The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 58

Cos Angeles (Simes 6 Part III Friday, April 21, 1989 A Giant Miracle Is Happening in San Francisco ONDECK San Francisco, Dodger Stadium, 3 games TV channel, tonight only. Radio KABC (790), KWKW (1330). Team records Dodgers 7-8. Giants 9-6. Record vs.

Giants 1-2. Dodger update Although they have scored more than three runs just once in this home stand, the Dodgers are within a game of .500 because of their exceptional pitching. The Dodger staff is working on consecutive shutouts, the first by the team since John Tudor, Orel Hershiser and Tim Belcher each threw one last September. Hershiser is starting for the first time since coming out of last Saturday's win against Houston with a twinge in his pitching elbow. He insists he is OK.

Giant update Reliever Craig Lefferts, who sprints from the bullpen to the mound faster than any relief pitcher in the league, has retired 29 straight batters. He set down all seven Dodgers he faced in the Giants' 8-3 win in San Francisco on April 1 1 The Giants were 3-6 last season in Dodger Stadium. Will Clark had seven hits, including two doubles and a home run, against the Dodgers in Candlestick Park last week. Pitching matchups Giants' Kelly Downs (2-1) vs. Orel Hershiser (2-1) tonight at Scott Garrelts (2-0) vs.

Tim Leary (2-1) Saturday at 7 p.m., and Rick Reuschel (3-1) vs. Fernando Valenzuela (0-2) Sunday at 1 p.m. cally to help them to the division championship, he did just that. He went 6-2 with a 2.68 ERA after the seven -player deal July 4. In the 1987 playoffs against the Eastern champion St.

Louis Cardinals, he tied a league championship series record in Game 2 for fewest hits allowed, pitching a two-hit, 5-0 shutout at Busch Stadium. A year later he was thinking about that game while watching Orel Hershiser celebrate the Dodgers' World Series championship on television. He was just a couple of weeks out of surgery. His left arm throbbed and, oddly enough, his right leg was in pain because of a second emergency operation that was required to restore blood flow there after Dravecky lay on the leg during nine hours of his first surgery. "But if I sat just right, I could get comfortable, and that's how I was able to watch Orel," Dravecky says.

"I knew he was out there celebrating and thanking God and, for a moment, I thought, you know, I'm never going to be able to do that again." If you're looking for a vulnerable moment in this story, that's it. That as weepy as Dravecky will get. Although the cancer was a surprise, the lump wasn't. Dravecky discovered it in September of 1987. In the ensuing year, several doctors glanced at it, but it was causing no pain and no treatment was required.

Then, late last summer, while rehabilitating a separate shoulder injury, he realized the tumor had grown. "It was like a little golf ball," Dravecky says. "You could see it plain as day." After the operation, Dravecky spent the winter watching the snow fall and answering the dozens of phone calls and letters from teammates and friends. He said he remembers them all, but one in particular. "Just a letter from a man who I didn't know and didn't know me," Dravecky says.

"The man said he also had this type of cancer. Had it 16 years ago. It was a good letter to get." Dravecky Survives Cancer, Plans to Pitch This Season By BILLPLASCHKE. Times Staff Writer SAN FRANCISCO The word miracle rarely pops up among the tobacco stains and caked dirt that go with major league baseball. The season is too long, the ball too small, the players too human.

All of which makes special what is happening here, where the otherwise sane men of the San Francisco Giants are spreading the word as if it were pine tar. "That the man is even in uniform, that's a miracle," pitcher Mike Krukow says. "I get chills just talking about it." Says pitcher Craig Lefferts: "Anybody will tell you, there's no way that man should be doing what he's doing. But he's doing it. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a miracle." In the Giants' clubhouse at Candlestick Park, the man they are discussing has the corner locker.

He is pitcher Dave Dravecky. He has cancer. Or had cancer. Part of this nightmare is that he's not sure. "How should I say it?" Dravecky, 34, asked idly.

"I know I've just had cancer. And if it comes back, I guess I'll have cancer. But what about now? "I just know there has been an alien in my body, and it might come back, and it might not. I guess how I say that is really not important." What is important, Dravecky has shown without saying, is that he is here, six months after having had a "low-grade malignant" tumor removed from the upper part of his left pitching arm. Six months after that operation also took 50 of his deltoid muscle, which helps raise the arm and is one of the chief muscles used in pitching.

He is in uniform six months after his surgeon, George Muschler of the Cleveland (Ohio) Clinic, told of 1 9 Associated Press Dave Dravecky has bounced back from cancer surgery and hopes to pitch later this year. him he had "zero percent" chance of ever taking the mound again. Dravecky hopes to pitch again by midseason. Said Muschler: "Our biggest hope, to be honest, was that he would one day be able to play ball in the back yard with his kids." Muschler said he was able to extract all of the tumor, that Dravecky is in no danger. But Muschler also warns that there is a "50 chance" of such tumors returning.

Yet Dravecky, every day, is stretching No. 43 across a slightly overweight body and working every imaginable part of that body to compensate for what it no longer has. And yes, he has started throwing. Every other day, for 10 minutes that can seem like 10 hours, he throws from a mound. Says Lefferts: "The physical therapist told me that all fitness tests show he's got no arm strength, that he should not be able to throw the way he's throwing." "Imagine that," Krukow mar- National League Roundup PUP-150 'amafan IS sec onos-pef 'page Soecii half ton Send-later capability 125-numoer autodiaier UF-620 260 250150140 fay ri nn 821 E- lmi1- Gltiriili rAA ULUD mil osr.som www vtiuw KINGS LAKERS TICKETS WANTED TOP PAID (213) 629-2158 EQUITY TICKETS 900 WILSHIRE BL.

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Dravecky says his arm feels naked, and will probably always feel naked. "Half of my deltoid is gone, and it's not coming back," Dravecky said. "There can be no transplants, and it will not grow back. It's gone, and that's it. I'm at 50 arm strength, period." Which may lead you to believe that the odds against his ever pitching in a big league game again are considerable.

Yet, the way Dravecky figures it, how can you figure odds on something you've already beaten? So he is celebrating his survival of the surgery by trying to prove that one reason he survived was to pitch again. His daily 10-hour routine that takes him to therapist, to clubhouse trainers' room, to field to home, as fruitless as it may seem, is his own victory tour. "It's a miracle of God that I'm game losing streak by beating the Braves at Atlanta. The Astros trailed, 3-2, when Glenn Davis started the rally with a walk off Jim Acker and took second on a sacrifice by Rafael Ramirez. Bass greeted Paul Assenmacher (0-1) with a run-scoring double and went to third on a wild pitch.

Craig Biggio grounded to third base, but the ball went through Gant's legs. The victory went to Danny Darwin (1-0), and Dave Smith finished for his second save. Philadelphia 9, Pittsburgh 4 Von Hayes hit a two-run homer, and Mike Schmidt doubled twice to break the Phillies' club record for career hits as the Phillies downed 1702 CAPRI CUDDY Great 'economy, ski performance and overnight accommodations for lockable cabin, stereo, swim Mets Add to From Associated Press Gregg Jefferies broke a l-for-28 slump with a game -tying single, and Mookie Wilson's grounder scored the go-ahead run in the seventh inning as the New York Mets beat Chicago, 4-3, Thursday night, sending the Cubs to their fourth straight defeat. Dwight Gooden (3-0) allowed four hits in seven innings to get the victory, and Roger McDowell finished for his first save. Andre Dawson gave the Cubs a 3-0 lead with a two-run double in the first inning and a run -scoring single in the third.

Met right fielder Darryl Strawberry was forced to leave in the third inning because of stiffness in able to be here," Dravecky says. "So I owe God 120 of my effort to come back on the field. That's the bottom line." Dravecky deals with his cancer the way he deals with its scar, which covers several inches of his upper arm. Ask to see it, and he pulls up his left sleeve and smiles. Says Krukow: "First time I saw the scar, he pulls up the sleeve and starts smiling and talking about how he's going to pitch again.

I have to turn my head. I can't bear to look at it, and he's talking about pitching again." This attitude mirrors his career which, although lacking overly impressive statistics he has a 62-57 record and a 3.13 earned-run average is better known for one specific talent. Dravecky is a big-game pitcher. Witness the 1984 playoffs and World Series with the San Diego Padres, during which he threw 10 scoreless innings. Then, after he was acquired by San Francisco in a mid-season 1987 trade, specifi a 4-3 Victory the Pirates at Pittsburgh.

Ex-Dodger Ken Howell (2-0) allowed four runs and three hits in six innings to get the victory, before Greg Harris pitched two scoreless innings and Todd Froh-wirth finished up. 28-70 ZOOM MACRO tW1IKL OUR VIDEO DEPT. I 2jr I 1 CJ I savei I 111 ICfS xfyir Pvlr -7ft 1 i Pilir A. I tsr SAVE '51 7 WM-TO I his right shoulder. St.

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