Bonds manages to sting Dodgers

It may have been a bit premature to dismiss the San Francisco Giants as old, slow and creaky a week into the season when they slipped into last place in the National League West.

OK, so maybe it wasn’t much of a stretch to consider a team with the soon-to-be AARP card-carrying Barry Bonds and Omar Vizquel, who are old by major league standards.

But there was nothing creaky about Bonds’ swing Wednesday night during a first-inning at-bat in which he inched closer to Hank Aaron by hitting a three-run home run.

And there was nothing slow about the way the ball jumped off Pedro Feliz’s bat during a sixth-inning homer that provided the go-ahead run during the Giants’ 6-4 victory over the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.

Only nine days after finding themselves a season-high five games behind the Dodgers, the Giants have made up nearly the entire deficit; their seventh consecutive victory moved them into a tie with San Diego for second place in the division, one game behind the Dodgers.

The Dodgers, who squandered a four-run rally, find themselves in their first mini funk of the season, having lost three consecutive games.

Starter Noah Lowry certainly was giving it the old college try while facing Dodgers counterpart Randy Wolf for the first time in a battle of former Pepperdine All-Americans.

Lowry, who pitched for the Waves in 2000-01, outlasted his fellow alum, giving up four runs in 6 2/3 innings. Wolf, who played for Pepperdine from 1995 to 1997, gave up five runs in six innings -- the same number of innings he has pitched in all five starts this season.

Wolf struck out six and walked one but gave up two crucial homers.

Bonds hit his 741st, a three-run shot to center field in the first inning that gave the Giants a 4-0 lead and moved him within 15 homers of surpassing Aaron for first place on the all-time list. Bonds has homered in three of his last four games and has seven homers.

Wolf said he wanted to be aggressive in the strike zone early, but his strategy backfired when the first three Giants hitters singled to bring up Bonds, who connected on a high fast ball.

“He got it off the end of the bat a little bit, but he’s so strong and he got his arms extended,” Wolf said. “He’s a guy with super-human power, so he doesn’t need to hit it perfectly.”

Said Dodgers Manager Grady Little: “(Wolf) jumped out in front of him with two strikes and left the ball where he shouldn’t have, and that ball got small real quick.”

After the Dodgers rallied to tie the score with two runs in the first inning -- thanks in no small part to errors by outfielders Randy Winn and Todd Linden -- and with two runs in the fourth, Feliz hit a 2-and-0 pitch from Wolf over the fence in right-center field with two out in the sixth to give San Francisco the lead again.

It was the third homer for Feliz in 11 at-bats against Wolf.

“Some guys see the ball off certain guys,” Wolf said. “And if you get behind in the count, it makes him even better.”

Bonds helped the Giants tack on an insurance run in the eighth inning when he singled against Jonathan Broxton with one out before giving way to pinch-runner Dave Roberts, who stole second base and scored on Ray Durham’s single up the middle. The run ended a streak of 16 consecutive scoreless appearances by Broxton dating to September.

ben.bolch@latimes.com