The Old Guys Make It Seem Like Old Days

SAN FRANCISCO — Here, said Brian Jordan.

Grab, said Marquis Grissom.

Pull, said Hideo Nomo.

Fingers on the precipice of the pennant race, a rival preparing to stomp, the Dodgers were dragged back to temporary safety Wednesday by three weathered hands.

Does that grip have 17 more games in it?

As their breath and color slowly return, the Dodgers can only hope.

Trying to avoid a three-game sweep and a two-game deficit in the wild-card race, they stepped into jeering Pacific Bell Park on Wednesday against the San Francisco Giants needing their heartiest game of the season.

Grissom started it. Jordan ended it. Nomo defined it. The Dodgers got it.

The final score was 7-3. The final pitch felt like a first one.

Two teams, dead even, 17 games remaining, winner plays in October, loser waits for April.

Dodgers and Giants. The renewal of a race that has lasted forever.

“This is gonna be fun,” Jordan said. “This is gonna be a battle.”

It is a battle that unofficially started Wednesday, because it could have ended Wednesday.

The Dodgers never said it, but you could hear it in the pregame silence of their clubhouse, see in the worried eyes of their manager.

“You would worry about the psychological effect of your biggest rival sweeping you and putting you two games down,” Jim Tracy acknowledged afterward. “Our players were well aware of that. And they played like it.”

They played like it because the three old guys played like it.

Grissom, with 48 postseason games under his cracked belt, began the first rally with a single and the winning rally with a triple.

“You have to go through it,” Grissom said. “I’ve been through it.”

Jordan, with 35 postseason games under his perpetual ice packs, toppled Jeff Kent with a slide into second base, then knocked over the rest of the Giants with a three-run homer.

“A lot of our guys haven’t been in this situation before,” Jordan said. “But they’re learning.”

And Nomo? The 34-year-old guy who trudges around as if he’s 50? The guy who has been around so long, Nomomania is cool again?

As usual, his deliberate delivery and tendency to avoid the strike zone made this game last forever. But this time, Nomo also lasted forever, 132 pitches, two runs in nearly seven innings, and I know what you’re thinking.

Yeah, 132 pitches are the most thrown by a Dodger this season. And, certainly, some arms have difficulty recovering from such heavy lifting.

But durable Nomo claims he once threw 191 pitches in Japan. And with the season on the line and the bullpen bracing for a weekend in Denver, Tracy really had no choice.

“At this point, you have to be ready to throw everything at them,” Tracy said.

Who would have thought that on the new-era Dodgers, most of those things would be coming from the old guys?

Start with Grissom, who said the foundation for his hits against hot Giant pitcher Kirk Rueter was created long before the game.

“I’ve faced him for, like, six or seven years,” Grissom said. “I know what he does. And I keep studying him.”

Sitting around a television in the visiting clubhouse Wednesday morning, many Dodgers were studying Rueter, who entered the game with a 13 1/3-inning scoreless streak and only one loss since July.

Earlier in the season, such skull sessions on opposing pitchers weren’t very crowded, attended mostly by the older guys.

“But everybody is catching on now,” Grissom said. “They are understanding that this game is all about homework.”

And Grissom’s homework?

“I knew he likes to start me off with a fastball away and throw that same pitch if he’s in trouble,” Grissom said.

His first-pitch, leadoff single that led to a two-run first inning was on a fastball away. His 2-and-0 triple to start the four-run fifth inning was on the same pitch.

“Just because you know what it is, that doesn’t mean you’ll always hit it,” Grissom said with a laugh. “But at least you give yourself a chance.”

That’s all Jordan wanted in the fifth inning after two ugly grounders earlier.

With 14 homers and 56 RBIs before the game, he has hardly been the offensive equivalent of Gary Sheffield. But the Dodgers coveted him because, unlike Sheffield, he understands pennant-race moments such as these.

“I had been anxious, trying to do too much, so I told myself to stay back and make him throw a strike,” Jordan said. “When I got ahead 2 and 0, I knew it was going to be there. I just had to swing as hard as I could.”

He hit the ball so hard, Barry Bonds barely turned as it soared over his head and into the left-field bleachers.

He hit the ball so hard, the Giants deflated in the manner of an ugly orange balloon, walking through the rest of the game as if it were spring training.

“A good game like this ... that does take the air out of you,” Jordan said.

The Dodgers flew to Denver hoping to remain pumped. The Giants flew to San Diego hoping to find perspective.

They will reunite at Dodger Stadium for the start of a four-game showdown that could decide the season, beginning Monday, not nearly soon enough.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected].