Losses Mounting for the Dodgers

And so the Dodgers’ 2001 season has ended just as it started.

With Gary Sheffield whining.

With Gary Sheffield being sent to his room.

With Gary Sheffield causing the sort of tremors that must be stopped if the organization is to ever stand firm again.

The Arizona Diamondbacks backed the Dodgers into a corner suitable for hibernation Sunday with a 6-1 victory at Dodger Stadium, splitting the four-game series as easily as an ax splits bad pine.

A medical report will show that the season ended even before the game started, with the decision to finally shut down, and open up, the right elbow of Kevin Brown.

The box score will show that, no, it actually ended with a handful of Diamondback runs in the seventh inning.

But history, and common sense, will show that, with the flick of an ego, everything crumbled in the first.

That was when Sheffield, hitting for a different sort of cycle, finished the selfish diatribe he started in spring training.

Angry at umpire CB Bucknor for calling him out on a third strike that Sheffield thought was a foul tip, Sheffield allegedly argued profanely enough-and personal enough-to be ejected.

But that’s not all.

The third strike bounced off catcher Damian Miller’s glove and rolled to the backstop. Mark Grudzielanek, in the sort of Gibsonesque play that could have changed this game and season, tried to score from second base.

In fact, some replays indicate he did score, sliding just ahead of pitcher Curt Schilling’s tag.

But Bucknor was out of position and may have missed the call because-you guessed it-he was blocked by the arguing Sheffield.

“I tried to tell him to get out of the way,” Bucknor said. “I finally had to move him.”

Instead of a 1-1 tie and a runner on second, the Dodgers trailed, 1-0, and the inning was over.

And, eventually, so was the season, as the Dodgers now face a virtually impossible game of hopscotch, trailing Arizona by four games and San Francisco by two games with only 12 games remaining.

“It’s really slim pickings out there,” Grudzielanek said.

We would have hoped that Sheffield, who left Sunday before speaking to the media, would have understood that before now.

Replays of the third-strike-or-foul-tip call were inconclusive, and catcher Miller said he never heard the ball hit the bat.

Either way, Sheffield should have walked away.

“I was very disappointed about it,” Manager Jim Tracy said. “We completely avoided recognizing that a guy was trying to score from second base ... to engage in an argument like that while a guy was trying to score from second base ... you try to avoid that situation.”

And that’s still not all.

While Sheffield’s replacement Bruce Aven stunned the crowd of 48,410 by tying the score with a homer in the fourth, his presence was missed at a more important moment in the sixth.

Marquis Grissom led off the inning with a single. Normally, Grudzielanek would have bunted him to second, not caring that the Diamondbacks would have walked Shawn Green, because Sheffield was due up next.

But, of course, he wasn’t up next. He was up in the clubhouse.

So Grudzielanek did not bunt. He swung at the first pitch. Grounded into a double play.

The next inning, the Diamondbacks strung together six singles for five runs and a victory.

“I should have been more patient,” Grudzielanek said. “I was trying to make something happen.”

Sheffield does that to this team. His volatility drives them crazy.

He can be cloaked in calm for months, then, in one weird moment such as Sunday, he can set that cloak aflame.

Weird moments at the worst times.

Two years ago, when new manager Davey Johnson was trying to get settled, Sheffield said he was going to retire.

Last spring, when Tracy was trying to get settled, Sheffield intimated that if he wasn’t traded, he might stop trying.

After a season of relative peace, now this.

“It’s like in hockey,” Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez said. “In a big game, you never want to be the one taking the penalty.”

This one was three hours for high-sticking in the most important game of the season.

And now, it seems, his team has run out of penalty boxes.

If they don’t make the playoffs, it is time for the Dodgers to grant Sheffield his long-ago wish to be traded.

Now that he’s no longer demanding a trade, he has enough value that the Dodgers can use him to help their tattered pitching staff and leadoff spot.

Certainly, they will miss his 34 homers and 88 runs batted in.

But do you know how many RBIs he had last week, the most important week of the season? Zero.

When the Dodgers needed him to grow, he has shrunk, with only two extra-base hits and a .231 average in helping drag the Dodgers down to five losses in seven games.

He wasn’t the only one who has struggled, certainly.

Grissom, the leadoff guy, went a week without scoring a run.

Paul Lo Duca looks as if his first season as a big-league regular is wearing him down, batting only .167.

Even Green only drove in two runs all week, although both RBIs accounted for one of the two Dodger wins.

This lost week wasn’t about bad pitching or lousy fielding or mental mistakes.

It was the heart of the Dodger order getting stuck in the Dodger throats.

At the center of that heart is Sheffield, who needs to be traded because things around here could get worse before they get better.

The news on Kevin Brown Sunday--he will undergo surgery Thursday to fix a detached muscle in his right arm--isn’t complete yet.

During the surgery, doctors could discover that his five injured starts caused further ligament damage. That could require full reconstruction, which means Brown could miss all of next season just like Darren Dreifort.

If so, the Dodgers would face criticism for allowing their most valuable asset to damage himself.

Not to mention, they would be forced to pay big money to Terry Adams and Chan Ho Park, or have a pitching staff of Andy Ashby and a bunch of kids.

Then Sheffield, if history is any indication, will start arguing that he doesn’t want to be part of another rebuilding project.

At which point the Dodgers, learning from CB Bucknor, should simply eject him.

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