Elster Delivers Game-Winning Homer

A ninth-inning homer by Kevin Elster gave the Dodgers a 4-3 victory over the New York Mets on Wednesday night in a game that saw Kevin Brown and Mike Piazza suffer hits of a different kind.

Brown, with the Dodger pitching staff already reeling from injury and inconsistency, was drilled by an Edgardo Alfonzo line drive in the sixth inning and forced to leave at the end of the inning because of a contusion on his right lower leg.

He did not require X-rays, but will be re-evaluated today.

“The good news on Brownie is that [the ball] got a lot of meat,” Manager Davey Johnson said, “but the [trainers] said they’ve never seen it swell up so fast. It’s a bad contusion, at least I hope it’s [only] a contusion.”

Brown, who allowed only three hits and one run [on a homer by Alfonzo in the first], had the satisfaction of retiring Alfonzo by making a sensational play on the liner that would knock him from the game. A Dodger stadium crowd of 31,323 saw the ball carom into foul territory near the first base line, where Brown retrieved it and threw out Alfonzo while somersaulting to the ground.

“What a great play,” Johnson said. “That was a highlight reel.”

Brown was limping in the clubhouse later but said he did not intend to miss his next start. He acknowledged, however, that the leg swelled so rapidly that he couldn’t have pushed off the mound and it wouldn’t have served any purpose to continue pitching. Of his play on the Alfonzo liner, Brown said, “that’s the kind of play you’d rather not have to make.”

Piazza was sent to his knees, knocked from the game and severely bloodied when struck in the forehead by a Gary Sheffield backswing in the Dodger half of the sixth. He suffered a slight concussion, needed one stitch to close the cut and may play in the Mets’ next game on Friday, although he conceded after the game that he was a “little foggy.”

Sheffield went to the Mets clubhouse to express his concern after the game and the two players hugged.

“I thought that showed a lot of class for him to show concern,” Piazza said. “I appreciate it. These things happen. It’s part of the game. I respect the fact he has to swing the bat. It was just a freak thing.”

Elster’s eighth homer came on Turk Wendel’s first pitch with one out in the ninth. Players seldom say they are trying to hit home runs, but Elster was at least looking for the slider Wendel threw since “he’s done that every damn time against me.”

The Dodgers also got a home run by Chad Kreuter, replacing the injured Todd Hundley, and run-scoring singles by Shawn Green and Eric Karros--all off Met ace Mike Hampton. A weary Dodger bullpen was unable to hold a 3-1 lead for Brown, but Mike Fetters pitched out of a ninth-inning jam after the Mets had tied it with two runs in the eighth off Alan Mills and Matt Herges.