Dodgers’ Comedy Routine a Bust in 6-4 Loss to Marlins

Sandy Koufax, Kirk Gibson and the rest of the “Heroes” portrayed on the outfield fences at Dodger Stadium didn’t get there by blowing four-run, seventh-inning leads at home to the worst team in baseball. Nor did they run any National League pennants up the center field flagpole by turning routine rundowns between third base and home into a bad bit of kids-don’t-try-this-at-home slapstick.

Gary Sheffield, one of the few Dodgers with a memory of how it feels to win a playoff game, knows that, which is why Sunday’s 6-4 loss to the Florida Marlins before 29,397 at Dodger Stadium tasted so foul.

“We should be playing a lot better than we are,” said Sheffield after the 8-23 Marlins hit three home runs off Chan Ho Park to erase a 4-0 seventh-inning deficit. “We just sit around, have one big inning, take the next five innings off and let the other team back into it. Then we finally play with a sense of urgency in the eighth and ninth innings.”

That is not how division titles, pennants and World Series are won, said Sheffield, a member of the 1997 World Series champion Marlins.

“You’ve got to play like it’s your last game,” said Sheffield. “You’ve got to play with an intensity that intimidates the other team, that makes the other team play flat.

“I know we’re not intimidating anybody now. We did the first six games of the season, but nothing after that. It’s still early, but it should have been happening by now.”

Instead, the budget-gutted Marlins, losers of eight in a row before this series and previously 0-9 on weekends this season, limped into Dodger Stadium and won two of three games for their first series triumph--home or away--in 1999.

Sheffield accused the Dodgers of playing with a “lackadaisical” attitude.

Sense of urgency?

That wasn’t evident by the prevailing mood in the Dodger clubhouse after Sunday’s defeat.

“This is not do-or-die,” first baseman Eric Karros said. “This is not life or death. It’s another loss. It’s done. We’ve got the Chicago Cubs next.”

But shouldn’t the Dodgers, supposedly loaded with talent, be faring better than a mere three games above .500, still trailing San Francisco in the NL West standings?

“Come on, man,” Karros said. “You’re trying to make it look like. . . . It’s May. It’s like I’ve said before: We’re not mathematically eliminated yet. What did San Francisco do? [The Giants lost to Milwaukee, 3-2.] So we’re a game back in the loss column. . . . I don’t think anybody’s clinched it yet.”

Still, as Dodger Manager Davey Johnson put it, “This is one of those hard-to-take ones.”

The Dodgers led, 4-0, on a first-inning bases-loaded walk to Karros, a two-run third-inning double by Devon White and a fifth-inning RBI single by Raul Mondesi and had starting pitcher Park taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning.

Then Florida’s Cliff Floyd tagged Park for a two-run home run.

And in the seventh, Todd Dunwoody and pinch-hitter Preston Wilson tied the score with solo home runs.

And in the eighth, with reliever Mike Maddux pitching, the Marlins took the lead on an RBI bloop single just inside the right-field line by Dave Berg.

That left the Marlins with runners on first and third, and when Berg took off for second on a stolen-base attempt, Dodger catcher Paul LoDuca drew the lead runner, Mark Kotsay, off third with a pump-fake to second. That set in motion a textbook example of how not to execute a rundown.

LoDuca chased Kotsay back toward third base, flipping the ball to third baseman Adrian Beltre. Kotsay then sprinted for the plate, with Berg heading to third. Beltre threw to Karros, who was covering the plate, and Karros ran Kotsay back to third before Berg broke back to second.

Karros stopped, whirled and decided to go for Berg instead. But his throw to second baseman Eric Young was in the dirt, and by the time Young would scoop up the one-hopper and throw home, Kotsay had scored Florida’s sixth run.

The play didn’t quite cost the Dodgers the game, but it was indicative of how wildly they let their minds wander during the late innings.

“We probably made too many throws,” Karros said of the botched rundown. “Sure, it looks [bad]. But we were already down, 5-4. Obviously, you’ve got to execute. But that was meaningless in the scheme of things.”