Dodgers Don’t Get a Chance to Stub Toes : Baseball: With Dreifort, Osuna warming up, Gross goes the distance and beats Cubs, 2-1, on Wallach’s homer.

From about the fifth inning on Friday, Kevin Gross sat in the visitors’ dugout at Wrigley Field when he wasn’t pitching and applied heat to his shoulder. He did exercises in the tunnel to keep it loose and, later on, to try to get it loose.

He grimaced from the pain while he was pitching, and even jammed his toe in the ninth inning while covering first base. But it was clear that Gross did everything he could in the Dodgers’ 2-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs, thereby completing a mission that nobody said, but everybody thought:

Go nine, young man.

“I’ll tell you who the best closer was; it was the guy who started the game today,” Manager Tom Lasorda said in fielding the inevitable question, “Who’s the closer?”

Gross, who had gone nine innings only once before in 12 starts this season, was working on a shutout until the ninth, when Sammy Sosa’s two-out single drove in Derrick May. But Gross retired pinch-hitter Glenallen Hill on a comeback ball to the mound to (a) give the Dodgers their second victory in seven games on this trip, (b) hand the Cubs their 10th consecutive loss and (c) keep the Dodgers’ beleaguered bullpen out of the game.

“I didn’t think I have to go nine because our bullpen needs it,” said Gross (5-3), who gave up seven hits, struck out five and walked one. “It’s just a plus. That’s what baseball is, picking each other up.”

Even before Sosa’s hit, it had appeared that Gross was finished for the day. On the previous play, Gross jammed his big toe covering first, and trainer Charlie Strasser dashed onto the field. Gross used the moment to his advantage, telling Strasser: “I think I stubbed my toe, but while you are out here, I’ll take a rest.”

It looked for a time as though Lasorda was going to be forced to go to the bullpen, which had blown three of the previous four games and has a record of 11-15, a 4.66 earned-run average and nine saves in 24 chances, the worst percentage in baseball.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on (then) in my mind,” Lasorda said. “A lot of things go through your mind. In that position as a manager, you have to think of everything, not that it will happen or to be negative, but to be prepared for whatever happens. So if it does, you can react.”

For all the things Lasorda was thinking, Todd Worrell apparently wasn’t one of them. With the game on the line and the tying run at first base, Lasorda had Darren Dreifort and Al Osuna warming up. It was a curious situation, considering that Worrell had once again been deemed the closer during a disciplinary meeting Friday with Lasorda and Executive Vice President Fred Claire--but an understandable one.

Worrell has blown his last four save chances and five of the last seven, but his meeting concerned his insubordination in Wednesday’s game against the Marlins in Florida, when he ignored Lasorda’s message to hold the potential tying run on first base. The runner, Chuck Carr, stole second and eventually scored.

“I don’t put it in the major category, but it gets back to the basics,” Claire said. “When a manager makes a decision how he wants to see the game played, then that’s the way it should be played.”

The Cub offense is struggling badly, but the Dodgers had even more trouble getting hits Friday. Their runs came in the sixth inning on Tim Wallach’s two-run home run, one of four hits in eight innings against starter Steve Trachsel (4-4). It was Wallach’s 15th homer this season and second in two games.

“I’m not going to repeat this over and over every time I scuffle for a week and a half,” said Wallach, who was asked to explain what he is doing now that he wasn’t doing a week ago. “I’m just not chasing as many bad pitches. I was just rushing too much, not seeing the ball and trying to hit it too hard. Sometimes I get too overaggressive.”