Garvey Uses His Head to Help the Padres, 2-0 : Bat Also Plays Role in Win Over Cardinals

We take you to the pragmatic world of Steve Garvey, who not only played first base during San Diego’s 2-0 victory over St. Louis Saturday, but thought about it, too.

Time: Third inning. Place: First base, of course. No score, but the Cardinals have a man on. The Padres have lost six straight and the fans are cranky. They boo. Garvey, who realizes this is detrimental to the Padre psyche, is seething inside, wondering if something can be done to bring the crowd and the team alive.

A ground ball comes his way. He throws to second for the out, but Danny Cox, a St. Louis Cardinal pitcher, sways a little bit out of the baseline to break up the double play. But it’s not flagrant. Still, Garvey, ever the opportunist, argues with second base umpire Lee Weyer.

What? Steve Garvey arguing? The fans cheer.

“I thought it was a good time to pick up the energy level,” Garvey said, admitting it was all basically an act. “I hated to use Lee, but you’ve got to do those things. It’s so easy to say ‘Here we go again.’ If nothing happens, and all of a sudden, it’s the eighth inning, we’re saying ‘Oh oh. We might lose again.’ You heard them (cheer). They know Steve Garvey doesn’t say anything unless he knows he’s right.”

But the Garv wasn’t through.

In the sixth inning, Tony Gwynn is on first and Garvey is at the plate. Gwynn runs on the first pitch and Garvey hits it down the right-field line, the ball bounding toward the corner. Right fielder Andy Van Slyke, thinking he has a chance to get Gwynn at the plate, tries to cut it off, but accidentally lets it roll by. Gwynn scores, and Garvey stands on third with a triple. He pumps a fist. He’s smiling that million-dollar smile.

The fans cheer. Garvey then scores the second Padre run on a Graig Nettles single.

“The fans were down, still,” he would say later of his triple. “They’re wondering what’s going on? This is a championship team? They had a right to be disappointed. But we’ve got to get the 10th player working sometimes.”

And so this is The Garv, and what he can do for a baseball team. Isn’t it all so very schmultzy? But it’s him. He might not be fast, nor his throwing arm strong. But he thinks. Exactly one month ago Saturday, the Padres had been six games in front of the Dodgers. Now, they had fallen 4 1/2 back, and he’d noticed a waning team attitude.

He thought about it. And he acted.

Of course, it wasn’t just Garvey on Saturday. Andy Hawkins certainly played a role in it all, too. The Padres finally ended their six-game losing streak because Hawkins (13-3) went 8 innings, yielding just four hits. His only nemesis was his control, and after he walked Van Slyke in the ninth, Manager Dick Williams brought Goose Gossage in for the save.

What did Hawkins do right to stop the Cardinals, who’d won six straight? For one, he kept Vince Coleman (69 steals) and Willie McGee (37 steals) off the bases. In the last two Padre losses, Coleman and McGee, the No. 1 and 2 hitters in the St. Louis lineup, had gone 6 for 19 with three runs. Saturday, they were 1 for 8.

Hawkins had planned it that way.

Strategy Against Coleman--”I had to rock him in and out,” Hawkins said. “I changed speeds on him. He’s not ever going to drive the ball, I don’t think. The last thing you want to do is walk him. With him, a walk is a triple.”

Just to show how conscious the Padres were of his speed, Coleman hit two routine grounders to second baseman Tim Flannery, yet Flannery treated the ball as a hot potato, getting it out of his glove to Garvey in a flash.

Strategy Against McGee--”I’d crowd him a little,” Hawkins said. “He hit a fastball down the pipe (for a single) in the first, but I made better pitches after that. A slider. A cut fastball.”

Still, McGee got the Padres in the field, robbing Bobby Brown (who’d replaced Carmelo Martinez in left) of a potential triple in the fifth. McGee ran about 40 yards to his left to catch it, his momentum carrying him 15 yards further into the fence.

Yet, Hawkins did walk five batters and escaped unharmed mainly because there were a season-high five Padre double plays. And against the Cardinals, that’s semi-amazing considering St. Louis hitters had only been doubled up 50 times before Saturday, the National League low.

And it was appropriate that the last out came on a throw to first base, to Garvey. There was heavy celebrating after that. Gwynn came running out of the clubhouse minutes later, saying: “Way to go Padres! I knew we were going to win again.”

Meanwhile, Garvey, a hero once again, was off doing some postgame radio show.

“You can’t imagine how great a feeling it was to be on a postgame show,” he said. “Those are the little things you miss when you’re losing.”

Padre Notes Tony Gwynn, who scored what proved to be the winning run, reached base on a fielding error by Jack Clark, who later said he’d waited for the ground ball to come up, but was ruined when it never did. Gwynn then planned to steal second on the first pitch from Danny Cox. “I told myself to run on the first pitch, to make something happen,” Gwynn said. “I felt like if we were going to win, we’d have to make things happen. We’ve been sitting around.” So Gwynn ran. Steve Garvey swung at the pitch and ended up with a triple. . . . The Padres showed a Goose Gossage video on the scoreboard here, and the accompanying tune was called “Bad to the Bone.” . . . Thursday’s catastrophe remembered (the Padres blew a 6-0 lead)--Gossage: “I went home that night and thought about it, and that game reminded me of one of my kids’ T-ball games.” Said Garvey: “The sky opened up, and the win evaporated on us.” . . . Batting news: Garry Templeton, who went 2 for 3 on Saturday is hitting .352 (31 for 88) in his last 27 games. . . . Kevin McReynolds, who went 0 for 3 Saturday, is 2 for 35 since the All-Star break. His average has fallen to .233.

PADRES AT A GLANCE

Scorecard SIXTH INNING Padres--With one out, Gwynn reached on Clark’s fielding error. Garvey tripled to right, Gwynn scoring. Nettles singled to right, Garvey scoring. Kennedy flied to left. Brown grounded to second. Two runs (one unearned), two hits, one left.