All weekend long, I've been trying to find a good reason to tell my wife and my boss that I needed to go to Los Angeles.  No matter how hard I thought about it, I just knew that the truth wouldn't fly:

"Well, honey (or sir), see...the Dodgers and Padres are within 1.5 games of first place, see, and..."

My gut told me that "You're Fired", or "I Want A Divorce" were the next things I'd hear, so I settled for watching on HD...and for a while I was glad I stayed home.  After watching the Dodgers get shelled on Saturday, then seeing them creep to a loss on Sunday, I donned my cap and jersey with full knowledge that the boys in blue NEED this Monday game.  How right I was!!

Seeing Jon Adkins and Trevor Hoffman get hammered for four home runs in a row was almost surreal.  Mark Grant, a local Padres announcer who called the game, said that if a screenwriter wrote that into a script for a baseball movie, he'd get fired for penning something so contrived, yet here we were watching it unfold in real time.  Four in a row; THEN my man Nomar lives up to his Mr Clutch reputation, replete with gimpy legs.  It was almost too much to conceive. Epic! Magnanimous!

But let's not kid ourselves...

THE most important element in this game was the momentum that my Dodgers have hopefully generated by such an historical--and histrionic--victory.    Once again, the dreadful Dodger bullpen allowed the less-than-potent Padres offense to stay in this game, after Penny lifted himself from the depths of a first-inning Hades to hold the Padres scoreless thru the rest of his five innings. 

This momentum could be the deciding factor in how the Dodgers attack not only the remainder of the season--which treads dangerously thru the Bay Area--but also the post-season. Hey, Houston did it last year, right?

But on a high note for Dodgerfan, San Diego's bullpen doesn't leave THAT much to envy, either.  Sure, they boast a pretty low bullpen ERA--something like 3.24.  But let's face it: if it wasn't for Cla Meredith, this team would have been dead a long time ago. Trevor uses good momentum to his advantage, and carries that energy into the ninth to fast-ball you to death.  But being sandwiched between Adkins and Seanez?  That was a recipe for drama...the good kind for Dodger Nation.

I was at Petco Park in April when the Padres smacked us for five runs in the bottom of the ninth to eventually win in 5-6 in the 10th.  Payback is indeed very sweet.  Now if we can just take the NL West, because the path to the Pennant takes us thru San Francisco...