Lima Already Starts the Good Vibrations

Jose Lima is that rarest of all pitchers, one who talks to the media before the game on the day he pitches. For a night game, he doesn’t put his game face on and withdraw until exactly 4:40 p.m.

But tonight, for Game 3 of the best-of-five division series against the St. Louis Cardinals, with the Dodgers down 0-2, Lima, the Dodger starter, psyched himself up early.

Real early.

Lima turned on his mood-enhancing merengue music at 3:30 a.m. Friday, on the bus transporting the team from Burbank Airport to Dodger Stadium.

“He was getting fired up already,” Dodger reliever Eric Gagne said.

Lima, an accomplished merengue singer in his native Dominican Republic, said he would break into song today should the Dodgers beat the Cardinals.

“It will be a complete song,” Lima said in Spanish, even if he fails to throw a complete game.

Asked his opinion of Lima, Cardinal third baseman Scott Rolen said, “He’s a pretty good singer.”

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Dodger outfielder Milton Bradley, who was diagnosed with a cramp in his left leg after Game 2, will play today, Manager Jim Tracy said.

Bradley suffered the injury running out a double in the fifth inning.

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Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa knows all about managing a postseason game at Dodger Stadium. When Kirk Gibson hit his game-winning homer in the 1988 World Series, La Russa was in the opposing dugout for the Oakland Athletics.

He also lost the second game at Dodger Stadium -- and the series in five games.

La Russa was asked if clinching the division series at Dodger Stadium would erase the memory of 1988.

“No,” he said, “I think there’s places in your brain for both of them.”

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The Dodgers have not won a division series game under the current format, having been swept in their only two appearances in the best-of-five round -- by the Cincinnati Reds in 1995 and the Atlanta Braves in 1996.

But they did win one 14 years before the format was instituted. Because of a strike in 1981, the season was split into halves, followed by what was then thought to be a one-time-only division series.

Facing the Astros, the Dodgers fell into a hole similar to the one they currently find themselves, losing the first two games in Houston.

Under that format, the next three games were at Dodger Stadium and the Dodgers won them all, the clincher a 4-0 shutout in which Jerry Reuss beat Nolan Ryan.

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Game 2 on Thursday night, televised by Fox, drew a 10.7 rating with an 18 share in Los Angeles. In St Louis, it got a 34.7/47. The national overnight rating was a 5.5/9, down 28% from a 7.6/12 for the comparable Minnesota-New York Yankee Game 2 last season.

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Times staff writers Paul Gutierrez and Larry Stewart contributed to this report.