  Photo courtesy of mlb.com Friday, July 23, 2004: This was the series both Los Angeles and San Diego have been anxious about this week, and now it's finally here. With the Padres in town, the Dodgers are in the midst of either making or breaking their National League division lead.
With the help of some friendly pitches and swingin' bats, tonight was worth the bitten nails. Dodgers class-act Jose Lima took the mound, resting the mighty bullpen by pitching eight full innings and only giving up two runs. On the other hand, Padres pitcher Brian Lawrence pitched seven innings and silenced the Blue Crew to just one run. To start the bottom of the eighth, Juan Encarnacion successfully drove the ball out to leftfield for a ground-rule double. Since one run was all they needed to tie the game, Alex Cora laid down a sacrifice bunt, fielded by pitcher Akinori Otsuka but thrown away as the ball sailed passed firstbaseman Mark Loretta. As Encarnacion scored from second, rightfielder Brian Giles committed an error as well on a bad throw towards second base on an attempt to keep Cora from advancing.
Due to the off-line throw, Cora stood on the thirdbase bag with no outs, and the twisted arms of the Padres' defense were noticeably on LA's side. 
