Dodgers' growing pains lead to champagne

LOS ANGELES -- In the midst of the Los Angeles Dodgers' wild champagne celebration, a dripping Manny Ramirez had a message for future postseason opponents.

"We did it once," the dreadlocked slugger screamed. "Believe me, we can do it again."

The way they dominated the long-suffering Chicago Cubs in their NL division series, the Dodgers certainly appear to have what it takes to beat anyone, starting with the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL championship series.

"We had nothing to lose," Ramirez said after Los Angeles completed its three-game sweep of the Cubs with a 3-1 victory Saturday night at Dodger Stadium. "We got in and we were underdogs, now we're going to the second round."

The Dodgers and Phillies open the best-of-seven NLCS on Thursday in Philadelphia, with the winner going to the World Series.

"We had a lot of people doubting us all year," first-year Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. "We weren't resentful about it. It was just the fact we haven't really played well enough to get anybody's attention."

That was certainly the case following a 9-3 loss Aug. 29 at Arizona, the Dodgers' eighth straight setback. That left them with a 65-70 record and 4 1/2 games behind the NL West-leading Arizona Diamondbacks.

A complete turnaround began the following two days, when the Dodgers beat Arizona aces Dan Haren and Brandon Webb to trigger an eight-game winning streak, putting them atop their division for good.

"We learned a lot about ourselves during that eight-game losing streak and we came together," third baseman Casey Blake said. "I think we found out what we were made of."

They won 19 of their final 27 games to give them momentum entering the postseason, and then came a surprising sweep of the favored Cubs.

"We struggled to find out who we were for a long period of time," Torre said. "If it wasn't for pitching, it would have been tough to keep guys' interest, trust me, because we weren't putting many numbers up."

That changed in late July, when the Dodgers acquired free-agents-to-be Blake from Cleveland and Ramirez from Boston. But everything didn't fall into place until the end of August.

Ramirez changed the entire dynamic of the Dodgers, on and off the field. He batted .396 with 17 homers and 53 RBIs in 53 regular-season games with Los Angeles and loosened up the clubhouse.

Ramirez was 5-for-10 with two homers, three RBIs and scored five runs against the Cubs.

The Cubs, in search of their first World Series triumph since 1908, won an NL-leading 97 games to the Dodgers' 84. But Los Angeles was far superior in all aspects in their playoff series, starting with a 20-6 advantage in runs scored.

"We made it easy, didn't we?" Jeff Kent said. "When you have a long layoff and you get yourself into the playoffs, anything can happen. We ended up playing some teams with losing records at the end of September and we gained confidence from all that."