The Dodgers played a minimum-requirement game Tuesday night. A contending team, coming home after an off day, attempting to shed a losing streak, needs to be able to beat the Montreal Expos. Simple as that. There aren't many black-and-white, no-questions-asked moments in baseball, but this was one. Lose to the Expos and the consequence is severe: Doubts are raised.

The Diamondbacks had just finished off the Pirates and the Giants had just tossed four more at the Marlins when Orlando Cabrera ripped a three-run double off Jeff Shaw in the ninth inning. It turned a 1-0 game and a masterful pitching performance by Chan Ho Park (he's gradually ascending to the Curt Schilling-Kevin Brown level) into a gruesome, where-now kind of loss for the Dodgers.

It was the Dodgers' fifth loss in a row, and there are now more questions than answers. In fact, these games are famous for breeding awkwardly constructed postgame questions, and Shaw got one that began, "Anytime you let the leadoff man get on ..." It went no further before Shaw snapped, "I didn't let him get on. How can you say I let him get on? It was an infield single. He hit it off his hands and beat it out."

Shaw has 34 saves this season; the entire Expos' roster has two. The Dodgers turned five hits and 10 walks into one run, which earns them points for ingenuity if nothing else. (Graeme Lloyd got to hit, too, which sounds a lot more entertaining than it actually was.)

Dodger manager Jim Tracy held a pregame meeting to make sure his players understand their fate is in their own hands. "We don't need to look anywhere else but within the walls of our clubhouse," Tracy said afterward.

Said Shaw, "You can't say because we lost this game you're going to jump off a bridge. Not going to happen." Still, not even the persistently cheery work of Nancy B. on the Dodger Stadium organ could sugarcoat this one. They'll remember it. As a call to action or as a bad omen, one way or another, they'll remember it.

E-mail Tim Keown at tim.keown@espnmag.com.