Victory Slips Away From Dodgers

The Dodgers caught Tom Glavine on a rare off day, but that’s about all they caught Sunday.

They didn’t throw that well, either.

And the bats? No business, as usual.

There were chances to win. There was a lead, but in the end, there was Atlanta, heading home with a 6-4 victory in a game that Manager Bobby Cox said seemed as long as the one the day before it.

That one was 18 innings.

“We didn’t need another extra-inning game,” said Cox, whose Braves ended a 17-game, 19-day, Olympic-induced trip. “It felt like we played all day long.”

That they didn’t have to was the result of a Dodger defense that made three ninth-inning errors--plus one in the sixth. No outfielder escaped being charged except left-fielder Billy Ashley, and that was only because errors aren’t assessed for misjudging fly balls.

Juan Castro made one at third base in the ninth inning, to boot.

“I just threw it away,” he said. “No excuse. I was playing back on the ball and trying to throw it in a hurry. The runner [Eddie Perez] wasn’t that fast and I thought I could get him.”

He couldn’t.

And the other errors?

“[Fred] McGriff just hit it down the line [in right field], and the ball came up on him,” said Dodger Manager Bill Russell, explaining what happened to Raul Mondesi.

“The same thing happened in left field,” Russell said.

This time, to Wayne Kirby.

To fill in the gaps, the ninth inning began with the score tied, 4-4. McGriff singled to right field with one out off Dodger reliever Mark Guthrie, and reached second when Mondesi bobbled the ball. Ryan Klesko singled to left, and McGriff scored when Kirby bobbled the ball.

Klesko was thrown out trying to stretch his hit, but Pedro Borbon, a relief pitcher who was hitting because Cox virtually had no other choice, singled for his first major-league hit.

Cox found a pinch-runner, Rafael Belliard, who scored from first base when Castro threw Eddie Perez’s ground ball off the bar that protects the right field photographers’ well.

It remained only for Mark Wohlers to strike out the side in the ninth inning after a leadoff single by Eric Karros for the Braves to end their trip with a 9-8 record.

Russell talked about the errors, but he didn’t want to dwell on them because errors are made every day, if not in Sunday’s quantity. More worrisome was the Dodger bats, asleep again.

Glavine’s lack of control created opportunities to score, with a double by Karros and two walks loading the bases in the second inning and three walks loading them again in the third.

Glavine struck out his counterpart, Hideo Nomo, to finish the second and Mike Busch to finish the third.

“He really didn’t have his good stuff,” said Cox. “He pitched that game on guts, but he can win on guts.”

Nomo was also struggling, pitching on the edge between effectiveness and disaster, giving up runs in the second, fifth and sixth innings, countered by the Dodgers getting two in the fifth and one in the sixth.

Atlanta’s run in the sixth came when Glavine hit a line drive to left field that Ashley misjudged into a double. Glavine went to third on an infield hit by Marquis Grissom and scored on Ed Giovanola’s sacrifice fly, making it ahead of Chad Curtis’ throw, which sailed to the backstop for another error, this allowing Grissom to reach second base.

To show that it might well have been contagious, the Dodgers tied the score, 3-3, in the sixth when Giovanola fielded Mondesi’s two-out grounder, took two steps toward second, saw Mark Lemke standing there and decided to toss it in his direction to force out Castro. The ball arrived about the time Lemke left, assuming that Giovanola would have taken the extra step to retire Castro himself.

Tom Prince, running on the play, scored from second base.

Prince gave the Dodgers a 4-3 lead in the seventh by squeezing home Kirby with what became a base hit because Atlanta reliever Brad Clontz was breaking toward the third base line, and the ball was bunted toward first.

With game’s end, the Dodgers and Braves ended their season series, the Dodgers winning seven of the 12 games, which Russell reminded anyone who would listen.

Would he like to play them a few more times?

“Yes, I would,” he said. “You know what that would mean.”

It would mean the Dodgers had reached the playoffs, though they slipped another game away on Sunday when San Diego beat Florida.

* END OF THE ROAD

The Braves completed their five-city, 17-game, 5,600-mile trip with a 9-8 record. C4