Piazza Goes Out and So Do Dodgers

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said Tuesday night he felt as if someone kicked him in the gut. There was a collective groan from the Dodger bench, followed by curses. It was as if the Dodgers saw their season passing before their eyes.

Catcher Mike Piazza slid awkwardly into second base in the first inning of their 9-3 loss to Philadelphia, and even before he clutched his right knee, the Dodgers knew something was wrong.

“I said, ‘Oh, no,’ ” Lasorda said. “I was sick just walking off the field with him. Shoot, you lose that guy, what are you going to do?”

The Dodgers looked lost without Piazza just for an evening at Veterans Stadium.

Piazza, leading the National League with a .373 batting average, was diagnosed with a hyperflexed right knee that probably will sideline him for several days. He was examined by Phillip Marone and David Rubenstein--two Philadelphia doctors--who didn’t detect any structural or ligament damage to the knee. Piazza will undergo an MRI today.

“It’s kind of frustrating, it’s very frustrating,” he said. “The doctors didn’t see any significant damage, but it’s numb and sore. If I have to take two to three days to treat it and really get it feeling good again, I’ll do it.”

The Dodgers, who were 14-20 in games Piazza missed last season, can hardly afford to be without him for several games in a row, much less survive a stint on the disabled list. On Tuesday, they dropped to a season-high six games behind the San Diego Padres--their largest deficit since the end of the 1993 season. The Padres are so hot these days that even though the Dodgers have won nine of their last 13 games, they still have lost half a game in the standings.

Just how difficult would it be for the Dodgers to stay in the race with a prolonged absence by Piazza?

“Let me put it to you this way,” Lasorda said, “it’s tough enough for me to take him out of the lineup for a day’s rest, so it would be really hard now.”

The most frustrating aspect, Piazza said, is that his knee just was starting to feel good again. He had injured it on April 26 when he stumbled after hitting a single in the sixth inning against the Chicago Cubs. He woke up the next morning in pain, and telephoned the Dodger trainers. He was taken for an MRI, which showed inflammation and fluid build-up, but there was no ligament damage.

Remarkably, while playing with the swollen knee since the injury, he has batted .383 with 10 homers and 23 RBIs in 28 games. Piazza, who also leads the team with 13 homers and 39 RBIs, realizes his impact on the lineup. The Dodgers are 14-6 when he drives in a run and 9-4 when he homers.

“The frustrating part is that my knee was just starting to feel better,” Piazza said. “[It was] almost to the point where it didn’t bother me, and now this. It’s pretty painful. It’s going to be nagging for a while, but I’ll see what I can do to support it and play with it.”

The injury occurred with two outs in the first inning when he hit a line drive that bounced off the right-field wall, perhaps two feet shy of his 14th home run. Piazza figured he would have at least a stand-up double, and watched right fielder Jim Eisenreich field the ball cleanly and throw quickly to second. Piazza slid late. His left leg slid past the bag, and his right knee bent awkwardly behind his leg.

“It was not as bad as it looked,” Piazza said, “but it took me a couple of minutes to get the feeling back. They wanted me to be carried off the field, but I wanted to wait until I got a feeling back again.”

Piazza, assisted by trainer Charlie Strasser and Lasorda, gingerly walked off the field into the Dodger clubhouse. He had barely laid down on the trainer’s table when the Dodgers collapsed on the field.

Dodger starter Ismael Valdes, who yielded a career-high 11 hits and seven earned runs in 5 2/3 innings, gave up four runs in the first inning, including a three-run homer by Pete Incaviglia. He gave up another run in the fifth inning on Benito Santiago’s two-out single, and there was Incaviglia again in the sixth, hitting another three-run homer. Incaviglia’s six RBIs matched the most by a Phillie in the 25-year history of Veterans Stadium.

The Dodgers’ only chance to come back against rookie Mike Grace (7-2) came in the fifth inning. Trailing, 4-1, they loaded the bases with two outs. But instead of Piazza coming to bat, it was his replacement, Tom Prince. Piazza is on pace to become the first catcher in major league history to hit at least 32 homers in three seasons. Prince is a lifetime .183 hitter, with five homers in parts of nine big-league seasons.

Prince bounced back to Grace for the inning-ending out, and the Dodgers never were in the game again, yielding their most runs in any game since April 5. Considering the Dodgers are carrying only two catchers, it will be Prince’s job until Piazza returns.

“We definitely need him,” Dodger cleanup hitter Eric Karros said. “That’s an understatement if there ever was one.”