LOS ANGELES -- With one Hollywood swing in the first inning, the littlest Los Angeles Dodger, Blake DeWitt, did what too few of the rest of his teammates had done in the first two games of this National League Championship Series. With one message pitch in the third, Dodgers starter Hiroki Kuroda did what Chad Billingsley wouldn't in Game 2.
Consequently, what came out of the Dodgers' 7-2 Game 3 triumph over Philadelphia, for them, was every bit as important as the final score.
Namely:
1. A real, live Dodger not named Manny Ramirez actually is capable of knocking in some runs.
2. A ranking member of the Dodgers rotation actually stepped up and said "Enough" after the Phillies had nearly decapitated Ramirez in Game 2 and then spent the better part of this series using Russell Martin for target practice.
If the Dodgers are to come all the way back in this NLCS against a Philadelphia club playing its best baseball of the season, it's going to take bats other than Ramirez's, and it's going to demand a take-charge demeanor.
After a bleak start in this series, manager Joe Torre's club actually had both.
"We needed something," Martin said. "We needed runs, for the most part. We got 'em early. And they were in our ballpark. It was good to send a statement. We've come too far to let down now. We've definitely got our momentum back."
When DeWitt stepped in with the bases loaded in the first, the Dodgers had scored nine runs in the series. Ramirez had knocked in five of them.
Then DeWitt, all of 5-feet-11 and 175 pounds, jerked a Jamie Moyer slider down the right-field line for a three-run triple and, finally, the rest of the Dodgers had combined to out-RBI Manny.
"The back-breaker for them," Torre said of the Phillies.
When Kuroda whizzed a 94 mph heater behind Victorino's head, Brett Myers already had thrown one pitch behind Ramirez in Game 2 and the Phillies had hit Martin with one pitch in Game 2 and another in the first inning of Game 3.
Dodgers veterans already were steaming coming into this game that Billingsley never bothered throwing inside in Game 2 after Myers went behind Ramirez. And now Martin was getting drilled again in the first? And reliever Clay Condrey threw another high-and-tight fastball in the second that narrowly missed him?
"This should have been handled last game," Dodgers third-base coach Larry Bowa said. "I don't think anybody had any intention of doing anything tonight. Then Russell got buzzed. I'm not a believer that one guy makes a team, but we're playing golf right now if Manny's not here. We're making tee times."
On a night of messages, Bowa's was clear: You protect your big guy. It is imperative, it is essential and is a way of baseball survival as old as the game itself.
Absolutely the Dodgers are playing golf by now if they hadn't traded for Ramirez. And absolutely they'll be playing golf within hours if their prized possession happens to injure himself -- or get injured on, say, a fastball above the shoulders during one of these games.
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| Blake DeWitt proves the Dodgers offense is more than Manny. (AP) |
"It's been talked about a lot over the past two days, and one thing you don't want to do is feel like you're getting pushed around with the other team thinking they can do whatever they want and you're not really going to stand up for yourself."
Winning himself friends in the Dodgers' clubhouse for probably the rest of his life, Kuroda finally pushed back. The pitch was too close to Victorino's head for comfort, and the Phillies outfielder had every right to be upset.
Kuroda said he tried to throw inside and the pitch slipped. Martin said the pitch slipped. Outfielder Matt Kemp said it slipped ... why, it was almost as if the Dodgers were reading from the same script. Lots of screenwriters here in Hollywood, you know.
"We're not trying to hurt Victorino," Ramirez said. "He's a great guy. I talk to him all the time. We want to send a message. That was it."
Message received. Victorino screamed at Kuroda. Then he swung and missed at a slider. Then he beat a ground ball to, wouldn't you know it, Nomar Garciaparra at first base.
Kuroda rushed over to cover and Garciaparra waved him off and stepped on first himself. But as the inning ended, it still put Kuroda and Victorino within a step or two of each other.
Victorino said something else, Kuroda looked, Phillies first base coach Davey Lopes joined a debate that certainly offered as much red meat as any other debate this month, and the benches quickly cleared.
Ramirez, who had walked from left field all the way in to shortstop earlier when Victorino was jawing at Kuroda, led the Dodgers' charge as the inning ended.
That he went from left field to the front of the pack near the first-base line in Olympic-sprinter time might have been the most impressive thing that's happened so far this postseason. It took four Dodgers to haul him away from trouble.
Ramirez clearly has been simmering. Television pictures showed him screaming in the dugout later in Game 2. But this is the new Manny, and the new Manny is affable, chatty and doesn't let you see him sweat.
Asked if he was trying to get at someone, he replied: "Next?" Asked who he was yelling at, he replied: "Next?"
Maybe he would have been more specific had someone asked what he was having for a late-night snack.
"We were mad about what happened," he said. "We should have taken care of it over there (in Philadelphia)."
It's odd watching a team lose its baby teeth and grow molars this late in the season, but that's where these Dodgers are. Still growing. Kemp, Andre Ethier and James Loney were markedly better once Ramirez arrived. They matured as hitters. They relaxed. They learned.
And every young Dodger from Billingsley on down learned some more Sunday. Or, more precisely, between Thursday's game in Philadelphia and Sunday's in Dodger Stadium.
Did you see old war horses Bowa and Lopes screaming at each other during the scrum? It was almost like it was 1978 all over again.
"Davey said we should have taken care of it (Thursday) and he's right," Bowa said. "He's 100 percent right. We didn't do it."
And probably, he reiterated, nothing would have happened, period, if Martin hadn't gotten hit again.
"Victorino was saying, 'I don't like throwing at my head,'" Bowa said. "He's right. You could severely hurt someone. Manny doesn't like it, either."
Lopes downplayed the whole thing.
"It was nothing," he said. "Nothing happened. I think everyone's making a big thing out of nothing. The only thing that happened was they kicked our ass."
Don't be so sure. In the Dodgers dugout following the altercation, and in their clubhouse following the win that got them right back into this series, there was an entirely different vibe.
"It was a different feeling," Bowa said. "(Kuroda) showed people that even though he's from Japan, he knew how to throw inside."
Translation: He taught a lesson in toughness that the still-finding-their-way Dodgers badly needed.
Now, let's see where this series goes from here. Back to hardball, or back to hard feelings?
"It's over with, in my head," Martin said. "But who knows what might happen? It's the playoffs."
"I don't want to fight nobody," Ramirez said. "I'm a lover."
