Dodgers Diaries

First, let me say it was a big Dodger win Wednesday night against the Cardinals. And it was a team effort. Joe “I never met a pitching change I didn’t like” Torre used six pitchers to capture a 5-3 victory. The Dodgers came out swinging at Chris Carpenter, a guy who had mastered them in all of his previous starts. After Randy Wolf loaded the bases and allowed a run to score on a bloop before his infield bailed him out with a sweet double play, Rafael Furcal and Matt Kemp gave the team a lead they’d hold all night. Kemp’s homer was classic Kemp, hard and deep to center field.

Now for the griping.

The game was interminable. Three hours and 54 minutes, and it felt longer. Maybe it was the half-hour of waiting to get from Sunset into the parking lot. Or the hour I spent in the parking lot after the game creeping up to the exit. All in all, I left my house at 5 p.m. and didn’t get home until midnight.

Then there was the extra minute of commercials that TBS requires for national television every inning. At the stadium, you could feel the boredom of the crowd and the players as they waited for the broadcast to return so they could start the game again. Second, there were the 12 pitchers used by Torre and Tony LaRussa, the Fischer and Spassky of baseball. Those guys must get frequent flyer miles for their trips to the mound. Sure, some of the moves were dictated by the situation, but LaRussa couldn’t resist a three-pitcher sixth inning.

And there were the baserunners: 23 hits, 13 walks, four hit batsmen adds up to 40 men on base. That’s in contrast to 51 outs recorded (the Dodgers didn’t bat in the ninth). There was only a single 1-2-3 inning, Ronald Belisario’s perfect sixth. The Cardinals left 14 men on base, the Dodgers left 16.

It felt like offense was being squeezed out of a clogged toothpaste tube, a drib here, a drab there. The only crooked number on the board came in the first inning off Kemp’s homer. The rest of the night it was fence posts and knot holes. The box score reads like Kilroy was there.

Ronnie Belliard was almost the goat. He ranged far out into the outfield on Ryan Ludwick’s bloop, distracting Matt Kemp from catching it. He then looked or swung at six straight strikes to kill rallies in the first and third innings. But he turned that game-saving twin killing, and, curiously, walked twice on eight straight balls late in the game. I still don’t understand what Orlando Hudson did to play himself out of a job. The guy brought nothing but energy and outstanding defense to a position where it was sorely needed. He also hit for a higher average and on-base percentage than Belliard. Hudson came into the game as a pinch-runner in the eighth.

Finally, there was an odd moment I have to consider a coincidence. As soon as Manny Ramirez grounded into a double play to end the seventh inning, the Dodger Stadium scoreboard played the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s public service announcement warning kids that steroids don’t produce great athletes. A message to Manny? I don’t think so. But it was delightful irony.

--- JOHN ROSENTHAL