Williams Is Already a Big Hit for Dodgers

Eddie Williams has spent the last six years playing in three countries and six organizations looking for a place to call home.

It took one swing of Williams’ bat with two outs in the ninth inning Saturday night to end the search.

Williams, who played too well in the minors for the Dodgers to ignore any longer, lifted the Dodgers to a 2-1 victory over the Montreal Expos with a pinch-hit RBI single in front of a crowd of 47,597 at Dodger Stadium.

“It was a tremendous feeling,” Williams said, “especially with the crowd behind me like that. It seems like the fans have taken a liking to me already and that’s a player’s dream.

“I can’t even tell you how good that felt. It’s been so long.”

The Dodgers, winners of nine of their last 11 games, scored their first run when center fielder Rondell White lost Wilton Guerrero’s fly ball in the lights in the second inning for a run-scoring double.

If that wasn’t bizarre enough, the Dodgers opened the ninth when Todd Zeile hit a one-out single off the left-center-field wall.

With two outs, Guerrero struck out on a wild pitch in the dirt from reliever Dave Veres. As the ball bounced to the backstop, everyone was safe.

Manager Bill Russell called upon Williams, who just came up Tuesday from triple-A Albuquerque, where he was hitting .373.

Williams walked to the plate as the crowd chanted “Eddie-Eddie-Eddie.” Williams took the first pitch for a ball. He swung and missed the second pitch. The crowd got louder and louder.

“I thought Eddie Murray was up there,” Russell said. “He even got the hit like Eddie Murray would get in that situation.”

Williams swung at the next pitch and lined it over the head of Veres, and before Zeile even reached third, Williams was pumping his fist in the air for the game-winning hit. He was mobbed by his teammates and bruised a few hands with vicious high-fives.

It was the Dodgers’ first game-winning pinch-hit of the season.

For a bench that was hitting .119, Williams has been a godsend.

“These guys [Williams and Eric Anthony] provide us with major league experience on the bench and you need guys like that,” Russell said. “They know their role.”

Just like that, the Dodgers moved within a half-game of the first-place Colorado Rockies, and all of their troubles of a few weeks ago seem like an eternity ago.

“When things are happening like this,” said center fielder Todd Hollandsworth, who is batting .333 since taking over for Brett Butler, “everything is good. We’re winning now. Nobody even cares about what happened before.

“You’re not going to love everybody you play with every year, but you’ve got to get along.

“Look, if life were great all of the time, it wouldn’t be exciting. You’ve got to have ups and downs.

“We’re having fun again, and you can see the difference.”

It hasn’t been pretty all of the time. The Dodgers have failed to score more than one run against five of the seven starters they’ve faced, but they have become the hottest team in baseball.

Dodger starter Chan Ho Park never was in the slightest bit of trouble during his seven-inning stint.

He retired the first five batters he faced. He didn’t yield a hit until Henry Rodriguez’s two-out, broken-bat single in the fourth. And he never allowed a runner to reach second base.

Yet, his seven-inning, three-hit shutout performance was squandered once he left the game for pinch-hitter Anthony in the bottom of the seventh.

Doug Strange led off the eighth with a single past third baseman Zeile into left field. Andy Stankiewicz sacrificed Strange to second. Right-handed reliever Darren Hall was called upon to face Mark Grudzielanek, but he was greeted with a sharp single to left, scoring Strange. The Dodgers got a break, though, when first baseman Eric Karros cut off Wayne Kirby’s throw, and tagged out Grudzielanek in a rundown.

Still, the damage was done, and Park was the latest who had nothing to show for his performance.