This Opening-Night Showing Is Not Good

Opening night, and Dodger Stadium was decorated not in bunting, but desperation.

Opening night of the nine-game season that will decide the National League West championship, and that smell in the air was decidedly not spring.

Fans booed the players, screamed at the scoreboard--C’mon Padres, you quitters!--and fought with each other.

The Dodgers felt it, became it, flailing and slipping and scowling on a Friday night that marked the beginning of their last chance to show us their heart.

We’re still waiting.

The Giants win, the Dodgers lose, and with eight games left, second place feels a lot like fourth.

The Giants survive, the Dodgers stumble, and we’re starting to think this championship sprint will be more excruciating with each step.

They can’t beat the Colorado Rockies here in front of encouraging fans in a must-win game with Hideo Nomo on the mound. . . . How in the world are they going to win four of those games next weekend in Coors Field?

They can’t beat the Rockies despite having a two-run lead in the sixth inning. . . . Will they even need to go to Coors Field?

Excuse the pessimism, but it wasn’t anything that, oh, about 53,408 angry folks weren’t feeling at Chavez Ravine during the Rockies’ 6-4 victory.

Last year at this time, at least the San Diego Padres won it.

Friday night, falling from a position that they held by two sturdy games only three days ago, the Dodgers were losing it.

The starting pitcher, given a two-run lead and asked to compose himself for the sake of the bullpen, does not.

The first baseman, with seven hits in his last 33 at-bats and no homers this month, fails to advance three runners and boots a ball that leads to the tying run.

The MVP-candidate catcher, perhaps weary of carrying these guys, does not throw out two base stealers in the late innings, and both score.

The former rookie of the year weakly grounding out to the pitcher with the tying runs on second and third base and none out in the eighth inning on a 3-and-1 count.

Hideo Nomo, Eric Karros, Mike Piazza and Todd Hollandsworth.

Four of the five players on the cover of a media guide that, for now, doesn’t look as though it will be needed much past next week.

Like any opening night, this one was vital in the recording of team’s pulse, in the examination of its expression.

One day after the soon-to-be-legendary 6-5 loss in 12 innings in San Francisco, everyone wondered.

Would the Dodgers take the field inspired, or defeated?

Would they take the field as though they were headed back into sole possession of first place, or the other way?

Turns out, they took the field as if they were still in San Francisco.

What could be worse than blowing a bases-loaded, no-out situation the way the Dodgers did in San Francisco on Thursday?

It happened again Friday.

The Dodgers loaded them against former mate Pedro Astacio in the sixth inning with one out and holding a 3-2 lead.

But Nomo was forced to bat for himself because of a tired bullpen, and struck out, and Otis Nixon hit a weak grounder to end the threat.

We’re not blaming Nomo for that.

We’re blaming him for what happened moments later, in the seventh, when his only walk became the go-ahead run that scored on Nomo’s wild pitch.

Sure, he was tired. But he knew the score, and we’re not talking about the scoreboard.

“Our bullpen has a lot of innings in them, and if we have to leave Hideo in the game long, then that’s what we’ll do,” Manager Bill Russell said beforehand.

Well, that’s what they tried to do.

“On our teams, we always had guys who wanted to be the hero,” Steve Garvey was saying. “Our guys wanted to get up in the pressure situations. They wanted to get the big hit.”

Garvey was the dugout before Friday’s game. Ron Cey was hanging around the batting cage. Tom Lasorda was upstairs.

All that Dodger history showed up for the beginning of another chapter.

“In times like this, you have to seize the moment,” Garvey said. “Capitalize on it.”

The Dodgers drop-kicked it.

A couple of more nights like this, and maybe people will quit with that silly debate.

You know what we’re talking about.

Most valuable player.

Larry Walker (hitless in four at-bats Friday) versus Piazza (one for five with a run batted in).

The award traditionally goes to the most valuable player from his team, meaning the guy with the biggest shoulders.

This was Kirk Gibson in 1988, when he won the award with only 76 RBIs.

This could be Piazza in 1997, when he has carried an equal load while being far more productive, except . . .

There is an unwritten rule that when a player puts up skull-rattling numbers, voters will ignore semantics and just give the darn thing to him.

One such case was in 1987, when Andre Dawson won the award while playing for the last-place Chicago Cubs.

Dawson had 49 homers and 137 RBIs and batted .287.

Walker has 48 homers and 126 RBIs while batting nearly 100 points higher than Dawson at .370.

And 29 of those homers were away from Coors Field.

The voting is being done now. The results will be announced this winter.

Gee, I can’t wait.