Signs Not Good for Dodgers, but They Hold On for a Win

On the mound, Dodger pitcher Kevin Brown was thinking slider.

Behind the plate, catcher Angel Pena was thinking fastball.

At second base, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Kevin Sefcik was just thinking he had to find a way to score.

For the Dodgers, it was all too painfully familiar, yet another method of self-destruction in the offing just when you thought they had run out of ways.

Sure enough, Brown threw his slider, Pena, crossed up, failed to hang onto the ball, which bounced all the way to the backstop, and Sefcik rounded third and came racing toward home as the potential tying run.

But at the last instant, disaster was averted in the eighth inning Sunday at Dodger Stadium. Pena recovered, fired a strike to the plate and Brown got his glove on Sefcik a blink of the eye before Sefcik’s left leg touched home plate, preserving a one-run lead and, ultimately, the victory.

In a season gone wrong, the Dodgers showed that they can still make the right play at the right time on occasion. They did all the right things and pulled out a 3-2 victory in front of 46,347 with clutch fielding, two home runs from Eric Karros, another from Devon White, solid starting pitching and effective relief.

“If you work hard enough and try hard enough,” Dodger Manager Davey Johnson said, “you will eventually get there.”

Don’t order those World Series tickets just yet. Sunday’s victory still leaves the Dodgers three games under .500 at 32-35.

But this three-game series against the Phillies provided the Dodgers with at least a model for success. Their starting pitching, their strong point on paper heading into the season, but just the opposite in reality, looked a lot like Johnson and General Manager Kevin Malone had envisioned it back in the spring.

Ismael Valdes pitched well, but lost because of a lack of support in the series opener Friday night. Darren Dreifort, given a reprieve after initially being banished to the bullpen, pitched Saturday with a smoothness and control previously lacking, and Brown, after a shaky start Sunday, performed like the pitcher the Dodgers thought he would be when they shelled out $105 million in the off-season to get him, improving to 8-4.

Brown gave up five hits and both runs in the first inning, the Philadelphia cause aided by a strange phantom throw by left fielder Todd Hollandsworth.

After Doug Glanville opened up the game with a single, Rob Ducey doubled down the left-field line. Hollandsworth scooped up the ball, but never appeared to get a solid grip on it. He wound up and tried to throw, but the ball squirted out of his hand early in his motion and it dribbled to the tarp along the seats down the left-field line. Glanville scored easily on the play and Ducey wound up at third.

From there, Ducey scored on a groundout to first by Bobby Abreu.

Brown labored through the rest of the inning, throwing 33 pitches in all. And it could have been worse. Scott Rolen was thrown out at home for the third out.

“He did not have good location on the ball,” Johnson said of Brown. “He might have been too pumped up.”

Brown disagreed.

“That’s not the case,” he said. “I wish it were. Then it would be much easier to address. The fact is, I’m out of rhythm. I just have to go out there and figure out what is working and what is not working.”

Everything Brown tried was working after the first inning. He didn’t give up another hit in his eight-inning stint, retiring 17 in a row at one point.

In the meantime, the Dodgers got back in the game. Karros hit his 11th home run against starter Chad Ogea (3-6) on a 1-2 fastball in the second inning, putting the ball into the seats in right-center.

White evened the score in the fourth with his seventh homer, a towering shot deep into the seats in right-center.

Karros hit an even higher drive leading off the seventh, smacking a 2-2 fastball from Ogea that Ducey in left field thought he was going to catch.

“I didn’t think it was going to go out,” Ducey said. “He hit it high into that wind that was blowing to right field. I didn’t even think I was going to have to jump to catch it.”

The ball just cleared Ducey’s outstretched glove and bounced on a platform separating the seats from the left-field wall.

“That’s what I get for thinking,” a frustrated Ducey said.

The Dodgers can relate. They have watched many a victory elude their outstretched gloves this season.

But not Sunday.