Well, it had to happen at some point...

The Dodgers needed someone to literally put them on his back and carry them to a victory. That's exactly why they acquired Manny Ramirez.

Manny was 3-4 with 2 homers and a double to power the Dodgers past the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6-2. The win FINALLY breaks that way-too-long losing streak of 8 games, and pushes them to within 3.5 games of the DBacks in the NL West.

The game was billed as a great pitching matchup between Chad Billingsley and Dan Haren, but Haren was the one who didn't live up to his end. It was scoreless until the 3rd when Manny hit a solo shot with 2 down. The DBacks responded with an RBI triple by Chris Young to knot the game at 1.

From there, the Dodgers' bats actually took over (yes, I did just say that). Matt Kemp, hitting in the #5 spot, singled and stole 2nd, then went to 3rd on Casey Blake's single. Angel Berroa scored Kemp on an infield single to take the lead, and Blake also scored on Stephen Drew's error. That made it 3-1.

They got on the board again when Manny doubled with 1 down in the 5th. Following an out, Kemp smacked his 16th home run of the year for the 5-1 lead. The scoring was closed in the 7th with Manny's 29th shot.

While Haren got knocked around for 5 runs off of 10 hits in 6 innings, Billingsley was awesome. He went 7 IP, 9 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 6 K. The 6 K's pushed him just above Haren for 2nd in the NL at strikeouts with 177 to Haren's 176 (Tim Lincecum is blowing them out with 210... whoa). Hong-Chih Kuo was great in his 2 innings of scoreless ball, K'ing 5.

It was an overall team effort that was sorely lacking the last 2 weeks. It's just 1 win out of 9 games, so it's not like everything is ok, but it had to start somewhere. They needed their best player and pitcher to step up, and that certainly happened.

Tonight is another ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game, where the Dodgers are 0-3 this season. Last week they were on against the Phillies, and they blew the lead in the 9th and lost in extras. It's Derek Lowe vs. Brandon Webb, so it's a big game. No NFL yet, so I'm sure more people will be checking this one out. Can the Dodgers play solidly and show everyone they're not done yet?