They Might Be Trying to Pull Another Stunt

And so our ordinary baseball team is now deserving of a magic number, one that lit up Dodger Stadium on Thursday like a high July sky.

It was imprinted on Jeff Reboulet’s ground ball, on Paul Lo Duca’s right arm, on Giovanni Carrara’s amazed smile.

It floated through a crowded clubhouse that nobody wanted to leave. It sat on a bench from which everyone leaps.

It’s early, it’s sacrilegious, but right now, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

The Dodgers have a magic number, and it is 1988.

This is not only how they look, but how they sound, how they feel, what they ponder.

“It’s something I think about all the time,” said coach John Shelby, who played on the Dodgers’ unlikely World Series championship team in 1988. “What it was like back then, that seems to be our makeup now. I felt the same things then that I’m feeling now.”

Those feelings were surely shared by most of the 34,613 who basked in the Dodgers’ 8-6 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, a colorful patchwork of a victory that matched the shirts of the kid campers who filled the pavilions.

The winning hit, an eighth-inning bleeder through a drawn-in infield, was by Mickey Hatcher. . . . oops, it was Reboulet.

The winning pitcher was Ricky Horton . . . oops, Matt Herges.

The defensive star was Dave Anderson. . . . Sorry, it was Lo Duca.

This team is a whole Danny Heep worth of 1988, a team Tom Lasorda would have embraced and Kirk Gibson would have tolerated.

A team, period.

Something we haven’t seen around Chavez Ravine since that nerdy pitcher and his funny nickname.

“It’s like one heartbeat in here,” Herges said after giving up four hits in 1 2/3 innings but staying upright for the win.

It’s an irregular beat--they started a knuckleballer Thursday then replaced him with a career minor leaguer--but it’s a beat that can be heard from here to Arizona.

The Dodgers have moved to within 1 1/2 games of the first-place Diamondbacks while taking the lead in the National League wild-card race.

There are 66 games remaining. But every day feels like the last day of September. And for once, the hunted is the hunter.

“For the last three years, expectations have been high and everybody has always said we flopped,” Lo Duca said. “Now, nobody expects anything, and it’s been great.”

Somebody mentioned Arizona, and Lo Duca smiled and said, “Guys are starting to smell it.”

Good thing, because if they actually looked closely at it, they would raise a sanitary sock on the spot.

Take Thursday, a tough spot even against a Brewer team that had lost 17 of 22 games and is filled with guys who have already quit.

Against a Brewer pitcher who had the best earned-run average in baseball since June 1--Jamey Wright--the Dodgers started Dennis Springer, whose knuckleball was completely foreign to his manager, pitching coach and catcher.

“I’ll be at my best,” pitching coach Jim Colborn noted before the game. “I won’t be able to say anything.”

After four innings, despite two home runs from Gary Sheffield, Springer’s knuckleball had hung up long enough to allow the Brewers to pound out four runs in the fourth inning to take a 4-3 lead.

That was when, both strangely and fittingly, Springer figured the Dodgers would win.

“I come off the mound and everybody was saying, ‘No big deal, we’ll get ‘em back,’ ” Springer said. “It was like they expected to win.”

Stranger still, they do.

In the bottom of the fourth, they scored three runs on a flare by Alex Cora, good hustle to first base by Mark Grudzielanek, and a Wright pitch that struck pinch-hitter Chris Donnels on the right calf.

All that was missing was a blooper by Rick Dempsey, or a walk by Mike Davis.

“I’ll take a bruise for an RBI any time,” Donnels said, showing off his red welt.

Moments after the game, Donnels was sent to triple-A Las Vegas so the Dodgers could recall outfielder Bruce Aven to replace Marquis Grissom during his six-game suspension.

These Dodgers are so anonymous, sometimes their heroes are guys who, moments later, aren’t even Dodgers.

“But he’ll be back,” Manager Jim Tracy said. “We tell everybody in here, if you’re wearing a Dodger shirt, we think you’re pretty good, and we won’t be afraid to use you.”

After the Brewers tied the score in the seventh inning, that was proven again in the eighth when Reboulet singled through a drawn-in infield to give the Dodgers the eventual victory.

His bases-loaded knock was set up when Cora hustled to first base after a dropped third strike and Brewer Richie Sexson forgot to cover the bag.

“I didn’t win the game, I just got a hit,” Reboulet said, shrugging. “I’m just a cog in this wheel.”

Just like Carrara, a 12-year journeyman who threw 2 1/3 decent innings and said it was the first time in his career that a manager had confidence in him.

Just like Lo Duca, the league’s most unknown MVP candidate who threw out three potential base stealers to extract the Dodgers from three jams.

And yes, even just like Sheffield, who, sore-legged and tired, refused to speak to the media after his great day. This is probably a good thing.

With the July 31 trading deadline looming, Dodger officials continue to ponder the acquisition of another starting pitcher.

While the players plead to be allowed to stick together.

“I’d like to see us get another quality starter,” Herges said. “But I don’t want to take away anything that we have right now. And I’m comfortable they won’t.”

In the manager’s office, the professor of all this chemistry is probably hoping the same thing. Before the game, Tracy wore a shirt given to him by his team.

It didn’t contain his name, or his team’s name, or anything hip or Hollywood.

It was emblazoned with the word “bunt,” followed by its definition.

Tracy smiled.

“Nice, ain’t it?”

In what are surely the words of Dodger fans today, ain’t it ever.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.