Dodgers Have No Defense for This One : Baseball: Kelly’s dropped pop fly is the turning point as a 7-1 lead turns into an 11-10 loss to the Marlins.

Tom Lasorda leaned back in his office chair Saturday night, looked to the heavens for help, found no relief and shut his eyes.

The Dodger manager watched it, endured it, and certainly experienced it, but there is no way in the world he could sufficiently explain the Dodgers’ 11-10 defeat to the Florida Marlins at Joe Robbie Stadium.

The game was lost in the eighth inning when Marlin third baseman Terry Pendleton hit a two-run, two-out homer off Pedro Astacio into the right-field seats.

Or was it lost in the fourth when the Dodgers were leading, 7-1, and left fielder Roberto Kelly dropped a routine fly ball that resulted in five unearned runs?

Or did the Dodgers lose it when three relievers combined to give up four earned runs in 3 2/3 innings?

Or did they lose it . . . ?

“What the hell’s the difference how we lost the damn game?” Lasorda said, his voice rising. “We should have won it going away. You saw it. You saw what happened. You don’t have to ask me what happened.

“That is a shame to lose that ball game.

“That is a shame.

“That’s a shame.

“What a shame.

“You’re winning 7-1, get 15 hits [actually 16] and lose that game . . .

“Oh, Lord have mercy, we score 10 runs and don’t win the ballgame?

“How the hell do you explain something like that? Now I’ll go back to the hotel and I won’t sleep half the night thinking about this game.

“God, almighty.”

Yes, it was that kind of night.

It was the Dodgers’ most excruciating loss since blowing a three-run lead in the 15th inning May 2 against the San Francisco Giants.

But never this season had the Dodgers blown more than a three-run lead. You must go back to June 2, 1994, for the last time the Dodgers scored 10 runs in a game and lost. It also was against the Marlins at Joe Robbie Stadium.

While the Dodgers changed out of their uniforms quickly in the aftermath, each searching for some valid explanation, there was nothing more painful than the blunt statement offered by first baseman Eric Karros.

“It was like any other ballgame this year,” Karros said. “You don’t catch the ball. You lose. Period.

“Everyone tries to take different angles, talking about our hitting, our pitching, but the one constant that nobody likes to really address has been our defense.

“Nobody wants to acknowledge it.

“That’s the thing that’s been holding us back all year.”

The Dodgers, with two errors Saturday, have committed a major league-leading 77 errors this season that have led to a whopping 49 unearned runs--16 in the last six games.

Incredibly, the Dodgers have permitted eight more unearned runs than all of last season.

And there are still 65 games remaining.

“I’m not going to point fingers,” said catcher Mike Piazza, whose three-run homer was wasted along with Todd Hollandsworth’s career-high four runs batted in. “But we’ve got to start catching the baseball.”

The play that triggered the entire mess was Kelly’s dropped fly. The Dodgers were leading, 7-1, Hollandsworth was having the game of his career, and starter Willie Banks was cruising toward his first victory in 13 months.

Chuck Carr, with two runners aboard and two outs, hit a lazy fly ball to shallow left field. Shortstop Jose Offerman drifted back, but Kelly called him off. Offerman veered away, just in time for the ball to pop into Kelly’s glove . . . and out.

“I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before,” said Kelly, who has committed more errors--five--than in his last two seasons combined. “If I did, I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember.

“That changed the game right there.”

Banks, punching his fist into his glove in anger, was never the same. He yielded a single to Jerry Browne, and two pitches later, a three-run homer by Jeff Conine into the left-field seats.

The Dodgers suddenly had that familiar feeling it was going to be one of those nights. They scored two runs in the fifth inning for a 9-6 lead, only to give back runs in the fifth and sixth innings. They scored a run on Hollandsworth’s homer in the seventh, only to watch the Marlins match it on Greg Colbrunn’s homer. Then came Pendleton’s gut-wrenching blow in the eighth.