Still, he can't bring himself to take anything too seriously when it comes to baseball at Coors Field. He just can't.

"This is the only place in baseball where a bad game effects me none," said Lowe, who wasn't the only Dodgers player having a bad game in Wednesday night's 7-2 loss to the Rockies. "I think if you play here 81 games and you can't hit here, you should quit. The altitude has something to do with it, but it's not really baseball."

Lowe did offer a solution to his problems at Coors Field -- become Brad Penny.

"Look at Penny here and how a power pitcher does and how a four-seam-sinker pitcher does," he said. "Penny's [ERA] under one [actually 4-1 with a 3.60] and mine is way above one [2-2 with a 4.84] -- far different results. I look forward to getting back to sea level."

Lowe didn't make it out of the fifth inning, and the last pitch he threw nearly resulted in his beheading, a screaming liner off the bat of personal tormenter Brad Hawpe (10-for-20 lifetime) that missed Lowe's noggin by inches and left him sprawled across the mound on his belly, all 6-foot-6 of him.

"That was the last straw Grady needed to see, and off I went," Lowe said of his removal by manager Grady Little after 96 pitches and 4 2/3 innings.

"We've had better days," said Little, who sent out a lineup to support Lowe that was, let's say, different. He sat 39-year-olds Jeff Kent and Luis Gonzalez, along with catcher Russell Martin. Brady Clark had two hits and an RBI in Gonzalez's place, and Ramon Martinez had a single filling in for Kent at second, while Mike Lieberthal went 0-for-4 and did it from Kent's cleanup spot.

With Thursday's day game following Wednesday's night game, Little felt the seniors had to miss one of the games, and their success against Thursday starter Aaron Cook forced the manager's hand. He also wanted Martin to catch Mark Hendrickson, who makes his first start of the season Thursday in place of the injured Jason Schmidt.

The Dodgers committed two official fielding errors and outfielders threw to the wrong base at least that many times, but the biggest play was a bases-loaded bouncing single in the fourth inning by Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba.

Right fielder Andre Ethier airmailed his throw to the backstop, and Lowe, who initially broke to cover first, failed to change direction and wasn't there to back up the throw, which kicked back toward the Rockies' first-base dugout. It was retrieved by Lieberthal, whose futile flip home was handled by first baseman Nomar Garciaparra, who got there after ranging far to his right chasing the ball off the bat.

"That one play was the killer," said Little. "It was just messed up from the get-go. There was nothing pretty about it."

Lowe, who has a 6.45 ERA in his last four Coors Field starts, issued two of his three walks that inning and walks in Coors Field are a highway to disaster. As early as Lowe went out, Rockies starter Rodrigo Lopez bagged it an inning earlier after aggravating his balky elbow, but four Rockies relievers allowed one run over five innings.

Ethier had a busy game, tripling and scoring one Dodgers run and gunning down a runner at third base. The Dodgers cut the deficit to 3-2 in the fifth inning, but all they could get out of a bases-loaded, no-out opportunity was Lowe's sacrifice fly.

Colorado scored twice in the bottom of the fifth to chase Lowe, then added two more runs in the seventh off Rudy Seanez.

"We were right into the game until it was 7-2," said Juan Pierre, who began his career with Colorado and had two hits in this game. "At 5-2 here it's like a 1-0 game."

Which gets back to Lowe's point. Because of the thin air, the park was designed with the fences deep enough so routine flies wouldn't be home runs. The problem is, there's too much real estate for three outfielders to cover, so many balls that would be caught in other parks fall untouched or roll forever in this one.

"I've seen my share of pitchers fight the altitude," said Pierre. "It's a crazy place, man. They've got the humidor [where balls are stored in sea-level conditions] and that evens the score a little bit. I was around when the games were 12-10, 15-12 every night. If you got your starter to go five [innings], that was pretty good."

Although Lowe couldn't, Little used only two relievers, Seanez and Chin-hui Tsao, the replacement on the roster for Schmidt, who made his Dodgers debut against his former club with 1 1/3 scoreless innings.