Speak Smartly, Hit Softly, Win Astonishingly

It started with a conversation. It ended with a conversion.

If anyone still doubts the 2006 Dodgers, they weren’t watching in the final moments Friday night when every inch of this patchwork quilt of a team was thrown against the San Francisco Giants.

The result was a smothering, stunning 4-3 victory.

A victory that clinched at least a tie for the National League wild-card playoff berth.

A victory that pulled the Dodgers into a tie for the National League West lead with the San Diego Padres with two games remaining.

A victory forged in the ninth inning by a walk, a wild pitch, two bloops, two wild sprints, and the most important pep talk of the season.

All of it resulted in the biggest celebration dance by guys wearing ski caps since the last Winter Olympics.

“The way things are around here, you have no idea what’s going to happen next,” Kenny Lofton said with an amazed grin.

A possible playoff berth clinching, as early as this afternoon here, appears to be next.

The clenching, however, is happening now.

That grinding was never louder than in the ninth inning, in front of a roaring, orange-towel-waving crowd at chilly AT&T; park, the Dodgers trailing, 3-2, and things looking bleak.

“We hit the ball all day and didn’t have anything to show for it,” Russell Martin said. “But we’re the kind of team, we’re going to play to the end.”

The end began with the pep talk.

It occurred in the Dodgers dugout after Jeff Kent had led off the ninth inning with a bloop single to right field against the weathered left arm of reliever Mike Stanton.

After being replaced by pinch-runner Jason Repko, Kent immediately approached potential pinch-hitter Olmedo Saenz in the dugout and began waving his arms.

The guy who was once famous for not being a team player was being the prototypical team player.

He was telling Saenz about Stanton’s pitches. He was saying they looked harder than they were, a lot of motion but not much velocity.

He was implying that if Saenz got an inside pitch, he could easily fight it to right field.

“It was a calming-type conversation,” Kent said. “Me and Olmedo don’t talk much, but we have an understanding.”

Saenz, with one hit in seven previous at-bats against Stanton, listened closely.

“Kent was giving me good information that I used,” he said. “It shows what a team leader he really is.”

J.D. Drew, the next batter, struck out looking.

Martin then coaxed a walk.

And now it was time for the pep-talk payoff, Saenz, batting for Marlon Anderson, stepping in and working the count to 1-and-1.

The next pitch was a fastball inside. Saenz normally might not have swung at it. But thanks to Kent’s advice, he knew he could handle it.

“I said to myself, ‘I can get the bat on this,’ ” Saenz said, and so he did, blooping the ball to right field, even shorter than Kent’s hit, barely reaching the outfield grass on the fly.

Repko scored the tying run, Martin went to second, and Stanton asked for a ball, and how far inside was that pitch?

“It had pine tar on it,” Stanton said.

Next, Julio Lugo, unhappy since arriving in a trade this summer, hit a grounder to third base, but second baseman Ray Durham could not turn the double play.

Why? Because pinch-runner Delwyn Young was sliding hard and Lugo, showing he was still playing hard, was sprinting down the line.

“The key to that inning,” said Manager Grady Little. “Both of those guys, busting their butts, keeping us out of that double play.”

Indeed, this team seemingly breaks up as many double plays as it hits home runs, doing more with their feet and hands and minds than any other contender.

“It’s how everyone is around here,” Young said. “You run hard, you play hard.”

With everyone having struggled to put Martin at third, it was finally time for luck to take over, as Stanton then threw a pitch in the dirt that scooted underneath catcher Eliezer Alfonzo and to the backstop.

Martin scored, in the easiest of ways, with the oddest of feelings.

“I felt like I was running on air. I didn’t think I could run that fast.”

The part about running on air, well, he can join the club. Dodgers fans everywhere are marveling at a team that achieves the improbable more often than any Dodgers team since ... shhh, don’t say it ... well, OK ... 1988.

They have won one game with an eighth-inning comeback -- and four with ninth-inning-or-later comebacks.

The later it gets, the more dangerous it becomes, the better they are.

And the crazier everything becomes.

Following the game in Los Angeles was LeighAnn Dobreff, daughter of third base coach Rich Donnelly.

She is seven months pregnant, and during the ninth-inning rally, she made an announcement.

“She said she thought she was having the baby right there,” Donnelly said. “And if she did, she was going to name it Olmedo.”

She did not have the baby. But the way things are going, by the time this season ends, that child could have two dozen other possible names.

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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.