What’s Scary Is Way Dodgers Are Finishing

Walking the Dogs all the way to the finish line....

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SAN DIEGO -- Checked in with the Dodger Cheerleader before the game and asked Jose Lima if it was time to bring out the pompoms or the oxygen to revive the Choking Dogs and he started yelling at me: “You don’t scare me, no you don’t.

“I’m the only one in here that’s not afraid of you,” he continued, and then from the next couple of lockers over Milton Bradley offered his knuckles to Lima, they tapped them together and Bradley said, “I’m not afraid of you either.”

I’d have felt a lot better, of course, had they told me they weren’t afraid of their own shadows as evidenced by the way the Dodgers have tanked.

“You’re from Boston,” Lima shouted, and I spent a few nights in a hotel there 26 years ago covering a couple of games between the Yankees and Red Sox, but I wouldn’t say that made me a Massachusetts resident.

“You’re no Dodger fan, no Dodger fan,” he said while putting a playful finger in my chest, and so for the record he’s not always wrong. “I don’t want to hear anything negative. We’re going to win. Period. Trust me. I put a zipper on your mouth.”

He should have swiped my laptop computer, of course, but these days the Dodgers can’t do anything right. They have a starting rotation so bad that Aaron Sele would be considered an upgrade, and out in the bullpen Eric Gagne goes to waste.

“You don’t bother me,” Lima kept jabbering, and I wonder how crazy he’d go if I did. “You don’t scare anybody.”

“You just said, I scare everybody in here but you -- so which is it?”

“Click, click,” Lima said. “I’m done with you.”

As you might have guessed, though, I’m not done with the Choking Dogs.

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HERE’S ONE reason why the Dodgers are in a state of collapse. Shawn Green said Brad Penny’s performance was going to be “big for the Dodgers, because he’s our horse.”

Horse? The guy had pitched 8 2/3 innings in a Dodger uniform before Wednesday night, and came to the Dodgers with a .500 record (8-8). Penny is the Dodgers’ horse, all right, the way Jeff Weaver is the starting rotation’s ace.

I mentioned this to Lima later on the field, explaining I didn’t understand most of the gibberish he had been yelling in the clubhouse, and he said he wanted to put that behind us. “I just got caught up in the moment with you,” he said, and that happens, you know, when a guy gets a little tight around the collar.

“Today is a big game; [Penny] wins, and it’s over,” the Cheerleader said, hopping from one foot to the other. “Then Odalis Perez and myself will go to San Francisco and wrap it up.”

I wonder what Plan B is.

(I hope it doesn’t include one of the team’s catchers getting a hit.)

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IT MAY very well be over, but not the way Lima had in mind. It’s almost laughable what has happened to the Dodgers, and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Kaz Ishii is pitching tonight.

“We’ve just got to win,” Lima said, and we were talking normally now with no histrionics or raised voices.

“There’s no next year. We’ve got to win now. This is the year. In a short series, no one can beat us.”

I apologize for the histrionics and the raised voice: “You got to be kidding me?” I snapped. “In a short series ... this pitching staff doesn’t even have an ace.”

“I consider myself the ace,” Lima said, and Lima has been sensational this season exceeding all expectations as both pitcher and cheerleader, but let’s get serious ... oops, I forgot I was talking to Lima.

“Now is not the time to panic,” the Cheerleader said -- even though Ishii is pitching and the Dodgers could fall out of first place for the first time since July 6.

“You might be right in terms of our rotation being shaky, but we just have to step up.

“I know this,” he added. “I just don’t want it coming down to those last three games [against the Giants in Dodger Stadium].”

I said I thought that would be a lot of fun, but Lima said, “no, no, I don’t want it to come down to that,” and watching the way the Choking Dogs have handled pressure the last week or so, I think I understand why he doesn’t want it to come down to the last three games.

And the way things are going, he might not have to worry.

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BEFORE THE game, Steve Finley was looking for a bat. In the last few days he’s been breaking bats at an alarming rate, while going 0 for 20 -- make that 0 for 23 after the latest loss. Most of the Dodgers use maple bats, a change from the days when most players went with ash. Catcher Brent Mayne still uses ash -- as if it would make a difference.

“Everybody’s bat is breaking,” Finley said. “We might have gotten a bad batch.” And all this time I thought it was the guys swinging them. Good thing I checked.

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TIGER WOODS was on “The Hot Seat” on ESPN this week and when he was asked if he thought his good buddy, John Smoltz and the Braves could win the World Series, he hemmed and hawed before telling the world he’s really a Dodger fan. That raises the question, of course, what happens first: The Dodgers winning a playoff game or Woods winning another major title?

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Paul Montgomery:

“Strangely when I first read this (People) article, I thought of you: ‘Salma Hayek and Josh Lucas have gone their separate ways, Lucas tells People.’ ”

I hope you’re not the only one who thought of me when (she) read the article.

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Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.