Improbable Victory for Depleted Dodgers

It was a stunner, and when it ended, baseball followers could only count the improbable developments that added up to the Dodgers beating the favored Oakland Athletics in a five-game World Series.

Eleven years ago today, Orel Hershiser pitched and Mickey Hatcher batted the Dodgers to a 5-2 Series-clinching victory at the Oakland Coliseum.

Who would have figured:

* That Hershiser, who had allowed five earned runs in his last 101 2/3 innings, would have enough left for such a masterpiece, a four-hitter, in the deciding game?

* That despite injuries to mainstays Kirk Gibson, Mike Scioscia, Mike Marshall and John Tudor, major contributions would come from Hatcher and Rick Dempsey.

* That Hatcher, out of a job in 1987 and with a total of 36 home runs in 10 seasons, would hit two as Gibson’s stand-in?

* That Oakland, winner of 104 games and with arguably baseball’s most fearsome lineup, would hit .177 and only two home runs? Or that Jose Canseco, with 42 home runs that season, would go one for 19? Or that 23 of the A’s 28 Series hits would be singles?

There really wasn’t any accounting for it.

Afterward, while the champagne was still being sprayed in the clubhouse, Manager Tom Lasorda wanted everyone to believe he’d sandbagged the Dodgers to the title.

“I planned it,” he shouted.

“I wanted people thinking this club was a bunch of patsies. I kept telling our players people believed they had no chance.

“This is, without a doubt, the greatest accomplishment of a team who didn’t have the greatest talent. This was greater, for me, than the ’81 team because we didn’t have that kind of talent.”

Also on this date: In 1975, the American Basketball Assn. agreed to disband the Baltimore Claws, who had never played a game. The move was required before the upstart league could merge with the NBA after the 1975-76 season. . . . In 1968, at Mexico City, Kenyan Kip Keino ran favored Jim Ryun into the ground as he won the 1,500-meter final, but U.S. track athletes finished the Games with 15 gold medals and 10 of the 14 world records set.