot,” he said.

Johnson, taking full responsibility for the lineup mishap, thought the next batter should be Roper. “The guy called out is in the eighth spot and the pitcher should hit--you don’t skip the next guy,” Johnson said.

But all that mattered is what Crawford and umpire crew chief Bruce Froemming thought. “Here’s the deal,” Froemming said. “When you bat out of order, you never go backwards. Boone was the proper batter when Dorsett had a pitch thrown to him. Dorsett was batting out of order, so Roper is the next batter and he’s out.

“Tommy filed a protest, then Davey protested because he just wanted to protest. So we said, ‘What the hell, we just let everybody protest.’ ”

Dorsett’s at-bat was nullified. Roper was scored an out by the catcher, unassisted. Boone’s scoring remained the same, grounding out to first base, unassisted. Boone and Dorsett changed places in the batting order to align with the official lineup card when they came up again in the fourth inning, and the game went on.

With the victory, Lasorda called off his protest.

Ramon Martinez (3-2) pitched well for the fourth consecutive start, holding the Reds to two runs, one earned, before being lifted for pinch-hitter Jeff Treadway in the eighth with runners on the corners and two out. Treadway walked before Butler, who has a .375 average against Brantley, scored pinch-runner Garey Ingram from third base. “I had Fortugno up, but when Brantley got out the (No. 8) hitter, I thought he could get out of it,” Johnson said of Brantley, who had held opponents to a .116 average with the bases loaded.

Darren Dreifort held the Reds scoreless in the eighth, but pitched what Lasorda called a “nerve-racking” ninth.

Dreifort gave up three singles and a walk, but was hurt by Delino DeShields, who was trying for a double play and couldn’t get the ball out of his glove. The Reds went on to score two runs to narrow the Dodger lead to 6-4 and had runners on second and third when Dreifort got Dorsett to ground out to first.

“It seems like it’s always an adventure in the ninth inning,” Dreifort said.