It Was a Quick and Painful Way to Lose

By MIKE DOWNEY

Sept. 18, 1997 12 AM PT

SAN FRANCISCO — At 3Com Park off Chan Ho Park, a booming home run left the bat of Barry Bonds. And the Dodger-Giant battle was on.

And just like that, boom, it was over.

After all the buildup, the most intense game of the 1997 baseball season lasted only 2 hours 26 minutes. Bonds stroked a two-run homer off Park in the first inning, and that was that.

Park did his part. He pitched impeccably.

If the Dodgers don’t win the division, don’t blame Chan Ho. Wednesday night here in the city by the bay, he pitched his heart out.

For the next couple of hours, the Giants would get only a couple of cheap hits. Raul Mondesi of the Dodgers would rip a ball into the left-field seats. But no other Dodger would cross home plate, leaving L.A. with a 2-1 loss and a one-game edge in the National League West, with 10 games to go.

What an incredible waste for the Dodgers, not winning because their pitcher makes one mistake.

At crunch time, Bonds crunched one. He and the Giants sent 50,921 ticket-holders home happy, carrying their cute little “BEAT LA” signs.

“What did he throw you?” Bonds was asked.

“A mistake,” he said.

Three umpires, their own belongings being lost, had to wear “SF” home-team caps during the game. (Although no one in history has ever felt the need for a “BEAT SF” sign.)

“We needed that, we needed that,” Manager Dusty Baker said, having just seen his Giants lose four games in a row.

His team is still in the thick of the race, thanks to Bonds, a big-time player who came through with a big-time hit.

Before the game, Bonds made a donation of $1 million to the Jackie Robinson Foundation from a charity fund bearing his name. That was a generous way for a Giant to begin a Dodger series.

Bonds’ benevolence ended there. He was the third batter Park saw. In his 501st at-bat of the season, Bonds walloped one over the right-field fence. He stood by home plate until the ball disappeared from view. Flipping his bat, Barry did a 360 revolution worthy of Baryshnikov, then jogged around the bases, basking in the applause.

The crowd was happy for a change, after fretting about the team’s recent slide into second place.

Baker, the former Dodger player who manages the Giants, summed up the situation cleverly before this big game, with a comment that belongs in any book of famous quotations.

“People jump on the bandwagon when things are going good,” Baker said, “and they jump on the bad wagon when things are going bad.”

San Francisco pulled out all the stops.

Orlando Cepeda, celebrating his 60th birthday, tossed out the ceremonial first pitch for the Giants, the team for which he played.

Then the actual Giant pitcher took the mound. Kirk Rueter, a fast-working left-hander, kept the Dodgers hitless until Mondesi’s homer in the fifth.

This Rueter’s bulletin just in: He can pitch.

His 13 victories are as many as anybody on the Dodger staff.

Back on June 22, at Dodger Stadium, he outdueled Park in a Giant victory. Bonds hit a home run in that game too.

Mondesi, though, took a .375 average against Rueter into this game. And he broke up the southpaw’s no-hitter with a 392-foot smash, Bonds remaining motionless in left field, not even looking up.

With his 27th homer to go with 32 stolen bases, Mondesi still has a shot at being a 30-30 man this season.

But that barely matters to the Dodgers, who could have put some nice distance between themselves and the Giants with a victory.

The Giants weren’t looking forward to facing Park.

“He’s got plenty of fastball,” was the interesting way Baker put it, before the game.

Sure enough, the Dodger ace was sharp. Except for walking Darryl Hamilton and surrendering a 426-foot swat to Bonds, he had the San Francisco hitters eating out of his hand. A wrong-way triple and a bloop single, that was all Park gave the Giants.

Didn’t matter. They beat L.A.

“That’s cool,” Baker said. “They’ve been saying ‘Beat L.A.’ even when L.A. hasn’t been here. They might as well say it when they finally play here.”