Padres’ Victory Clinches a Tie for Third Place

There used to be pennant fever here, but since there isn’t anymore and since the Padre front office has a wonderful sense of humor, they used their Diamond Vision screen to show Toronto’s Lloyd Moseby drop the fly ball that gave the Yankees an important victory Friday night.

The San Diego crowd, rather disinterested in its own little game, squealed and laughed, but it’s unfortunate they didn’t recognize how important this little Padre game was.

We’re talking third place.

We’re talking two grand per man.

So, by winning 4-3 Friday night, the Padres assured themselves a tie for third place in the NL West, and that also means their magic number is now down to one. They can clinch today.

“I’m serious,” Jerry Royster said of the playoff tension. “If you hung around here (the clubhouse) for 15 minutes, you’d hear guys talking about it.”

He means it. The Padres led, 4-0, in the eighth after RBIs from Carmelo Martinez and Kurt Bevacqua and a two-run homer by Mario Ramirez. But reliever Lance McCullers, who had been honored prior to the game as the Padres’ top rookie, gave up three runs (including homers by Kevin Bass and Phil Garner), and suddenly it was a one-run game. Dick Williams, sensing the importance of it all and sensing that maybe, just maybe McCullers had let all the success go to his head, called for Goose Gossage.

“We’re trying to get a lock on third,” Williams would say later. “It may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but to the coaches, players and front office . . . well, it’s a matter of pride.”

And money, but we’ll get to that later. Anyway, Gossage came in, retired the side in the eighth and did it again in the ninth. The crowd of 11,210 screamed “Goooooose,” and everyone went home happy.

Now, about that money. Players will say that third place is important because it sounds a lot better than fourth place, and this is true especially when you’ve been to the World Series the prior season. But money is money. Player representative Terry Kennedy explained that there’s a player’s pool that comes courtesy of gate receipts from the first four playoff games in each league and the first four World Series games. The teams that finish in third place in each division split 2 1/2% of that player’s pool.

About two grand:

--Steve Garvey: “That’s just two more that would figure into the budget.”

--Royster: “That’ll get us to Squaw Valley.”

--Tim Flannery: “We’re playing for Maui money. I’m saying: ‘C’mon guys, I need Maui money.’ That’s good money for me. Two grand is two grand.”

--Kennedy: “Just because we make a ton of money doesn’t mean we don’t have pride, nor does it mean we don’t want more money.”

--Greg Booker (who makes the minimum of $60,000 a year): “Any money is important to me. I take what I can get.”

--Tony Gwynn: “I don’t know what the others will do, but I put it in the bank.”

Still, it’s not really fair to say everyone went home happy, for McCullers was in a sad and bad mood after yielding those home runs. The ceremony before the game was touching. They had called him out to receive his award as the top rookie and then honored him with a music video, showing some of his personal highlights to the song “The Kid is Hot Tonight.”

Then he posed with his boss, Jack McKeon, for a nice photo.

Later, after he’d flopped, McCullers didn’t care to talk, but Garvey, a man for all emotions, picked the perfect time to perk him up. The Garv walked over with a present, a framed poster of newspaper clippings from the day after McCullers’ successful major league debut.

“McCullers Is Super” was the essence of all the headlines.

Said Garvey: “Forget about tonight. Just enjoy this (the poster). It’ll probably be worth $1,000. All you’ve got to do is sign it.”

Padre Notes

Kevin McReynolds fouled a ball off of his foot during batting practice Friday night and did not play. He was replaced by Bobby Brown in center field. Later X-rays were negative.