Nomar steals the thunder

When Dodgers pitcher Mark Hendrickson played baseball and basketball at Washington State, the snakebit Cougars became so adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory a new verb was coined to describe it.

“To Coug” basically meant losing a game you should have won. On Wednesday, however, his Dodgers may have inspired a new term. Call it the “Reverse Coug,” or winning a game you should have lost.

Held to two runs and three hits through seven innings, the Dodgers got two infield hits, an opposite-field single and a two-run home run by Nomar Garciaparra in the eighth to escape with a clutch 6-4 victory over Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants.

And for a Dodger team that was five outs away from its sixth loss in seven games and a two-game deficit in the National League West, Wednesday’s win could be the kick-start they’ve been waiting for.

“We’ve been looking for something to get us started,” closer Takashi Saito said. “This could be it.”

Added Garciaparra: “Nobody’s putting their head down. It’s easy to…[but] we were still battling, still doing things to get on base.”

Rafael Furcal got the rally started by beating out an infield hit. Juan Pierre followed with an infield single of his own, then stole his 43rd base of the season, putting the tying runs in scoring position.

Two batters later the tying runs came home on Luis Gonzalez’s single just inside the left-field line off reliever Randy Messenger (1-3). And two pitches after that, Garciaparra completed the comeback with his fifth homer of the season.

“That’s the kind of ballclub we have,” Manager Grady Little said.

Saito made the rally stand up with a perfect ninth, retiring Dave Roberts on a broken-bat liner for the final out then punctuating the emotional win by grabbing the meat end of Roberts’ bat and slinging it at the hitter’s feet.

“There’s no doubt it was an exciting win for us,” Gonzalez said.

It didn’t need to be, though, not with the way Hendrickson pitched. The left-hander held Bonds and 23 other Giants to three hits in a season-high 6 2/3 innings but he couldn’t stop slap-hitting Omar Vizquel, who had San Francisco’s other three hits, doubling three times, driving in two runs and scoring another to help the Giants take a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth.

Unfortunately for Hendrickson and Dodgers, however, Giants rookie Tim Lincecum was even better, giving up two hits in six innings. He made two mistakes, walking Furcal in both the first and third innings, and Pierre made him pay both times, driving Furcal in with a groundout and with a triple into the right-field corner.

Lincecum left for a pinch-hitter in the seventh, though, and the Giants’ bullpen let his lead unravel. For the Dodgers, meanwhile, the comeback prevented them from falling two games off the pace in the division race for the first time in more than a month.

“Baseball’s a funny game,” said Hendrickson, who gave up three or fewer runs yet failed to earn a win for the sixth time this season. “We battled, hung in there and came up with a rally.

“It doesn’t matter how we win it as long as you win it.”

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kevin.baxter@latimes.com