Lowe is riding high

NEW YORK -- Rick Monday, the former flag-saving outfielder and Dodger broadcaster, glanced at Derek Lowe sprawled across a sofa in the visitors' clubhouse at Shea Stadium yesterday and shook his head.

``Derek," Monday said, ``is an oil painting on concrete."

What that actually means, of course, is open to conjecture. A piece of work? To be sure. A work of art? Well, if so, you probably couldn't, or wouldn't, hang him on a museum wall.

There is enough there, however, to appeal to the discerning eye of manager Grady Little, who had Lowe in Boston, has him again in Los Angeles, and can't imagine a prettier scenario than having Lowe on the mound tonight for the opening game of the National League Division Series against the New York Mets.

``This is his time of the year -- the playoff season is his time of the year," Little said of Lowe, who won 9 of his last 10 decisions to finish the season 16-8 and was due to face Orlando Hernandez of the Mets, until El Duque hurt a calf muscle while jogging in the Shea Stadium outfield yesterday and is now a major question mark to start tonight.

That decision, the Mets said, will be made in the morning.

For Little, the decision to go with Lowe was made over the weekend, when the manager elected to hold off on starting Lowe Sunday in San Francisco, even though it meant risking a possible division title. The Dodgers won that day but still lost the division to the San Diego Padres, settling for the wild-card spot and a Game 1 nod for Lowe, a decision by Little that had a much more satisfying outcome than the last time he was called on to decide how a pitcher should be used in October.

Lowe, of course, was just as much at ease talking about the circumstances of Little's firing in Boston as he was about the wager he'd made with Doug Mirabelli that he'd finish the season with a higher batting average than the Sox backup catcher. ``I would have had him, too," complained Lowe, whose .094 average was 97 points below the .191 average with which Mirabelli finished the season, ``if I'd gotten a couple more hits in my last start."

Little, Lowe said, was deserving of a return to the postseason stage for the first time since 2003, when he was dismissed by the Red Sox after a Game 7 ALCS loss to the Yankees in which his decision to stick with Pedro Martínez was given the Buckner treatment in Boston.

``Players on that team kind of saw what he was going through the last two months," said Lowe, who in the interim may have heard the story that Sox owner John W. Henry was said to have mused aloud that instead of saying, ``I'm going to Disneyland," he planned to say, ``I'm firing Grady Little."

``I firmly believe that if we would have won the World Series, I think he still would have gotten fired. It was an unfortunate way for him to go. My belief and a lot of people's belief was he was going to be let go, no matter what."

A year later, without Little, Lowe was in the same position he finds himself now, on the eve of another postseason, only in 2004, Lowe was convinced he was regarded no better than the 12th man on a 12-man staff. Instead, Lowe pulled off a historic trifecta -- winning the clinching game in the Division Series against the Angels, the ALCS against the Yankees, and the World Series against the Cardinals.

The circumstances, while seemingly so different -- the Dodgers are placing far more faith in Lowe than Terry Francona did at the time -- are really not so different, Lowe said.

``You know, they're almost the same," he said. ``You're still out there to try to prove yourself. In '04, I was out to prove that I was worthy of even getting an opportunity to start.

``Every playoff game has pressure. Game 3 against Anaheim was a freak thing. I came in by default because I was the last guy and [David] Ortiz hit a home run.

``This is a different type of pressure. Five-game series, Game 1 is very important because you really haven't got that much time to make up.

``This year, you're out to try to prove to yourself and your organization that you can go out there and pitch a Game 1 and get your team a win on the road."

Lowe had some proving to do in Los Angeles, where he'd signed a four-year, $36 million contract as a free agent after the 2004 season, then went out and had a losing record (12-15, 3.61), went through a high-profile divorce case, and had a publicity-spawning affair with a TV sports reporter that admittedly caused him to lose focus. It also was revealed that he was taking medication for attention deficit disorder, a practice that had begun back in Boston, and that required a special dispensation from the commissioner's office.

``You're not eating, you're not sleeping -- the stress of the whole thing," he said in an interview last spring. ``It was a tough situation. I talked about this 24-7, and the guys were great about listening to me, but eventually they got tired of it. I alienated myself from the team. People knew I was having a bad day and they didn't look at me, they didn't want to talk to me."

Things had supposedly stabilized personally this season, but still Lowe was just 7-5 with a 3.88 ERA at the All-Star break. His attention still occasionally drifted, to the point that on one occasion, rookie catcher Russell Martin came to the mound and announced that he wasn't leaving until Lowe pulled himself together.

He did just that, especially after realizing he'd gotten away from his trademark sinker and was throwing his cut fastball too much.

In the season's last two months, Lowe went 8-1 with a 2.39 ERA. That included a three-inning win in relief in a 16-inning game against the Reds, and an extraordinarily efficient outing against the Brewers in which he threw just 79 pitches while allowing only one unearned run on three hits in eight innings.

He threw a career-high 218 innings, tied Brad Penny for most wins on the staff, and was ninth in the league with a 3.63 ERA.

And now he's back on the big stage, just missing what would have been, for Sox fans, a nightmarish matchup against Pedro Martínez, who already had been scratched from the postseason even before it was announced that he will need surgery on his right shoulder, an operation scheduled for tomorrow.

``People in Boston say, `See, they made the right decision to get rid of him,' " Lowe said. ``But maybe if they'd kept him, they wouldn't have been swept from the playoffs in three games last year. And who knows what would have happened this year?

``Knowing the competitor he is, I know it's killing him inside."