Even Fans Were Part of Comeback

It figures that during perhaps the greatest exhibition of disappearing baseballs in the history of Dodger Stadium on Monday night, the biggest casualty wasn’t the Dodgers or San Diego Padres.

It was the baseballs.

They nearly ran out of them.

At the bottom of the 10th inning, a frantic messenger entered the Dodgers clubhouse with the news that the umpires had already gone through more than 100 baseballs and needed more.

The clubhouse workers quickly rubbed up several handfuls of balls and ran them outside.

Just in time for Nomar Garciaparra to lose one more.

“You know, what happened, you can’t really describe it,” J.D. Drew said a day later.

But we’ve tried, haven’t we? From office cooler to chat room to classroom, all of Los Angeles is trying to get its goose-bumped arms around a moment as deep as Chavez Ravine and as wide as we can dream.

Some tall tales soften in the retelling. This one just gets better.

Monday night, first place at stake with two weeks left in the season, the Dodgers trailing the Padres by four runs in the ninth inning.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Chills.

Four consecutive Dodgers batters, four consecutive home runs.

The Padres come back to score one run in the top of the 10th, and it happens again.

Ball one. Ball two. Ball three. Ball four. Ball gone.

Two Dodgers batters score two runs after two at-bats that include one full swing.

That swing is a walk-off homer by Garciaparra that gives the Dodgers an 11-10 win, gives them first place, and gives their town fits.

For the first time in memory, a game ends and Dodgers fans are rushing into the stadium.

For the first time in a long time, the parking lot mess becomes a high-school pep rally.

“I walk outside 10 minutes after the game and it seemed like every single driver of every single car was blowing their horn,” said Vin Scully. “It sounded like V-J Day.”

What were you doing?

Watching at home, I was gasping for breath, literally, louder with each ensuing blast, rewinding and fast-forwarding and rewinding again to make sure it was real.

On Sunday, I wrote that the Dodgers were on fumes. On Monday night, I choked on those fumes.

On Tuesday morning, the phone rang. Did your phone ring?

Friends calling to hear another voice tell them it was real. Friends wondering if this was the greatest Los Angeles sports moment ever.

Well, yes and no.

This wasn’t Kirk Gibson or Steve Finley or Robert Horry or Derek Fisher or all the Lakers in the fourth quarter against Portland.

Remember, this didn’t happen in the postseason, nor did it send the team to the postseason.

But Kobe Bryant’s 81 points? This was bigger, because it was about team.

Matt Leinart’s quarterback sneak? This was bigger, because it was about an entire city.

In regular-season baseball terms, this was 20 minutes’ worth of Fernandomania, two innings full of R.J. Reynolds’ 1983 squeeze bunts, a condensed version of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game.

By themselves, considering the stakes involved, either the ninth- or 10th-inning comeback would have been one of the best in Dodger Stadium history.

Together, on the basis of sheer improbability, can we call it the greatest Dodger regular-season finish ever?

“With all the noise inside and outside the stadium, you would have thought we just won the championship instead of having two weeks of games left,” Kenny Lofton said. “The way it happened, you have to admit, they had a point.”

Look at the players who hit the ninth-inning homers.

Jeff Kent, struggling with a sore side that has required two pain-killer injections.

Drew, two years here without a truly big hit.

Russell Martin, a rookie still young enough that his father was dancing behind home plate.

Marlon Anderson, a journeyman who three weeks ago was packing for the winter as a bench guy on the Washington Nationals.

Now, look at the two pitchers they hit them against.

The first, Jon Adkins, had not given up a homer in 51 innings.

The second, Trevor Hoffman, had not blown a save against the Dodgers in five years.

Now, look at what surrounded the homers

At the time, the Dodgers were last in the National League in home runs.

And at that time of day, after 10 p.m. at Dodger Stadium, there had been only two homers hit since Aug. 1.

And now five in two innings?

“Usually it’s moist at that time, but it had suddenly dried out, and there was a little breeze blowing out, we all felt it,” Kent said.

Nobody felt it like the two oldest guys in the room.

Scully was the hero in the booth. Grady Little was the force in the dugout.

Scully noticed the key to the comeback even before the comeback ended, and cited it immediately.

He saw Hoffman warming up in the top of the ninth inning for the Padres, then, when the Padres took a four-run lead, he saw Hoffman sit down.

When Hoffman was rushed back up and into the game after the Dodgers hit their first two homers in the ninth, Scully posed the question.

“You wonder when the last time he was interrupted ... “ he said on the broadcast.

In other words, what happens when this veteran reliever with a tender shoulder has to pitch when he’s warm, then cold, then warm again?

Two fastballs and two home runs, that’s what.

Why Padre Manager Bruce Bochy didn’t just start the ninth inning with his future Hall of Fame reliever is a question that could haunt him all winter

As for Little, well, it seems he calmly predicted everything else.

He started Anderson instead of struggling Andre Ethier again, understanding that veteran savvy can be more powerful than youthful potential. He allowed Garciaparra to talk his way into the lineup with a sore leg.

When all around him were squeezing towels and bats and fists, Little stared at the field as if it were spring training, his sense of calm eventually leading to the Dodgers’ sense of late-inning concentration.

“You know, I don’t know what happened,” Little said Tuesday with a shrug.

You know, neither do the rest of us. And we’ll never forget it.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.