It’s Worth Losing a Little Sleep Over

See you next week, or next season?

Leaving town for a three-game series at San Diego that will make or break them, the Dodgers gave 53,856 of their truest-blue fans quite a sendoff Wednesday night, with a superbly executed 7-4 victory that knocked the upstart Colorado Rockies back to second place, where hopefully they belong.

Hunch starter Kevin Tapani couldn’t have pitched much better, and virtually every man in Tom Lasorda’s lineup contributed at least one hit, the pitcher included. So perhaps we haven’t seen the last of the Dodgers this season after all.

Emerging from the dugout before the game, uncertain when he would next set foot on the grass of Dodger Stadium or what the circumstances would be, Lasorda took a long look around, saying wistfully that he would give anything to own a crystal ball.

“I wake up this morning, 5 o’clock. My wife says, ‘What’s wrong?’ I tell her I’m thinking. I can’t stop thinking. I go to bed tired and I wake up just as tired as when I close my eyes,” the manager of 1,555 Dodger victories said.

Baseball will do that to you.

But there is more to life, as Lasorda’s daughter, Laura, took a moment to remind him.

“Listen to this,” she said.

Lasorda pressed against her and heard a sound--bump-bump, bump-bump.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the baby’s heartbeat,” said the mother of his grandchild, who is due the first week of October.

Making this an even more eventful time in the 68-year-old manager’s world.

Real life has a habit of intervening now and then, which Andres Galarraga of the Rockies learned the hard way. Struck in the helmet by a pitch from hard-throwing Antonio Osuna in the eighth inning, Galarraga and his teammates had a terrifying moment, not unlike a beaning Ron Cey took in the 1981 World Series, the victim of the Yankees’ Goose Gossage.

Galarraga got up, though, under his own power, and should be all right if the Rockies make the playoffs.

Ah, the playoffs. Will the Dodgers be in them? Will Colorado? Will Houston? No one knows, partly due to a shortage of crystal balls and partly due to a ridiculously complex tiebreaker system that would require Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden and intricate diagrams to successfully explain.

We do know that if the Dodgers sweep all three games at San Diego this weekend, they are in . Period. End of story. Because that would mean the best Colorado could do is tie L.A. for first place, while Houston could kiss its Astrodome good night.

However this ends, nobody can deny that the Dodgers dominated the Rockies this season, head to head.

Rolling the dice Wednesday, taking a chance that No. 5 starting pitcher Kevin Tapani wouldn’t develop ulcers at the thought of working such a big game, the Dodgers did themselves proud, with timely hitting in support of Tapani’s very impressive effort.

Really making only one poor pitch--a belt-high one that Dante Bichette belted somewhere toward Pasadena--the determined Tapani acquitted himself beautifully in what might very well be his final start of 1995.

He had a good time doing it, grinning from ear to ear at first base after driving in a Dodger run with a second-inning single. In the grand tradition of Don Drysdale, Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser, the Dodgers have gotten some clutch hitting of late from their pitchers, notably Hideo Nomo and Tapani.

“We control our own destiny now,” said Tapani. “This could pave the way for us.”

Eric Karros added, “This game meant two games. We really, really needed this one.”

On a night when everyone had to be at their best, the Dodgers were. They played error-free, heads-up baseball, turning two nice double plays, with shortstop Chad Fonville making one backhand stab in particular that Jose Offerman couldn’t have caught with a butterfly net.

It was just the kind of performance Lasorda was looking for in posting victory No. 1,556 of his career. Three more and he’ll sleep like a baby.