DODGERS ARE FOILED BY PHILLIES' HEROICS : AMARO'S HOMER, ROOKIE'S GLOVE BEAT L.A. PHILADELPHIA 3, DODGERS 1.

Byline: Tim Brown Daily News Staff Writer

Everyone in the ballpark - well, almost everyone - figured the baseball Tim Wallach had just hit would not stay inside the walls, that the game would be tied, that the Philadelphia Phillies had of course found another way to lose.

``I didn't think it was gone,'' said Wendell Magee, a rookie too young to know anything about pennant races, about the Wallach touch with the Dodgers, about how teams such as the Phillies aren't supposed to stand in the way of such things. ``I thought it was a routine fly ball.''

He made it one. Magee faded back to the outfield fence, leaped, extended his glove a good foot above the top and caught what was supposed to be a two-run home run. Besides a baseball, what Magee found in that glove was a 1-1/2-game deficit for the Dodgers in the National League West.

``I crushed it,'' Wallach said. ``I thought it was gone.''

The Phillies - and not the Dodgers - were full of such heroics on Tuesday night.

Ruben Amaro hit a pinch-hit, two-run home run with two out in the ninth inning, and the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Dodgers 3-1 at Dodger Stadium. Phillies starter David West allowed three hits in six innings.

The game ended with Magee showing off the ball and with his teammates only too eager to see it. Against Phillies closer Ricky Bottalico, Eric Karros singled and was standing at second base with two out. Wallach had several good cuts at Bottalico fastballs and, with the count full, hit another one to left-center field.

``It was over the fence,'' Dodgers manager Bill Russell said. ``But he played it right.''

And now the Dodgers, losers of two in a row, are playing catch-up. Again. Antonio Osuna (8-5) allowed the home run to Amaro, after a two-out, two-strike double to Kevin Stocker.

Going on a month since his last victory, Dodgers starter Ismael Valdes again was the pitcher he has been recently, as opposed to the pitcher he was for the first 3-1/2 months of the season.

The differences are subtle but visible, even in the midst of the duel with West that extended into the late innings against the Phillies.

In his first 21 starts, he allowed as many as eight hits five times. Since then, he has given up eight or more hits in each of his past five starts, and that includes appearances of 6-1/3, 6 and 4-1/3 innings. Only once in those 21 starts did Valdes walk as many as three batters, and he did that in each of his previous two starts.

Valdes, who suddenly lives high in the strike zone rather than below it, had lost two consecutive decisions, and the Dodgers have lost six of his past seven starts.

To find flaws in an 11-7 season, and in a start in which he allowed one run through eight innings, is merely a reflection of his dominance over his first two seasons. But, with the Dodgers in their most critical stretch of the season, they could use the old Rocket back.

Valdes allowed eight hits to the Phillies in his first five innings, including three in the third, when the Phillies scored their run. Kevin Stocker singled and went to second on West's sacrifice bunt. Rookie Magee singled to right field, and Raul Mondesi had a chance to throw out Stocker at the plate. However, he double clutched, then threw on the run, and bounced the ball past catcher Mike Piazza.

Valdes, who for the second consecutive start failed to back up the plate on a throw home, scrambled to the backstop and threw out Magee attempting to reach third base. That act saved a run, because Mondesi immediately made his second error of the inning, when he lost Mickey Morandini's liner in the lights, and Gregg Jefferies followed that with a single.

However, after an uncontested double steal put Morandini and Jefferies in scoring position with two out, Todd Zeile grounded to first base. The Phillies put runners on base in four of the next five innings, and into scoring position in three, and Valdes pitched out of each jam.

The Dodgers scored in the seventh inning to draw even. In his fourth start since returning from a year-long absence due to shoulder surgery, West allowed one hit and two baserunners through six innings.

In the seventh, Delino DeShields singled to right-center field. Given that DeShields was batting .209 against left-handed pitchers, and that West has held left-handed hitters to a .168 average since 1993, it was an odd way to start a rally. Piazza then singled to right field.

Against reliever Ken Ryan, Karros drove in DeShields with a grounder to shortstop. The inning ended there, with a Mondesi strikeout and a Wallach fly ball, this one routine.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--color) Jim Eisenreich of the Phillies steals s econd under the glove of the Dodgers' Delino DeSields.

(2) In his fourth start since returning from a year-long absence due to shoulder surgery, David West allowed one hit and two baserunners through six innings.

David Crane / Daily News