Dodgers Exit the Stage With a Touch of Class

The ending was as unpredictably classy as the journey.

First, the Dodgers congratulated the St. Louis Cardinals, jogging on to the field to shake hands for what may be the first time in baseball history.

Then, the Dodgers congratulated their fans, clapping at them, waving to them, showering them with wristbands and batting gloves and caps.

In Eric Gagne’s case, he even ripped off and threw in his goggles, unashamed to reveal eyes brimming with tears.

“I wanted to tell the fans that next year, when we start over, we want to keep this same feeling,” he said.

What a strange feeling it was for the Dodgers on Sunday, in the wake of the Cardinals’ 6-2 victory and three-games-to-one capturing of the National League division series.

Where there might have been anger, there was understanding.

“We just lost to the best team in baseball,” Gagne said, shaking his head. “And now they’re going to win the World Series.”

Where there might have been heads buried in hands, those heads were being grabbed and hugged by teammates.

“We’re going to finish this thing in oh-five, you got that?” said Manager Jim Tracy, hugging coach Manny Mota. “Next year, we’re going to finish this thing.”

Their despair of losing was couched with their determination in continuing.

“This is awful,” said Jose Lima, rubbing his eyes, but only for a moment. “But if we bring the core of this team back, this will be something.”

Strange, indeed, for a Los Angeles professional sports team with a history of championships to behave this way.

Stranger still that it makes sense.

If these were the Lakers, and they lost in the first round of the playoffs, then congratulated their opponents, then appreciated their fans, then hugged each other, we would question their fire.

But on this unlikeliest of Dodger teams, that fire has long since been confirmed, on the wick of 53 comeback victories, in the torch of a West Division championship won by a team whose heart had been gutted two months earlier.

The Dodgers were as good as they were going to get.

In the end, that fire was swallowed by the baseball equivalent of a blow torch.

In the end, their season was popped like a blue noise stick under a giant tire.

“Everybody knows they had the better lineup,” Adrian Beltre said. “We never wanted to believe that, and we kept coming, but . . .”

But, appropriately Sunday, it came down to the two issues that have clouded this special season like a mist rolling in over the right-field pavilion.

The starting pitching, and The Trade.

“Next year we need to shore up our starting pitching,” said Shawn Green afterward in an understatement the size of one of his three playoff homers.

Odalis Perez, in probably his last start as a Dodger, couldn’t get through the third inning for the second time in six days.

In four playoff games, the Dodger starters only reached the fifth inning once, while the Cardinal starters only failed to reach it once.

“To me, this totally shows how our general manager does not deserve the criticism for trading for a starting pitcher, because he knew that element would be necessary,” Tracy said.

To me, Sunday totally revealed just the opposite.

The Trade bit the Dodgers for the final time after Perez went down and was replaced by Wilson Alvarez.

With the score tied, 2-2, in the fourth inning, Alvarez threw 19 pitches and had runners on first and second with Albert Pujols coming up.

With hitless-in-the-series Scott Rolen nursing an injured leg on deck, perhaps the Dodgers could have walked Pujols.

Or, if the Dodgers had not traded Guillermo Mota, perhaps the right-handed Yhency Brazoban could have been brought in to face Pujols.

Instead, Alvarez remained and, after falling behind 3 and 1, allowed Pujols to jerk the ball into the right-field corner for a three-run homer.

When the saved Brazoban finally entered the game in the next inning, he was his usual dominating self for his first few batters.

But, with no other trusted setup man available, he was left in the game for three innings for the first time in his career, a difficult up-and-down proposition even for a kid with a low pitch count.

In his third inning, he walked two guys, hit a batter and gave up the final run.

Oh, and the Dodger catching platoon? Brent Mayne and David Ross went two for nine in the series and hurt Tracy’s bench by being replaced with pinch-hitters in three of the four games.

“Hey, we won the West Division championship,” said Paul DePodesta afterward when asked about his trades being redeemed.

Perhaps it is worth noting here that neither Brad Penny nor Hee-Seop Choi, the players acquired in The Trade, even appeared in the playoffs.

So what’s next?

Tracy, who worked out the cool, postgame congratulation ceremony with Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa before the series, will certainly be re-hired as manager. That’s good news.

Ross Porter, who has spent the last 28 years providing Dodger fans with dignified broadcasting, may be gone without even having a chance to say good-bye. That would be another tacky move by the struggling Dodger marketing department.

As for the single biggest issue that will affect the future of this team, the signing of Beltre? Who knows?

The only certainty is that, without him, everything changes, the lineup is jumbled, the defense is diluted, the promise is broken.

During the last six months, we learned about the heart of a baseball team.

Now, finally, we will learn about the wallet of its owner.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. For more Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.