Mr. Septembers in Short Supply

Some teams play their best baseball in September. Their pitchers look sharp. Their hitters get in a groove. A pennant race makes everybody dig deep for a little bit extra, and the manager has had six months to know which buttons to push.

So far this September, the Dodgers have played 17 games.

They have lost 11 of them.

Panic hasn’t set in yet, and center fielder Otis Nixon offered reassurance to the despondent Dodgers after their 2-1 defeat Saturday against the Colorado Rockies, telling a few teammates emphatically, “Look, we just lost four games . . . tough games . . . close games . . . and we are still only one . . . game . . . out!”

Nixon is a good speech-maker.

Yet something else is ringing in the Dodgers’ ears, an echo that grows louder each day throughout Chavez Ravine:

The sound of true-blue fans, booing.

“They think they’re frustrated,” first baseman Eric Karros said inside the Dodger clubhouse, “it’s nothing compared to what’s going on in here.”

September has been a disaster.

If the Dodgers hadn’t won those back-to-back, 7-6 games in St. Louis--one that took 15 innings after Todd Worrell got torched, the other requiring a four-run rally in the ninth--do you know what their record would be over the last dozen games?

It would be 1-11.

This is a team trying to get to a championship by going backward. The manager, Bill Russell, has begun to turn to players like shortstop Juan Castro or pitcher Rick Gorecki, who hardly played all season long. Russell uses three newcomers in his starting lineup--Nixon, Eric Young and Darren Lewis--and leans on another, Eddie Murray, whenever the Dodgers are dying for a pinch-hit.

August’s studs are September’s bench-warmers.

Greg Gagne goes ice cold, in a heated pennant race.

Brett Butler, Todd Hollandsworth, Wilton Guerrero and Billy Ashley sit on the bench, gathering splinters.

Mark Guthrie--a man with World Series experience--is going so poorly, he could get left off a postseason roster in favor of Dennis Reyes, who is the youngest pitcher in the majors.

“We need somebody to step up and be a hero,” catcher Mike Piazza said.

Any volunteers?

Even when the Dodgers do everything right, it is coming out wrong. On a perfectly executed play--Nixon’s outfield relay to Castro, who makes a peg to Piazza at home plate that is low and accurate, just the way they teach it--what happens? The ball short-hops Piazza, who drops it.

Todd Zeile gets called out at home, when he’s safe. A bad break? Big deal. Colorado’s infielders dropping a pop fly by Zeile was a good break. The top teams make their own breaks.

Every moment counts now.

Piazza, who goes all-out, all of the time, forgot to go all-out on the ball he hit to the right-field wall. It could have been a home run. It could have been caught. Piazza loafed, and settled for a single. By hustling for a double, he could have been in scoring position, with Karros up next.

Oh, for a hero, now that September is here.

Russell set the table for Murray to be one again, moving Eric Anthony and others like chess pieces, just so the future Hall of Famer could give his legions of fans one last blast.

Don Baylor, the Colorado manager, didn’t exactly enjoy seeing the 41-year-old Murray dig in and take a wicked cut at Jerry Dipoto’s first offering, which he fouled back to the screen.

“I played with him in his prime,” Baylor said of Murray. “That first pitch, he was all over.”

Two pitches later, the game was all over.

A 5-4-3 double play, Murray out by a good 10 feet.

If something good doesn’t happen to the Dodgers soon--like today--nobody who bleeds blue is going to enjoy Monday’s off-day much. (And that includes Vice President Tom Lasorda, who on Monday will mark his 70th birthday.)

Russell has two choices:

He can go with the guys like Murray and Gagne and Todd Worrell who know what a World Series’ pressure is like, or he can go with younger guys who can’t do any worse than the older guys are doing right now.

Either way, the Dodgers are searching for a hero.

The hunt for Mr. October.