Grissom Helping Dodgers Play the Part

Since the Seattle Mariners play in the American League West rather than the National League West, the crucible facing the Angels is much greater than that facing the Dodgers.

The Angels are 17 games behind the Mariners and essentially playing for a wild card.

The Dodgers are three games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and still have division title hopes, which is not to say that they aren’t walking a tightrope as well.

With so many key players injured or just coming back from injuries, the Dodgers are at a critical juncture, struggling not to fall from the race.

Manager Jim Tracy said Saturday he feels like a man trying to plug leaks in an overflowing dike.

“I’ve got all 10 fingers in,” Tracy said. “Every club goes through adversity during the course of a season, but I don’t think any club has gone through as much as we have. I don’t even think there’s enough of the season left for another club to go through what we have.”

Adversity comes in different forms.

There were the Gary Sheffield tremors during the spring and the later firing of general manager Kevin Malone.

Now, the Dodgers have Kevin Brown, Andy Ashby and Eric Karros on the disabled list, and Sheffield and Adrian Beltre back from the DL but struggling to regain their swings.

Nevertheless, the Dodgers moved six games over .500 Saturday at 34-28 as Chan Ho Park matched the competitive effectiveness of Ramon Ortiz, and Mark Grudzielanek produced a 2-1 victory over the Angels when he drove a ninth-inning, bases-loaded single over Mike Scioscia’s five-man infield and drawn-in right fielder Tim Salmon.

It is a cliche, of course, to talk about a 25-man effort, but that is basically how the Dodgers are surviving, reviving memories in some ways of the 1988 magic when Mickey Hatcher, Danny Heep, Tracy Woodson, Dave Anderson, Rick Dempsey and Mike Sharperson, an improbable group known as the Stuntmen, helped propel the Dodgers to an unlikely pennant and World Series title, with help, of course, from Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson.

Who knows whether the Dodgers will still be alive in October, but another improbable group that includes Marquis Grissom, Jeff Reboulet, Tim Bogar, Chris Donnels, Hiram Bocachica, Paul Lo Duca and the familiar and reliable Dave Hansen--should we call it the Posse since Sheriff Malone essentially put it together?--is pumping life into the Dodgers.

“These guys have helped hold the club together,” Tracy said. “I couldn’t be more happy with the effort of one through 25. If we hadn’t gotten that effort, we wouldn’t be in the position we are. This is a situation ripe for excuses and alibis, but we’re just not going there.”

No one has been more successful than Grissom, who was acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers for Devon White in a March trade that seemed designed to hurt both clubs but has only helped. At 34, Grissom is playing center field and swinging the bat with some of the same flair of his All-Star seasons.

He helped save Saturday’s win when he took a two-out, two-run double away from David Eckstein with a running catch in right center to end the second inning. He then opened the Dodger half with a double and scored his club’s only run until the ninth.

Has he experienced a rebirth?

“I still have the talent and skill I’ve always had,” Grissom said, “but I’ve gotten away from a lot of the negatives of the last few years. I’ve gotten away from being labeled a fourth outfielder, as I was in Milwaukee, and the most important thing is that this is the healthiest I’ve felt since 1994. I still have all the confidence in the world when I’m healthy.”

Grissom said he spent almost six years battling hamstring and lower back problems--”playing when I should have sat out”--and at various times went to peers, trainers and batting instructors like Clarence Jones and Tommy Harper to ask if they felt he should retire. He doesn’t have to ask now. He is batting .267 with 13 home runs--one less than he hit in 595 at-bats last year. At this point, the fact that his contract extends through 2002 seems to be a bonus rather than a burden the Dodgers swallowed in their desperation to trade White.

“The way his work ethic is and the way he feels physically now, I think Marquis believes he could play another four or five years,” agent Eric Goldschmidt said while waiting for his client near the Dodger clubhouse. “But we haven’t approached the Dodgers. He needs to just go out and play.”

For Tracy, with those fingers in the dike, Grissom is “another guy who has stepped up in a very big way.”

He and Grissom were once bench coach and center fielder with the Montreal Expos, and Tracy knew he was getting a solid citizen for a Dodger clubhouse often said to be characterized by bad chemistry--or none at all.

“He’s the same guy I knew in Montreal,” Tracy said of Grissom. “I just think he’s much healthier than he was.”

The second game of the interleague renewal between the Dodgers and Angels drew a sellout crowd of 54,415 to Dodger Stadium. However, anyone concerned about the state’s power shortage didn’t have to worry about an overload of electricity because the freeway rivals didn’t produce much. Asked why there hasn’t been more passion when the neighborhood foes meet, Tracy said, “that’s hard for me to answer because I’m from Hamilton, Ohio.”

In early June, of course, the Angels and Dodgers have some distance of their own to travel.