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Knee hurts Loney the most

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Times Staff Writer

His knee hurt. His face hurt. His shoulder hurt.

As James Loney lay motionless on the warning track Sunday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, it would have been easier for him to take inventory of all the things that didn’t ache.

“I think a lot of my body parts hit the wall,” said Loney, the right fielder who banged into the right-field scoreboard in the eighth inning of the Dodgers’ 10-4 loss to the Angels while attempting to catch Gary Matthews Jr.’s towering fly ball. “It was kind of hard to tell. I know my knee hurt the worst.”

Luckily for Loney, he emerged from the frightening collision with only a bruised right knee. It had looked much worse when he crumpled to the warning track and remained motionless while Matthews circled the bases for an inside-the-park home run. Trainers from both dugouts and every Dodgers player on the field besides reliever Brett Tomko and catcher Mike Lieberthal gathered around Loney.

“I had fear that he hit his head,” Dodgers Manager Grady Little said.

Said Loney: “It just kind of knocked me out for a second, and I woke up and my knee couldn’t really move.”

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Loney, who entered the game in the seventh inning as a defensive replacement for Matt Kemp, had to be lifted onto a cart and driven off the field, though he waved to fans on his way toward the dugout. He was scheduled to undergo X-rays on his knee after the game.

Kemp banged his right shoulder into the same scoreboard April 9 and suffered a severe bruise that forced him onto the disabled list.

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It was difficult to tell who was harder on Randy Wolf, the Angels’ hitters during the game or the Dodgers’ pitcher himself in the clubhouse after the game. Wolf gave up seven hits and four runs in five innings, with five of the hits and all four of the runs coming in the third inning.

“You could put a Little League team up there and they were going to have success the way I was throwing the ball,” said Wolf, who walked three and struck out one. “My fastball was all over the place. I wasn’t locating it at all. When you’re not locating your fastball and pretty much every other pitch rides off your fastball, it’s pretty hard to be effective.”

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Catcher Russell Martin did not play after waking up with a stiff neck, “probably from sleeping,” according to Little. Lieberthal replaced Martin and probably will start several more games between now and the All-Star game July 10, Little said, because the Dodgers start a stretch of 20 consecutive games without a day off beginning Tuesday in Toronto.... The attendance of 168,000 for the Freeway Series was a Dodger Stadium record for a three-game series.

ben.bolch@latimes.com

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