LOS ANGELES_Somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Mudville ... nah, been done.
It is darkest before the dawn ... no, that's been done, too.
Yea, though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death ... nope, nothing original there.
At this point, the original thoughts about the Los Angeles Dodgers are few and far between. They lost again., 6-5. Their crazy big lead has been whittled to a pretty big lead. They can't possibly suffer the greatest collapse in baseball history.
Presumably.
Their National League West lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks remains 10 games, with 20 to play. What was a 21-game lead has more than halfway evaporated, with the Dodgers losing 14 of their past 15 games, including their last nine consecutive games.
The Colorado Rockies administered the latest loss on Saturday, this one by a 6-5 score. The UCLA and USC football teams have won two games each since the Dodgers last won a game.
The good news for the home team: the Diamondbacks lost, too, giving up six runs in the ninth inning to the San Diego Padres.
The Dodgers might be able to win the division by running out the clock. For the second consecutive night, an Arizona loss meant the Dodgers could shave their magic number to win the division.
That magic number: 11.
The Dodgers did not go down easily. They got the would-be winning run to the plate in the eighth inning. In the ninth, Logan Forsythe's leadoff homer got the Dodgers within one, but Colorado closer Greg Holland retired the next three batters.
The Dodgers started the evening with an air of anticipation. For the first time since Aug. 19, they had their top four batters back atop the lineup. "I like it," manager Dave Roberts said. "We've gone with that for quite some time when we were on a good roll."
The Dodgers were 20 games up the last time Chris Taylor, Corey Seager, Justin Turner and Cody Bellinger occupied the top four spots in the lineup.
They had won 87 games. That was three weeks ago, and they're stuck at 92.
There was no better image of the Dodgers of this moment than two in the eighth inning, the first when Yasiel Puig stood briefly at home plate, appearing to wish distance upon his fly ball. A home run would have given the Dodgers the lead, and Puig gave the ball a good ride to center field.
The ball descended well short of the warning track.
Austin Barnes followed Puig and actually did drive a ball to the warning track in center field. The crowd erupted, a spirited sellout crowd wishing distance upon the fly ball. Not on this night, not in this losing streak.
Alex Wood delivered the latest in a series of unimpressive results from a Dodgers starting pitcher.
The Rockies batted around in the second inning, scoring four times _ two on a home run from Trevor Story, two more on two-out singles from Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado. They never trailed.
Wood pitched five innings, with the leadoff batter reaching base in four of them, and gave up five runs.
In the first three games of this series, the Dodgers' starters have combined to give up 14 runs in 13 innings. The starters: Wood, Clayton Kershaw and Yu Darvish, presumably three of the four starters the Dodgers would include in an October rotation.
There was one story line every fan could pull for, even a Dodgers fan. Chad Bettis earn the win, his first of the year. Bettis left the team in for treatment of testicular cancer. He won his first game in his sixth start.
