DODGERS-GIANTS ... ENOUGH SAID.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

SAN FRANCISCO - Flags flapping in a crisp breeze behind the center fielder. Rowboats bobbing in the cove behind the right fielder. Oversized Coke bottle and fielder's glove towering behind the oversized left fielder.

All the elements of a big baseball weekend in San Francisco were in place Friday at AT&T Park.

Wind. Water. Garlic-fries stench.

Could the Dodgers and their fans imagine a sweeter setting for a playoff clinching party than here in the black heart of Giants country?

``That would be so good,'' Tommy Lasorda was saying in the visitors' clubhouse before the game with a malevolent chuckle.

I know, the Dodgers' immediate rival in the chase for the National League West championship is San Diego and their immediate rival for the wild-card spot is Philadelphia.

The standings say that when the Dodgers came from behind on Jeff Kent and Olmedo Saenz bloops and a wild pitch in the ninth inning to win 4-3 in front of 42,587 fans, they tied San Diego for first place and assured that Philadelphia can't outfinish them without a tie-breaking playoff game.

But the Padres' and Phillies' involvement is just an inconvenient fact that we're going to ignore in favor of the truth.

The gut reality of it is that here in late September, the Dodgers are fighting the Giants for October, battling Giants who otherwise are just trying to stay out of last place. The Dodgers are trying to do something that no club in the wild history of the Brooklyn-Los Angeles franchise has ever done. They are trying to nail down a playoff spot that's in doubt on the final weekend and do it on Giants soil.

Didn't happen at the Polo Grounds. Didn't happen at Candlestick Park.

Didn't happen at Pac Bell, SBC or AT&T -- wait, that's all the same park.

In 1977, the Dodgers clinched a division championship at Candlestick.

That was in the 151st game of a runaway, though. Nothing those Giants could do to derail those Dodgers.

In the Dodgers' disputed bids to celebrate pennants and division titles in their rivals' house, they haven't got past doormen named Thomson and Morgan.

Now it was the Dodgers down by one game to San Diego and up by two games over Philadelphia, three games to play, at San Francisco. With Barry Bonds in a lineup that, for the first time in days, was full of first-string Giants. With a sellout crowd on its feet in the ninth inning, more to root against the Dodgers more than for the Giants.

It felt like the good, bad old days at Candlestick, right down to the late-innings punch-up in the third-base stands.

With one out in the top of the third, Giants leading 1-0 and Marlon Anderson at bat, a sharp ``Beat L.A.!'' chant started up. Anderson put a stop to that by lining the next pitch back to the mound, striking pitcher Noah Lowry in such a way as to briefly threaten the contentment of Mrs. Lowry. The pitcher, uninjured, picked up the ball and threw Anderson out.

Touche, and touche.

The uniformed personnel is prone to saying the old blue-black rivalry ain't what she used to be.

``I think you're going to see the Dodgers and Giants playing on the field and the fans getting excited,'' Dodgers manager Grady Little said. ``It's their (the fans') rivalry, not the teams'.''

But of course fans know and care about it more than players.

You wouldn't expect players to know how this all began in 1934, when Giants manager Bill Terry responded to a preseason question about the Dodgers by saying: ``I was just wondering if they're still in the league,'' and the sixth-place Dodgers got him back with a final-weekend sweep of the Giants that handed the pennant to the Cardinals. You wouldn't even expect 30-year-olds to remember 1993, when Mike Piazza and the fourth-place Dodgers broke the hearts of the 103-win Giants on the final Sunday.

You don't expect the Dodgers' free agents and rookies to grasp what it means to bring the upper hand down hard on the heads of a rival that had won more games in eight of the past nine seasons.

Kevin Frandsen, a young Giants infielder, grew up in San Jose as a Giants fan. The memory that boils his Dodgers-hating blood is Steve Finley's Saturday grand slam at Dodger Stadium. Which was a whole two years ago today.

``When I got comfortable talking to him,'' Frandsen said of Finley, now a Giants teammate, ``I said, `I hated you for a couple of days.'''

So what if fans and old-timers care most about the Dodgers-Giants historical aspect of this weekend's drama. That doesn't diminish it one bit.

They thought they had it, up 3-2 after Lowry stopped the Dodgers for six of his seven innings while Hong-Chih Kuo was able to stymie Bonds but not Eliezer Alfonzo. Then came the top of the ninth, which goes down as a pennant-drive half-classic, only half the teams being in a pennant drive.

Kent led off against Mike Stanton with a looping single to right, and an out later with Dodgers on first and second, Saenz was sent up to pinch-hit for the hot-hitting Marlon Anderson. It was a righty-vs.-lefty move by Little, but a curious one. The way the past couple of weeks have gone, it's no surprise it worked out.

Saenz's soft liner barely made the outfield grass in right, and the tying run came home. After a fielder's choice moved the go-ahead runner to third, Stanton bounced a split-finger pitch past Alfonzo.

Russell Martin, who had walked, brought home the winning run as Giants fans cursed those slap-hitting Dodgers.

Friday night, the Dodgers promised themselves at least a 163rd game, and this afternoon they can make themselves a real live playoff team. On the Giants' grass. What could be better?

``If I could pick the place to pop champagne, the first would probably be Dodger Stadium,'' Martin said after the game. ``But the second place would be here. They're our rivals. That would definitely be sweet.''

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