Astacio Gets Close to a Winless Year : Dodgers: He pitches a solid 6 2/3 innings, but doesn’t get any breaks in 3-2 loss to the Cardinals.

Lance Ito was just another judge. Bud Selig and Don Fehr were still speaking. The Democrats were in power in Congress.

It was June 25, 1994.

That was the last day Dodger starter Pedro Astacio won a game, and after 322 days between victories, the drought will continue at least another five days.

The St. Louis Cardinals continued Astacio’s anguish Saturday night, defeating the Dodgers, 3-2, in front of a paid crowd of 37,188 at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers nearly pulled off a rally to save Astacio from defeat, but Henry Rodriguez’s fly ball with the bases loaded was caught on the warning track, leaving rookie John Frascatore with his first major league victory.

It was almost cruel the way it happened, and certainly Astacio deserved a better fate the way he pitched--giving up six hits and three earned runs in 6 2/3 innings--but he still was left winless for the 11th consecutive start.

“I don’t even bring it up,” pitching coach Dave Wallace said, “because if you bring it up, then he’ll start thinking about it more.

“I told him the only thing you can control is how you pitch. You can’t worry about the umpires’ calls. You can’t worry about broken-bat hits, or anything else. That’s tough to accept sometimes, but that’s the way it has to be.”

For the first five innings, it appeared this would be the night the drought would end. Astacio was pitching brilliantly, not giving up a hit until the fourth inning, and preventing a runner from reaching third until the sixth.

Yet, as Astacio can readily tell you, when you’re in a rut like this, anything that can go wrong, usually does.

It happened in the sixth inning. Bernard Gilkey led off with a single to right field. Ozzie Smith then hit a ball off the end of his bat, and the ball squirted into left for another single.

Needing a double-play ball, Astacio induced a sharp one-hopper back to the mound. Go figure. The ball caromed off Astacio and bounced crazily into right field. Gilkey scored, Smith went to third, Ray Lankford was on first, and Astacio was about to lose his mind.

“He gets frustrated at times,” Wallace said, “sometimes so much so that he forgets what he has to do.”

This time, Astacio got Todd Zeile to hit a slow roller to third. It was the first out, but slow enough to score Smith. Astacio prevented further trouble by inducing a grounder to first by Scott Cooper and struck out Brian Jordan, but the damage was done.

The Cardinals had a 2-1 lead, and just when Astacio didn’t believe his luck could get any worse, along came the seventh inning.

Astacio retired the first two batters when John Mabry hit a pinch-hit double into the left-center gap. It looked like the inning would harmlessly end when Gilkey hit a routine bouncer to third. But as Dave Hansen reached to grab the ball, it took a wild hop, and skipped past Hansen into left field for a run-scoring single.

The Dodgers, sensing that was enough to test anyone’s sanity, removed Astacio from the game. Felix Rodriguez made his major league debut by retiring Smith on a fly ball to right, but it was of little use.

The Dodgers teased Astacio all night into believing they would score runs, but instead of teeing off Frascatore, a native of Queens, N.Y., who attended C.W. Post, they stranded 12 runners and blew one chance after another.

They saved their most painful failure for the ninth inning. Trailing 3-1, pinch-hitter Chris Gwynn hit a one-out double off closer Tom Henke. Delino DeShields followed with a single to center, advancing Gwynn to third. DeShields then stole second, Jose Offerman walked, and Raul Mondesi was batting with one out and the bases loaded.

Mondesi, who already had two infield hits in the game, grounded out to first baseman Zeile for the second out, one run scoring, but then Eric Karros drew a walk, loading the bases for Henry Rodriguez.

Rodriguez crushed a 1-and-1 pitch into right field, and momentarily, the crowd believed it was heading into the seats. Right fielder Jordan went back to the wall, spun around, and caught the ball for the final out.

“Maybe in the daytime it’s gone,” Rodriguez said, “but not tonight. It wasn’t meant to be.”