Martinez Is the Toast of Ebbets Field Bunch

SAN DIEGO —  Bob Dole should be informed that the “Brooklyn Dodgers” won again. Dole, who mistakenly called the team Brooklyn while complimenting Hideo Nomo’s no-hitter, would have admired Ramon Martinez’s equally impressive 7-0 shutout Thursday over the San Diego Padres.

“Did you see that sign the fan down the first-base line was holding?” Vin Scully asked in the Dodger clubhouse after the game.

No, what did it say?

“Beat Brooklyn.”

It was a funny way to begin the biggest series of the season for the Dodgers and Padres, who could meet as often as 13 more times, should they each reach the National League championship series.

Fernando Valenzuela, who, I believe, went to high school with Dole, was the starting pitcher for the Padres, but he was no match for Martinez, who skunked the little monks on six hits.

Martinez is virtually the last remaining Dodger teammate of Valenzuela’s, although Dave Hansen did have a cup of coffee in L.A. during the 1989 season.

Asked if it made this game more special, being pitted against Fernando, a glazed look came across Martinez’s face, as though it was the last thing he had even considered.

“You know what?” Martinez replied. “My mind was so much on my game, it didn’t matter to me whoever was going to pitch for them today.”

Martinez struck out 12, including Ken Caminiti three times. Caminiti’s bat has been so hot, you could open an Olympics with it. But he never hit the ball fair all day.

The strategy was to pitch around the Padre cleanup hitter, so Martinez walked him in the first inning and pitched to 40-homer man Greg Vaughn instead. He set up Vaughn with a 94-mph fastball, then fanned him with a changeup that turned the Padre into a pretzel.

That changeup, Dodger Manager Bill Russell said, “makes Ramon’s fastball look like it’s 100 miles per hour.”

Martinez went to it repeatedly, often on strike three. He got John Flaherty with a slow curve in the second inning, pulled the string on pinch-hitter Doug Dascenzo to end the seventh, then caught Steve Finley the same way as the last man up in the eighth. Fastball, fastball, changeup.

“If I could throw 90 miles per hour, I’d pitch just like him,” today’s starter, Tom Candiotti, joked later.

Everybody in the Dodger dugout these days is buzzing about Martinez, who has won eight of his last nine decisions. Everybody loves Ramon.

Shortstop Greg Gagne felt the Dodgers were in great shape right off the bat, giving Martinez three runs in the top of the first.

“If you’re in Colorado, you want to get as many runs as you can get,” Gagne said, with a smile. “But today, I had a feeling Ramon wasn’t going to need many.”

Left fielder Todd Hollandsworth, who had never faced Valenzuela before this, came away far more impressed with his own pitcher, saying, “You saw it. Ramon was outstanding. He just took control of that game.”

“He threw strikes,” catcher Mike Piazza said. “There’s no easier way to say it.”

True, but he also had the Padres swinging at pitches that weren’t strikes.

Caminiti got the full repertoire. Martinez struck him out on a full count with a fastball high and outside. In the sixth, he burned a heater past Caminiti that popped Piazza’s mitt like a firecracker. And then in the ninth, Martinez whiffed the league’s possible MVP on a pitch in the dirt.

It didn’t hurt Martinez any that shadows fell across the diamond during the afternoon, darkening the area around home plate in the late innings, when Martinez felt he was putting each pitch precisely where he aimed it.

Martinez even drove in a run for the Dodgers in the second with a dying-quail single off Valenzuela, who walked three batters--each on four pitches--that same inning.

It didn’t give Martinez any special satisfaction to defeat Fernando, but the Padres . . .

“These are the guys we have to beat,” Martinez said.

The Dodgers play three more games here, before coming home for a series against their hated rivals, the New York Giants.