DODGERS HAVE HOT TIME IN DESERT MLB: WILD GAME VS. ARIZONA GOES INTO EXTRA INNINGS TIED 7-7. DODGERS, ARIZONA LATE GAME.

Byline: Tony Jackson 

Staff Writer

PHOENIX - The Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks, in the opener of the sort of three-game series that passes for monumental in the less-than-monumental National League West, showed up at Chase Field on Friday night and immediately began showing the world why they are the worst one-two punch to top a division in recent memory.

The result was a level of ineptitude no one team could achieve alone.

Fittingly, as the two clubs went to the bottom of the ninth, it was still anyone's guess as to who would win. They were tied 7-7 before 38,561.

In the first inning alone, there were three errors, two of them by the same player on the same play and the other by a 10-time Gold Glove winner, and those miscues contributed to a combined seven runs. By the bottom of the third, both starting pitchers were gone, having combined for five innings during which they conspired to give up 11 runs on 13 hits.

But in the second half opener for both clubs - the first day of the rest of their lives, if you will - there also was no shortage of heroics. For the Dodgers, there were two home runs by Nomar Garciaparra, the somewhat broken-down, one-time superstar who proved there is still enough pop in his bat to provide the occasional dose of nostalgia. For the Diamondbacks, there were three hits by Orlando Hudson, the reigning N.L. Gold Glove winner at second base and still one of the game's most underrated, overlooked players.

And then, for a Dodgers team that had fallen behind 6-3 by the end of the second inning and 7-5 by the end of the third, there was Matt Kemp, the enigmatic superstar-in-waiting, who delivered a towering, game-tying homer off reliever Leo Rosales in the seventh inning, a shot that flirted with the closed roof at Chase Field before landing 10 rows deep in left field.

But mostly, there was enough intrigue to prove that as undeniably mediocre as these clubs are and as laughable as this division is, this budding rivalry still figures to make for one heck of an interesting race.

If anything, there was too much intensity at times, with two struggling clubs eager to take advantage of being rested, refreshed and ready for action following the four-day All-Star break. Some players appeared tight in the beginning, a fact that might have contributed to that wild first inning that ensured this game would have no trouble surpassing the three-hour mark on a sweltering night in the desert.

The madness started with the second batter, Dodgers left fielder Andre Ethier, who gave his club a 1-0 lead by lining a double into the rightfield corner but slipped and did a faceplant into the infield dirt on his way around first base. Ethier was able to laugh at his pratfall when he finally did reach second, but the laughter didn't stop there.

Three batters later, with the Dodgers leading 2-0, runners on first and second and still nobody out, Garciaparra delivered the first of his three hits, a sharp single through the left side. Diamondbacks left fielder Conor Jackson charged the ball, but it kicked off his glove and caromed just far enough away - about 10 feet - that Russell Martin was able to score from second.

Jackson then picked up the ball and fired a wicked one-hop throw that appeared to easily beat Jeff Kent to third, but it skipped away from Mark Reynolds, allowing Garciaparra to move into second on Jackson's second error.

The bottom of the first practically mirrored the top, the only exception being that the Diamondbacks scored four runs to the Dodgers' three. Center fielder Andruw Jones, whose defense had never wavered even as he batted .164 and struck out once every 3.2 plate appearances before the break, committed an error almost indentical to Jackson's first one, again letting in a run. But that was little more than a blip in an inning in which Dodgers right-hander Hiroki Kuroda gave up five consecutive one-out hits and blew a 3-0 lead.

Kuroda was gone after two innings, having been torched for six runs.

Diamondbacks starter Doug Davis, who had dominated the Dodgers on April 8 in his last start before undergoing surgery for removal of a cancerous thyroid, was gone after three, having himself been lit up for five runs.

Garciaparra homered twice in the same game for the first time since Aug. 4, 2002, when he was still one of the game's marquee players for Boston.

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DODGERS

TODAY at Arizona, 5 p.m., Chase Field.

TV: Ch. 9.

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Photo:

Nomar Garciaparra, right, is congratulated by James Loney after a sixth-inning homer Friday at Arizona, his second of the game.

Matt York/The Associated Press