Baby Zach sliding home. This has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was cute.

Baby Zach sliding home. This has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was cute.

So we pick up half a game without even playing yesterday. As we head to Denver, we are only 3½ games behind Arizona. Wow! Who woulda thunk it?

My husband is going through past years of L.A. Times Sports sections to find photos from which to create his baseball haiku paintings, and he keeps reminding me of all the players we had at one time or another. Remember Ronnie Belliard? How about Juan Rivera? Olmedo Saenz, Vicente Padilla, Brad Ausmus? I always really liked the two Blakes, Casey and De Witt. And who could ever forget Man-Ram, certainly not the man-crush smitten T.J. Simers?

I think the guys we have now are, with a few exceptions, really great. Solid, hard-working players with no egomaniacal histrionics, at least as far as the fans know. I loved seeing Matt Kemp teasing Yasiel Puig after the game Sunday. He and Andre Ethier, after the outfield’s victorious triple chest bump, pushed Puig away playfully, and they all looked like frolicking puppies. It is getting fun to root for them now that they seem to be gelling as a team.

So there is only one thing left to say: GO DODGERS!

Series StatsThere is no logic in baseball. Look at those series stats. On paper, they out-hit us, out-scored us and played better defense. We should not have taken three of four games from the Philadelphia Phillies. But we did.

The Dodgers won a completely comfortable 6-1 victory yesterday, and they all looked relaxed and playful while they were doing it. The problem for the Phillies was that ⅔ of their runs and 40% of their hits were all in the one blowout game on Friday night, whereas the Dodgers spread things out among the other three games. That’s what I’m talking about.

Only four games from the top at the halfway point. Not bad (even though it still is last place). But the momentum of the entire division has shifted, and we are making our move.

I wish the management weren’t such money-grubbing bastards. The Top Deck is and always has been the people’s perch, the home of the truest of True Blue fans. But they have monetized it to where it’s almost as elite as Field Level. What a shame. I’d be going to the ballpark every night to root on this team.

Shortstop Hanley Ramirez roars his mightiest after scoring the walk-off winning run.

Shortstop Hanley Ramirez roars his mightiest after scoring the walk-off winning run.

It didn’t look good after blunders in the top of the ninth tied the game at 3. I bet the whole outfield and Kenley Jansen were feeling more heat than even the sweltering temperatures warranted. But for some reason, I was sure we were going to score in the bottom of the inning. I just had a feeling that it would be all right.

Catcher A.J. Ellis is hoisted aloft by right-fielder Yasiel Puig after hitting the walk-off RBI single that made fans forget Puig's ninth-inning blunder.

Catcher A.J. Ellis is hoisted aloft by right-fielder Yasiel Puig after hitting the walk-off RBI single that made fans forget Puig’s ninth-inning error.

And it was! Hanley Ramirez singled on the first pitch off Phillies reliever Justin De Fratus, and a couple batters later, A.J. Ellis did his usual schtick of seeing many pitches and then slamming one down the line into right field. It was a beautiful thing. And outfielders Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp and Yasiel Puig led the assault on the hero after he made their ninth-inning miscues meaningless.

So with that 4-3 win over the Phillies, the Dodgers move to only five games out of first place. A week earlier, it was 9½, so they have made up considerable ground by playing like the team they should have been from the start.

Let’s keep it up, guys!