GRAVEYARD SHIFT: 2 EARLIER DEFEATS : Dodgers Manage to Lose Both Games as Doubleheader Ends After 3 A.M.

ST. LOUIS — Steve Sax was standing in front of his locker, methodically peeling off layers of uniform and occasionally wiping a hand across the 3 o’clock shadow covering his jaw.

Elsewhere in the Dodger clubhouse, players moved slowly about the room, and it was so quiet you could hear Manager Tom Lasorda eating in his office.

It was difficult to determine whether it was weariness from playing until 3:02 a.m., CDT, here Wednesday morning or depression caused by squandering leads in both games of a doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals that had the Dodgers in such a somber mood.

Most likely, it was both.

“I’m just dead,” Sax said. “I just want to sleep all day. But I can’t. We’ve got another doubleheader in a few hours.”

Indeed, a long and counterproductive Tuesday night for the Dodgers ran on into the early hours Wednesday morning. Then, they were back at Busch Stadium Wednesday afternoon for two more games.

The scheduled 5:35 p.m., CDT, start for the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader was delayed by rain until 7:57. The first game ended at 10:48, the Dodgers commiting three consecutive errors in the seventh inning that resulted in two runs and a 5-4 Cardinal win.

Game 2 began at 11:14 p.m. and ended at 3:02 a.m. with another 5-4 Cardinal win, this time in 10 innings. The Dodgers had a 4-2 lead in the bottom of the ninth with Matt Young, their best short reliever, on the mound. But Young gave up a two-run home run to light-hitting Steve Lake to send the game into extra innings.

In the 10th, Ken Howell, the only reliever Lasorda had not used in the doubleheader, gave up a single to center field by Jack Clark, scoring Tom Lawless from second base.

The loss in the first game gave the Dodgers a 37-44 record at the halfway point in the season. The loss in the second game suggested that their prospects for the second half are not much better.

“This just shows what lapses can do to a club,” Mike Marshall said. “Both defensive and offensive lapses tonight. It’s not just one or two of us. We’re all to blame. It’s a team effort.

“We’ve lost a lot of games like that. We’ll lose a lot more, too, if something doesn’t change.”

Lasorda was not in a mood to talk about the events on the field--”You saw what happened,” he said--but he touched upon the lateness of the hour.

“This is ridiculous, playing at three in the morning,” he said. “These guys (Dodger players) got to the park at 2 or 3 o’clock (Tuesday afternoon). They (the Cardinals) had the same thing, so I’m not saying that’s why we lost.”

There was little chance that Tuesday night’s second game would be canceled, because the Cardinals would be deprived of a home game. This was the Dodgers’ last trip to St. Louis this season, and the game would have been made up in Los Angeles later this month.