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Dodgers hope Lowe will be Mr. October

T.J. SIMERS

September 27, 2008|T.J. SIMERS

"Pitching is all about feeling, and making adjustments," he said, and what a lift it would be for the Dodgers if Lowe could beat the Cubs with his eyes closed.

When things don't go well, and there was a stretch of six miserable games earlier, he's tougher on himself than Page 2 -- sometimes talking about the home runs he has given up and wondering if they have yet to come down.


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"This is a game when you must quickly forget what went wrong," he said. "You've got about 10 seconds between pitches. Sometimes you'll see me just look up like I'm in la-la land, but it's my way of letting it go and moving on."

His record has hovered around the .500 mark ever since joining the Dodgers, but any regular follower of the team knows he hasn't always gotten great run support.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "My job is to keep us in the game. I was something like 14-12 with a 5.90-something earned-run average a few years back. Did I pitch good because I was 14-12? I gave up an average of six runs a game; that wasn't pitching well."

He's pitching well now, and if the Dodgers are going to think upset, they need someone who can go into Chicago in that zoo-like atmosphere without giving it a thought.

Now if he were a power pitcher, Lowe would already be getting more attention, and so would the Dodgers. But "a lot of ground balls are boring," said Lowe, who also pitches as if he has early dinner reservations.

"I remind myself all the time to work fast because if I'm relying on guys to catch the ball, I can't be strolling around the mound pitch after pitch, putting everyone to sleep," he says.

Lowe tuned up for his playoff assignment Friday night with three innings and 33 pitches against the Giants.

In the next few days he'll continue his routine of throwing the ball from one end of the stadium to the other after catching, and in some cases, diving for fly balls before everyone else has arrived at the park.

"The secret to this game is throwing the same way on Oct. 28 that you're throwing on April 1," said Lowe, who has never spent a day on the disabled list, a rarity in today's baseball.

"I've just found something that works for me, as crazy as it is."

Crazy as it is, the Dodgers might've just found something that works for them too, short of bringing Lima back.

JOE TORRE thought he'd treat himself to a manicure and pedicure in San Francisco after the Dodgers' celebration in L.A. a night earlier.

But a few minutes after he had sat down, the manicurist became concerned, asking Torre if he was all right, and if he had any circulation problems.

Soaked with champagne the night before, the dye from his blue shoes had turned his feet blue.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.

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