Sutcliffe’s Not at Top Speed, but He Hurts the Padres Anyway

If Rick Sutcliffe is healthy, then so is John Henry. But they both have bad legs. They both can’t run. Sutcliffe, the Cub pitcher, should’ve had a hit on a slow ground ball Tuesday night, but since he would prefer not aggravate his leg injury, he never dropped his bat and ran to first at about 1/100th of his normal speed.

And this man beat the Padres.

Sutcliffe, saying “I obviously wasn’t 100 percent,” obviously didn’t need to be to beat the slumping Padres. San Diego lost to the Cubs, 8-1, their third straight loss. What’s more, the big bad scoreboard in right field showed that the Dodgers had won, which meant the Padres had fallen one and a half games back in this National League West horse race (That’s for you, John Henry).

And this normally would be of little value in July, but because of this Aug. 6 strike date, could time be running out?

The Cubs are playing that way. They trailed the St. Louis Cardinals by 6 1/2 games before Tuesday night’s game, and saw this series as imperative. While Sutcliffe got by with his breaking ball and changeup, Ryne Sandberg had four hits and Leon Durham had three, leading the Cubs to the victory.

The loser was Andy Hawkins, whose right index finger supposedly had healed. But Hawkins (12-3) gave up 10 hits and five runs in 5 innings. Tim Stoddard finished the sixth inning, but Ed Wojna finished the Padres, giving up two more runs in the eighth.

Tony Gwynn, who should’ve been smiling because of his three hits, was not.

“We lost,” he said. “And we can’t win without runs on the board.”

Sutcliffe (8-7), who has only been given 12 runs in his seven losses, had support this time. He needs it. He went on the disabled list May 20 with a left hamstring injury. And then, in July, hurt a muscle near his groin because he was compensating for the injury, again going on the disabled list. He came off that list today.

Frey has told him not to run the bases too hard. So he isn’t. But on a ground ball to Durham at first base, he sprinted over and covered the bag.

“I’ve got to make that play at first,” he said.

About his pitching?

“I wasn’t throwing my good hard slider,” he said. “I’ve got to make compensations. If that means more changeups and curveballs, that’s it.”

Hawkins’ right index finger, which had been bothering him for six weeks, had been pronounced almost fit after Hawkins’ six-hitter against Pittsburgh last week.

The key word is almost--because Hawkins struggled from the beginning Tuesday night, from the time Ryne Sandberg, second in the Cubs’ lineup, stepped to the plate and delivered a single to left in the first inning. The Cubs collected four hits in that first inning, which led to two runs. Before the inning was over, pitching coach Galen Cisco had been out to the mound.

Hawkins to Cisco: “I’m all right.”

But he wasn’t.

He was able to hold the Cubs scoreless in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings (despite three singles), but then he lost touch in the sixth.

The misery went like this:

--Leon Durham missed a double by a foot on a rocket off the wall in right center.

--Tim Flannery, normally a reliable fielder, committed an error, and Durham took third.

--Ron Cey was saying bye-bye to his latest slump after he scored Durham with a single. It was his first RBI since June 14, exactly 34 games ago.

--With runners on second and third, Larry Bowa, who tried bunting until there were two strikes, doubled to right. Tony Gwynn made a nice try at catching it, diving to his left. But he missed it. He banged his sore wrist. To make things worse, Jody Davis scored.

--Sutcliffe, although he couldn’t run, could hit. He hit a sharp fly ball to center that was caught, but scored Cey.

--Bob Dernier put down a perfect suicide bunt. Hawkins tried flipping the ball to the catcher, Terry Kennedy, but Kennedy couldn’t hold it, Bowa scoring.

--Sandberg, who had collected the first of 10 hits off Hawkins, walked on four pitches.

--Dick Williams came out and took the ball from Hawkins.

And out on the right-field scoreboard, it said: Dodgers 5, Pirates 0 in the fifth inning.

“You glance up there now and then,” Williams said when asked if he thought about the Dodgers during Padre games. “You’re always looking up to see the count anyway. It (the scoreboard) is right in front of us.”

And so are the Dodgers--one and a half games.

The Padres, as usual, had their chances. In the first, Steve Garvey singled and Graig Nettles doubled. But Terry Kennedy, after it’d been 3-and-0 in the count, struck out on a high fastball.

And in the second, Carmelo Martinez had led off with a single, but the Padres went down 1-2-3. And the first one to fall was Kevin McReynolds, who’d been 0-for-18 coming in. He struck out on three pitches. There were boos.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it,” McReynolds had said before the game. “And it’s one thing to think about it during the game, but once the game’s over, there are other parts of life besides baseball. But it weighs on the mind.”

He then said it was a worse slump than his first encounter in the major leagues, when he’d been called up from Las Vegas touted as a savior and only hit .176. He was sent down, called up again, and hit only .221. That was in 1983.

“For the two times I was up that year, I hit .220, but I was mixing hits in. Now, I’m not even getting close to mixing them in.”

But, then . . . he homered to left Tuesday night, a ball hit quite hard. The Padres’ only run.

“I’d like to call it a fastball,” Sutcliffe said. “But he (McReynolds) would probably call it a changeup.”

And then . . . McReynolds robbed Keith Moreland of a hit in left and then threw out Gary Woods for a double play.

Padre Notes

In response to last weekend’s trade rumors that the Padres were close to dealing for Pirate pitcher John Candelaria, Padre Manager Dick Williams said Tuesday: “He (Candelaria) has been on the market a long time. Like Jack (McKeon) said, if anyone was getting close to getting him, he’d have been dealt before the trade deadline.” Also, with the possibility of a players strike Aug. 6, Williams said: “If they do shut down, nothing (as far as trading) can be done. No maneuvers can be made. But there might be a hell of a lot when they come back.”