Rare Bad Outing for Gagne in Loss

This was about as foreign a sight in Dodger Stadium as an entire crowd seated for the first pitch ... and staying to the last.

It was closer Eric Gagne, the untouchable one, walking into the dugout Monday night -- the game not yet over -- his trademark pump of the right fist replaced by an unceremonious booting of a garbage can after he was shelled in the ninth inning of an 11-4 loss to the Atlanta Braves.

A crowd of 27,458 watched Gagne, who gave up one run in his first 18 2/3 innings this season, get rocked for four earned runs and three hits in one-third of an inning, as the Braves turned a 4-4 tie into a blowout with a seven-run ninth.

The Dodger right-hander didn’t give up as many as four runs in any of his 77 appearances last season, when he went 4-1 with a 1.97 earned-run average and a franchise-record 52 saves, but he believes he has the mental mettle to avoid any kind of four-peat this week.

“It’s over with, I lost the game, that’s it,” said Gagne, whose ERA jumped from 0.48 to 2.37. “I can’t come back and be selfish, be all down on myself, because that might cost the team [tonight]. I just have to come back and do my job.”

Vinny Castilla singled to right on Gagne’s first pitch in the ninth, and pitcher Jung Keun Bong sacrificed Castilla to second. Rafael Furcal walked on four pitches, and Marcus Giles grounded an RBI single to center for a 5-4 Atlanta lead.

Gary Sheffield, the former Dodger who was questionable for Monday night’s game after being hit on the left forearm by a pitch Sunday, turned on a 95-mph fastball, lining it over left fielder Brian Jordan’s head for a two-run double and a 7-4 lead.

“The pitch to Sheffield, that was a good pitch -- he’s that good, I guess,” Gagne said. “But I made too many other bad pitches, and they beat me.... I wasn’t aggressive enough tonight.”

It was Sheffield, remember, who provided Gagne with his first blown save of 2002, hitting a tying ninth-inning homer off the Dodger closer on May 7 in Atlanta. Gagne’s response? He converted his next 20 save chances from May 8 to July 1.

“He’s had enough [adversity] to learn from this,” Manager Jim Tracy said. “He responded to the Sheffield home run last May. He bounced back enough for me. He’ll do it again.”

After Sheffield’s hit, Tracy pulled Gagne in favor of Troy Brohawn, who gave up a walk, an RBI single to Andruw Jones and Javy Lopez’s three-run home run, and the Braves were well on their way to winning for the 22nd time in 26 games after their 4-8 start.

The Dodgers felt fortunate to even be in a position to use Gagne on a night they issued nine walks, including seven by erratic starter Hideo Nomo.

But the right-hander minimized damage in the fifth, giving up only one run after the Braves loaded the bases with no one out, and the Dodgers scratched their way back from a 4-2 deficit with runs in the sixth and seventh.

Alex Cora doubled to lead off the sixth and later scored on Ray King’s wild pitch to pull the Dodgers to within 4-3, but the rally ended when Mike Kinkade, who’d homered in the fifth, grounded into a bases-loaded double play.

Dodger shortstop Cesar Izturis legged out a one-out double to right-center in the seventh, and Brave Manager Bobby Cox summoned left-hander Bong to face pinch-hitter Larry Barnes. Tracy countered with right-hander Ron Coomer, who grounded a single up the middle to score Izturis and make it 4-4.

Sheffield, who has a .500 average (12 for 24) with three homers and seven runs batted in against Nomo, had an RBI single in the first, and Atlanta starter Shane Reynolds knocked in a run with a two-strike suicide-squeeze bunt in the second.

Chipper Jones hit a sacrifice fly in the fifth, and Castilla homered off Nomo in the sixth. The Dodgers scored their first run on Fred McGriff’s RBI double in the first and spent the rest of the evening playing catch-up.

“It’s a very difficult chore dealing with their lineup when you’re not walking anybody at all -- with Vinny Castilla hitting eighth, that’s a deep lineup,” Tracy said. “Then we walk nine. We spent seven or eight innings dodging bullets, and we were still in the game.”