Dodgers’ win is miss and hit

The long and short of this Dodgers victory involved a home run in a rare pinch-hit appearance by Andre Ethier and the winning run scoring during an inning in which the Dodgers put four runners on base without so much as putting the ball in play.

Even when Chicago Cubs reliever Carlos Marmol bounced a pitch that hit Juan Pierre in the left knee with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th inning to give the Dodgers a 2-1 victory Sunday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, the winners remained momentarily frozen.

“Nobody knew whether to celebrate,” Pierre said of a victory that kept the Dodgers tied with San Diego atop the National League West. “Everyone was still in shock of what happened. It was definitely one of the weirdest endings.”

The Dodgers’ fourth victory in five games also entailed a baserunning blunder by Ramon Martinez that turned fortuitous when Cubs catcher Michael Barrett threw to second base instead of third. Martinez wound up at third with a stolen base and eventually scored the winning run.

“Ramon gave an old-school Wiffle ball play right there,” Pierre said. “I don’t know if he planned it or not, but it worked out well.”

Martinez opened the 11th by drawing a full-count, pinch-hit walk from reliever Angel Guzman and moving up a base when Guzman walked Wilson Betemit on five pitches.

Then, after Marmol replaced Guzman and threw a ball to Rafael Furcal, Martinez slipped while taking his secondary lead off second base.

“I was in no-man’s land,” Martinez said. “When I got stuck in the middle, I had to choose which way to go. When I saw [Barrett] go to second, that’s when I decided to go to third.”

Martinez made it safely and then Marmol elected to intentionally walk Furcal to load the bases and bring up Pierre. Marmol bounced a 2-and-2 pitch in the dirt before it hit Pierre and allowed Martinez to trot home with the winning run.

“It bounced pretty much in front of the plate and it took me a minute to realize [I was hit],” Pierre said. “I was like, ‘The ball hit me! The ball hit me!’ I think they were trying to say I swung.”

Dodgers starter Randy Wolf and Cubs counterpart Rich Hill each pitched six scoreless innings before being lifted for pinch-hitters and turning the game over to the bullpens.

Chicago broke through first in the eighth against Rudy Seanez. Alfonso Soriano led off with a single to left, advanced to third on Ryan Theriot’s hit-and-run single to right-center and scored on Derrek Lee’s single to center.

Then in the bottom of the inning, Ethier homered off reliever Scott Eyre on an 0-and-2 pitch when pinch-hitting for the first time this season.

“It’s nice when you come off the bench cold and contribute right away and come up with a big hit to help the team out,” said Ethier, whose homer was his fourth of the season and first of his career as a pinch-hitter.

Dodgers relievers Jonathan Broxton and Chad Billingsley (3-0) combined for three innings of scoreless relief in which they faced the minimum nine batters before the Dodgers assembled their rally in the 11th, winning perhaps the only way they could on a day they collected only four hits.

“A game like that where there’s not a whole lot going on offensively, you’ll take it any way you can,” Dodgers Manager Grady Little said.

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