These Dodgers Bring the Pain Rather Than Suffer From It

You gotta play hurt and you gotta have heart. Rarely has old-time baseball lingo sounded more like poetry than it did here Saturday night to the Dodgers, who made monkeys out of anyone ignorant enough--sorry--as to say that there was no way they would win the National League West title.

Without complaint, Raul Mondesi (carried off on a stretcher 24 hours earlier), Tim Wallach (still limping from a torn knee ligament), Mike Piazza (days after being struck on the hand with a pitch) and Hideo Nomo (despite something reportedly wrong with his pitching arm) all came through at a time when the Dodgers did everything but bleed blue.

In this, the year of Cal Ripken Jr., it turned out the 1995 Dodger boys of summer were not exactly wimps.

“This team’s got some heart,” was the way Wallach summed things up.

Calling it the greatest night of his 15-year career, Wallach added: “That’s as good a baseball as we played all year. This is a good ballclub, and anybody who questions that is crazy.”

Mondesi in particular was the man of the hour. His sprained knee, wrapped in more tape than a mummy, kept him from running the bases at anything but half speed. But that’s as fast as he had to go, after pounding a 404-foot home run into the pint-sized palm trees beyond the fence in left center, scoring Wallach in the seventh inning and putting the championship champagne on ice.

Knowing it was gone as soon as he swung, Mondesi stood near home plate, hanging on to his bat like a cane. He watched the ball fly in a way that would have made Reggie Jackson proud, then broke into a jog, doing a lasso twirl with his fist.

Mondesi was still so pumped upon returning to the dugout that he looked a TV camera squarely in the eye and gave it a wink. Teammates smacked him on the back, Fonville gave him a major chest-bump and Wallach wrapped his arms around Mondesi’s neck, while music from the stadium loudspeakers blared “I’ll Be There For You,” the theme from the aptly named TV program, “Friends.”

About 45 minutes later, the division was theirs. Los Angeles might not have pro football players, but they do still have baseball players.

They mobbed one another on the diamond after downing the San Diego Padres, 7-2, feeling no pain. Injuries? What injuries? Labor strike? What labor strike? Forfeit? What forfeit? White wine was flowing and Los Angeles was going to the championship playoffs for the first time since Orel Hershiser hummed strike three past the last batter of 1988.

“Anything else that happened,” Piazza said, “well, it just doesn’t matter.”

The fact that Mondesi is playing at all is meaningful.

“GWYNN, RF,” read the lineup card of Manager Tom Lasorda before the game, and he didn’t mean Tony. Unsure whether Mondesi could run with a sprained knee, and not inclined to use young Todd Hollandsworth in such a big game, Lasorda had little recourse but to pencil in Chris Gwynn as his starting right fielder.

This development didn’t spoil the fun for Chris’s brother, because Tony Gwynn had said for Lasorda’s benefit after San Diego’s victory Friday night: “I just love to see Tommy squirm over there.”

At the batting cage an hour before Saturday’s oh-so-crucial start, Lasorda was leaning on an iron bar at the back of the batting cage. What he saw made his old Italian heart go pitter-pat. Mondesi, stepping gingerly into the batter’s box, yanked an 80 m.p.h. batting-practice pitch into the Jack Murphy upper deck in left, a considerable poke.

That was all Lasorda needed to see.

Chris Gwynn, thanks for being there, but no way Mondesi wouldn’t play.

“That’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life, him going out there that way,” Lasorda said.

Until the homer by Mondesi, the most unforgettable swing of the division- clinching game nearly turned out to be one by Nomo, an .095 hitter who suddenly turned into hammerin’ Hideo, crushing one that sent San Diego’s Steve Finley to the wall in center. Nomo, like Mondesi, came to play. Sore arm or not, he struck out Padre after Padre, including that poor monk Melvin Nieves three times.

In the celebration, teammates Billy Ashley and Hollandsworth stood in the clubhouse chanting: “Nomo! Nomo! Nomo!”

But this night belonged to Mondesi, who spoke for everyone in the winning clubhouse, hugging teammates and saying: “Who said we wouldn’t win? We won! We won!”