LATE RALLY REMINDER OF BETTER TIMES DODGERS CAPITALIZE ON BRAVES' FALTERING BULLPEN DODGERS 6, ATLANTA 4.Byline: Tony Jackson
Anthony (Antonio) Jackson, best known as Tony Jackson Staff Writer ATLANTA - It is at best a sampling, a tiny morsel mor·sel n. 1. A small piece of food. 2. A tasty delicacy; a tidbit. 3. A small amount; a piece: a morsel of gossip. 4. thrown to a Dodgers team that is starving for a prolonged winning streak Noun 1. winning streak - a streak of wins streak, run - an unbroken series of events; "had a streak of bad luck"; "Nicklaus had a run of birdies" . But there is something about these past few days, with all the late-inning heroics and dramatic wins, that feels vaguely familiar. And vaguely like last year. The latest sense of deja vu See DjVu. came Tuesday night, in a 6-4 victory over the Atlanta Braves The Atlanta Braves are a professional baseball team based in Atlanta, Georgia. The Braves are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League. From to the present, the Braves have played in Turner Field. in front of 24,692 at Turner Field • • [ . The Dodgers again came back in classic 2004 fashion, going to the ninth inning needing a run to tie the score and offering little to suggest they would get it. To that point, they had one hit in 13 at-bats with runners in scoring position In the sport of baseball, a baserunner is said to be in scoring position when he is on second or third base. The distinction between being on first base and second or third base is that a runner on first can usually only score if the batter hits an extra base hit, while a runner on , and their manager had been watching the game on a clubhouse television since his ejection by first-base umpire Larry Poncino in the seventh inning. But Atlanta's Chris Reitsma Christopher Michael ("Chris") Reitsma (born December 31, 1977 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is a right-handed relief pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. He made his Major League debut on April 1, 2001, with the Cincinnati Reds. finally has begun to show chinks in his armor for the first time since he replaced Dan Kolb as the Braves' closer early this season. This time, Reitsma's armor essentially fell off. The magic began with an opposite-field double by Jayson Werth Jayson Richard Gowan Werth (born May 20, 1979 in Springfield, Illinois) is an outfielder in Major League Baseball who currently plays for the Philadelphia Phillies. He has usually been a bench player, but injuries to regular right fielder Shane Victorino and his backup Michael to lead off the inning. Hee-Seop Choi followed with a single that put Werth on third. Ricky Ledee, hitting for Dioner Navarro, walked to load the bases. And Olmedo Saenz, hitting for Giovanni Carrara, lined a first-pitch single through the left side of the infield, putting the Dodgers up 5-4. ``I was just trying to be aggressive, trying to get something in the strike zone,'' Saenz said. ``I hit the ball hard. I wasn't really trying to do anything else. (Reitsma) kept the ball down, and I hit it on the ground. But thank God it went through.'' Reitsma walked Cesar Izturis intentionally, then left the game without retiring a batter. Oscar Robles then greeted John Foster with another RBI RBI abbr. Baseball runs batted in Noun 1. rbi - a run that is the result of the batter's performance; "he had more than 100 rbi last season" run batted in single to effectively seal the victory. It was Reitsma's third blown save in the past 10 days. It was the Dodgers' fourth win in their past five games, with their past three victories coming in their last at-bat after trailing at some point. ``As crazy as this season has been, we're five games out,'' said Werth, who went 3 for 4 and scored twice. ``We have a big September coming up, but this is a pretty big road trip where we're going to play two good teams and see some good pitchers. We'll see where we are after the road trip, but it's starting to feel a little bit like last year around here.'' The Dodgers' past two wins have come against future Hall of Fame starters, although John Smoltz was long gone by the time this winning rally came together. Werth's two-run homer Sunday, coming immediately after Antonio Perez's eighth-inning triple broke up a no-hit bid, tagged the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Mets' Pedro Martinez with a loss in a game Martinez had dominated. Tracy's ejection came after Kelly Johnson reached on Jeff Kent's error to lead off the seventh. Kent recovered and flicked the ball to Choi, but Poncino ruled Johnson safe. Tracy came out and committed a taboo, immediately bringing up what he felt was a missed call by Poncino an inning earlier when Choi appeared to beat out an infield grounder. ``I might have mentioned that, yes,'' said Tracy, who was ejected for the third time this year. At any rate, Phillips eventually scored on Marcus Giles' one-out single, giving the Braves a 4-3 lead that, fatefully, would be turned over to Reitsma (3-4) in the ninth. The third-place Dodgers (54-64) remained five games behind division-leading San Diego after the Padres won at Florida. Derek Lowe gave up three more homers - all in the first two innings, to Chipper Jones, Brian McCann and Rafael Furcal - but didn't give up any more earned runs over seven innings. He was helped by two double plays, one of which he started to escape a first-and-third, one-out jam in the fifth. He also stranded four Braves runners in scoring position. Giovanni Carrara (7-4) pitched a perfect eighth, putting the Dodgers in position for their ninth-inning heroics. Duaner Sanchez, in the first save situation the Dodgers have had since Yhency Brazoban was yanked from the closer role, finished it with a perfect ninth. The Dodgers are 10 games under .500, nowhere near first place and still beaten up from an injury standpoint. But the magic appears to be back - however long it lasts. Tony Jackson,(818) 713-3675 tony.jackson(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): photo, 4 boxes Photo: Jason Repko, right, scores the go-ahead run under the tag of Braves catcher Brian McCann in the Dodgers' victory at Atlanta. John Bazemore/Associated Press Box: (1) DODGERS at ATLANTA - Tony Jackson (2) GAME RECAP (3) HOW THE RUNS SCORED (4) ALMANAC almanac, originally, a calendar with notations of astronomical and other data. Almanacs have been known in simple form almost since the invention of writing, for they served to record religious feasts, seasonal changes, and the like. |
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