Dodgers Get Double Whammy in This Loss

If nothing else, the Dodgers reasoned Saturday night, their most tumultuous week since former general manager Al Campanis sat in front of the cameras for ‘Nightline” finally is over.

Certainly, after being knocked out of first place with a 9-8 defeat by the Montreal Expos, there was little else to enthuse the Dodgers or the paid crowd of 35,323 at Dodger Stadium.

The week began with the Dodgers in first place, management summoning a replacement player, Dodger players wanting the replacement player to go home and fans screaming at the Dodger players and cheering the replacement player. It ended Saturday night with fans booing the replacement player and the Dodgers coming close to pulling off a miraculous comeback.

The Dodgers have no desire to sit back and relive old times. There’s nothing they can do about the call-up of replacement player Mike Busch and can’t erase their four losses in five games since returning home.

All they know is that they have 25 games remaining to start playing championship baseball.

“If people think there’s pressure now, wait until the last two weeks of the season,” first baseman Eric Karros said. “That’s when we’ll find out who can play and who can’t play.

“And whoever plays the best ball the last two weeks is going to win the division.”

The Dodgers, predicting in June that they might run away with the National League West title, confident they’d leave the pack July 31 when they acquired pitchers Kevin Tapani and Mark Guthrie and counting down their magic number Aug. 18 when they picked up center fielder Brett Butler, wake up today in shock.

They feel bad enough that for the first time since Aug. 11 they’ve fallen out of first place, losing for the 11th time in 16 games. But look at what’s happened now. The Colorado Rockies are in first place by half a game. And the San Diego Padres are only 2 1/2 games out of first with the San Francisco Giants only five games back.

“That’s the worst thing of all,” Mike Piazza said. “We let the Giants back in the race.”

The Dodgers, trailing 9-4 in the bottom of the eighth, nearly changed their fate. They had one run in when pinch-hitter Carolos Hernandez hit a three-run homer.

The Dodgers threatened to tie the score when Roger Cedeno followed with a pinch-hit double, Butler walked, and Chad Fonville came to the plate with one out. But Fonville hit a grounder to second baseman Mike Lansing, who turned a nifty double play.

“The thing that hurt was the double play,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “I didn’t think there was any way possible he would hit into a double play.”

For the first time since May 10, all four divisional teams are bunched within five games.

The Dodgers might have five all-stars, the leading rookie-of-the-year candidate, two most-valuable-player candidates and a reliever about to set the Dodger save record, but. . . .

They have played .500 ball since the third game of the season.

The Dodgers, plagued by poor defense, bad baserunning and erratic hitting, managed to pull off a trifecta this night.

Starter Kevin Tapani was rocked for five runs and seven hits in 1 2/3 innings. Delino DeShields was picked off first base. And third baseman Busch made a fielding error in his first start.

Right fielder Raul Mondesi hit two, two-run home runs, but it wasn’t enough to rescue the team from another excruciating evening.

If nothing else, the Dodgers proved there’s tranquillity in the clubhouse, treating Busch like one of their own.

Butler, who took the brunt of the blame for the Dodgers’ initial reaction toward Busch, wished him well before the game. Busch thanked him, and became the National League’s first replacement player to start in the field.

It wasn’t the debut he envisioned. Busch struck out twice, and when David Segui’s grounder went through Busch’s legs in the fourth, the fans treated Busch as one of their own too. They booed him just as they would any other Dodger.