Victory drops in Dodgers' lap

The 50,000-plus fans at Dodger Stadium might as well have thrown in their towels instead of continuing to wave them around their heads.

This game was over.

The bases were empty. The Dodgers were trailing by a run and down to their last out.

When James Loney hit what looked like a catchable a line drive toward Matt Holliday in left field, Andre Ethier said he turned his back to the field and started to make his way across the dugout, figuring the game had ended.

"All of a sudden, I heard people go crazy," Ethier said.

Holliday had dropped the ball.

The most improbable of errors set the stage for the most improbable of comebacks, this one completed when Mark Loretta drove in Casey Blake with a bloop single to center field that lifted the Dodgers to a 3-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday that put them up, 2-0, in their best-of-five National League division series.

The stadium shook. The towels continued to wave.

Loretta was hitless in his previous 15 at-bats against Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin. The only other time he played in the postseason in his 15-year career, his team went winless.

"This is the best moment of my career," Loretta said.

And, perhaps, the most inexplicable.

The Dodgers' 12 other walk-off wins this season did nothing to temper their amazement.

"Can't figure this game out," third base coach Larry Bowa told Manny Ramirez as they walked out of the Dodgers' clubhouse together.

Instead of heading to St. Louis with home-field advantage lost and the series tied, the Dodgers will head into Game 3 at Busch Stadium with wins in games against Cy Young Award candidates Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright.

"That doesn't really happen too often," Blake said. "You'd be really lucky to get one of those guys when you face them back-to-back. The fact that we got two wins out of there is a huge, huge boost of confidence for everybody."

But Blake made sure to add one qualification: "I wouldn't say we beat Wainwright."

While Carpenter was hit hard in Game 1, Wainwright held the Dodgers to one run and three hits in eight innings.

Andre Ethier's fourth-inning solo home run accounted for the only run charged to Wainwright, who escaped a bases-loaded jam in the eighth by getting Matt Kemp to ground to first to hold the Cardinals' 2-1 edge.