Dodgers Emphatic in Rout : Baseball: Braves stymied, 9-4, by Cummings and five-run inning after marveling at team’s potential.

Manager Bobby Cox and the Atlanta Braves sat on the bench Thursday afternoon, talking about the Dodgers and admiring their collection of talent.

They discussed the marvelous pitching staff, the potent lineup and how difficult it will be for the Colorado Rockies to keep the Dodgers down.

“That team scares me, it scares me a lot,” Cox said. “They’re a team to watch down the stretch. They’re capable of doing some heavy damage.

Hours later, Cox was left cursing under his breath, realizing that the Dodgers might have to be reckoned with down the stretch, perhaps in mid-October as they blew past his Braves, 9-4, before a frenzied paid crowd of 36,942 at Dodger Stadium, winning for the seventh time in their last nine games.

Suddenly, the Dodgers (43-41) are within three games of the Rockies for the first time in three weeks, and three games above .500 for the first time since July 2.

“I’m glad we’re done playing them this season,” Atlanta first baseman Fred McGriff said. “That team can be awesome. . . ..

“Shoot, to tell you the truth, I’d kind of hate to see them in the playoffs.

“I don’t care what they’ve done in the past, they can beat up on you in a hurry.”

The Dodgers indeed showcased their explosiveness to Atlanta, providing a memory that may last all the way until October, overcoming a 4-1 deficit in the fifth inning to turn the game into a rout.

It was a game so preposterous that Dodger left-handed reliever John Cummings, who hadn’t pitched in a Dodger victory this season and was 2-10 last season for Seattle, pitched 4 2/3 shutout innings for the victory.

Cummings (1-0), entering the game in relief of starter Willie Banks in the fifth inning, retired 14 of the 16 batters he faced, winning his first game since Aug. 9, 1994.

“That was the kind of thing we’ve been looking for all year,” Dodger catcher Mike Piazza said. “We haven’t done anything like that all year.”

The Dodgers, trailing, 3-0, in the first inning after David Justice’s three-run homer, appeared to be dead for the night once McGriff’s single in the fifth inning scored Jeff Blauser for a 4-1 lead. Considering starter Kent Mercker was on the mound, and only once this season have the Dodgers come back from as big a deficit in the fifth inning, no one would have blamed the fans for leaving.

Certainly there was no reason for hope when Chad Fonville and Jose Offerman made the first two outs. Along came Raul Mondesi to wake everyone up with a line-drive homer that clanged around the left-field seats. It was Mondesi’s first home run since June 25, spanning 26 games and 95 at-bats.

Piazza then hit a sharp grounder into the hole. Shortstop Jeff Blauser fielded it cleanly. Planted. Had plenty of time. And promptly threw it the dirt past McGriff into the camera well.

“That opened the door for us right there,” first baseman Eric Karros said. “It would have been real easy for us to shut it down and feel sorry for ourselves, and we may never have had the opportunity until Blauser made that error.”

Karros became the first to capitalize, hitting a slicing triple into the left-field corner, scoring Piazza. And before Mercker knew what hit him, the score was tied at 4-4 on Roberto Kelly’s bloop single to right.

Mercker fell behind, 2-0, to Tim Wallach. He grimaced, and fired a fastball over the heart of the plate. Wallach sent it flying into the left-field seats for his first homer since July 4, spanning 20 games and 59 at-bats.

The Dodgers had a 6-4 lead, and the Braves were emotionally finished.

“When we scored all of those runs,” Piazza said, “I told him, ‘You’ve got to get us back to the dugout quick. You’ve got to do it. It’s up to you.”

Said Cummings: “He might have said it, but I didn’t really hear him. I was too busy concentrating on the hitters.”

Cummings, who also batted twice for the first time since he was at Canyon High in Anaheim, retired the first 10 batters he faced before Ryan Kleski’s two-out single in the eighth.

By then, the Dodgers had a 9-4 lead, scoring three more runs on a homer by Karros and a two-run homer by Todd Hollandsworth. It was their most homers in a game since June 22.