mound

“We expect a great, boisterous crowd. We have one of our aces on the mound. So the way we’re playing, we want to put these guys away and don’t let them up for air.”

As the Dodgers infielders gathered at the mound and Alex Vesia entered from the bullpen, Betts thought back to a play he had participated in once, in an August game against the Angels.

Today, sizable mounds of horse manure dot Warm Springs, a remote area along the eastern edge of Mono Lake that Marquart had raised the alarm about during his tenure.

He worked the fourth and fifth innings, left the mound with the Dodgers down by five runs, and quietly asked the plate umpire for a baseball on his way out.

The four pitchers the Dodgers used all spent time away from the mound this season.