With Gossage Gone, Stoddard Gets Call and Padres Get Loss

With Goose Gossage on his way back to San Diego with a knee injury, Padre reliever Tim Stoddard was on the spot again Wednesday night. The score was tied in the 10th inning. Boom! Terry Harper doubled to left. Wham! Pinch-hitter Gerald Perry scored him with a single.

Braves 5, Padres 4.

After another loss, Tim Stoddard finally lost his wondrous sense of humor. But how could this happen? In Montreal, he’d lost a game and said: “What do you want me do? Jump in front of le subway?” In Chicago, he’d lost a game and said: “And I’m sure I’ll stink again.”

Wednesday, Stoddard had no comment.

“Write what you want,” he said. “I ain’t got nothing to say.”

What happened to the jokes, to the subways?

“It (losing) is getting old now,” he said.

He left to be alone, to be quiet. Elsewhere, there was silence, too. Seemingly, against a mediocre team such as the Braves (44-55, fifth place), the Padres had a chance to get well. Owner Ted Turner had said publicly the day before that it was “the first time since I’ve owned the team that the club has taken a substantial step backward.” And during Wednesday’s game, Atlanta Manager Eddie Haas and reliever Bruce Sutter were booed heavily.

“Who’d they boo more?” Sutter asked Haas afterward. “You or me?”

Still, the Padres, who can’t hit, can’t win. They scrounged up four runs the hard way, hitting and running and sacrificing. But without Gossage, it was hopeless.

Gossage, who has pitched with an injury to his right knee for over a month, flew back to San Diego Wednesday night when the knee swelled and became too painful to ignore.

Padre trainer Dick Dent said, “I suspect cartilage,” but more will be learned today when Dr. Cliff Colwell examines Gossage at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla.

Manager Dick Williams said Colwell will decide either to drain the knee, to perform arthroscopic surgery or send Gossage back to the Padres immediately.

“How long he’s out depends on what Cliff does,” Dent said. “But he’ll be back before the season’s over. No matter what he (Colwell) does, he’ll be ready for the stretch run.”

Gossage was unavailable for comment Wednesday, but he told teammates he injured the knee slipping off the mound at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium in early June. At the time, he walked around the clubhouse with the knee wrapped, but would only say: “Oh, it’s an old injury.” Since there was no swelling, Padre officials figured he could pitch.

But the knee swelled Tuesday night after Gossage threw two scoreless innings of relief against the Braves and the swelling increased overnight. He was sent home on a 7:30 p.m. flight.

Williams, asked who his short reliever would be, said: “We’ll play whoever does the best. If someone’s not doing it, we’ll go to someone else. The most logical guy would be (Craig) Lefferts. And the next guy in line would be Roy Lee (Jackson).”

Jackson, who earned his first save as a Padre Tuesday night, replaced starter Dave Dravecky with the score tied 3-3 in the eighth.

Dale Murphy homered on his first pitch.

Bob Horner singled.

Terry Harper singled, Horner taking third.

Craig Lefferts came in to replace Jackson and retired the side, but Manager Dick Williams had to pinch-hit for Lefferts in the ninth. Jerry Royster, having gone from first to third on Tony Gwynn’s single (he’d been running on the pitch), scored the tying run on a Steve Garvey ground out to third. The third baseman, Ken Oberkfell, threw to first to get Garvey, and Royster took off, beating Horner’s throw and Rick Cerone’s tag.

Enter Stoddard.

End game.

“I hope he (Goose) is all right,” catcher Terry Kennedy said after the game. “If it is serious, I’d rather he take care of himself than worry about us. I don’t want him to hurt his arm overcompensating for the injury.

“But he’s the single-most important player on the club. Without him, it’d be a tough road to hoe, or a tougher road to hoe. This club wasn’t much different before we got him, but we didn’t win. You’ve got to have a stopper. If you don’t, you just can’t do it.”

Williams, in a bit of a cranky mood, isn’t talking to Atlanta reporters and broadcasters because of the way they treated him after last year’s brawl here. He did speak to everyone else (albeit briefly) and said it wasn’t entirely the bullpen’s fault Wednesday night.

“We had chances offensively, but didn’t get the job done,” he said. “It wasn’t just the relief pitching.”

One play stands out. With the score 3-3 in the eighth, the Padres had runners on first and third with one out. Kevin McReynolds was up. Williams put on the squeeze play on a 1-1 pitch from Jeff Dedmon, but McReynolds’ bunt attempt bounced foul. The Padres never scored that inning.

“A perfect ball to bunt,” Williams said.

Sutter started the ninth and gave up three hits and a run. Since he has now blown seven save attempts in his last 15 chances, he was was booed viciously. But he escaped when Kurt Bevacqua grounded out with two outs and a man on second. Stoddard yielded a hit in the bottom of the ninth, but he, too, escaped when Horner grounded out with a runner on second.

Still, in Stoddard’s last three appearances, he’s lost each time in extra innings--4-3 to Chicago in 10 innings on July 24, 2-1 to St. Louis in 12 innings on July 26 and then Wednesday night.

It’s another loss, but, apparently, it isn’t funny anymore.

Padre Notes

Padre starter Dave Dravecky threw seven innings of five-hit baseball. He left with the score tied, 3-3, and none of the Brave runs had been earned. . . . The Brave starter was rookie Joe Johnson, who lasted six innings. Johnson was struggling at Double-A this year, but was called up to Triple-A because of injuries. His manager at Richmond, Bruce Dal Canton, changed the way Johnson threw a slider, and Johnson wound up going 7-1. He was called up to Atlanta when Pascuel Perez was absent from the team. . . . Terry Forster, the star from “Late Night With David Letterman,” gave up two hits and no runs in 1 innings Wednesday night, but when he was replaced in the middle of the eighth, he hurled his glove into the dugout. . . . Brave Manager Eddie Haas on the booing:”You don’t hear much. You’re wrapped up in the game” . . . Padre catcher Bruce Bochy, with the Padres trailing 4-3, led off the ninth with a hit against the fence in left field. But Terry Harper threw him out as he tried for a double. “Everybody knows I’m not a blazer,” Bochy said. . . . Stats:Tony Gwynn, with three hits Wednesday, is hitting .305. Dravecky’s ERA is 2.14.