Braves Quiet Padres, Crowd With 4-2 Win

While a regular-season record crowd of 54,732 was busy doing the wave, Atlanta’s Ken Oberkfell waved bye-bye to the Padres Saturday night with a three-run sixth-inning homer that secured a 4-2 Brave victory.

The crowd had been cheering at the crack of Oberkfell’s bat, but suddenly realized the magnitude of the blast and grew silent.

San Diego, suddenly trailing, 4-0, could not recover, though Graig Nettles’ hit one of Rick Mahler’s junk balls for two-run single in the seventh. But Mahler (6-5), who throws nearly every kind of breaking pitch, continued to shut down the Padres. He was then replaced in the eighth by lefty reliever Paul Assenmacher--Atlanta’s new Bruce Sutter--who ran his consecutive scoreless streak to 13 innings and earned his sixth save.

The Padres, still stranding runners every chance they get, lost for the eighth time in 11 games.

“I’m thinking about shaking up the lineup a little and running some left-handed batters out there Sunday,” Manager Steve Boros said. “I’ll sleep on it and see what I come up with in the morning. . . . I seem to be saying the same things every night. I still think we can hit.”

Loser LaMarr Hoyt (2-3) rarely is wild, but he walked six batters, a career high. He has 17 walks this season, and he had all of 20 last year. He says he isn’t concerned about walks any longer, because in the past, he would be so concerned about throwing strikes, he’d throw gopher balls (in other words, too many home runs).

But the home run got him anyway. The Braves had led, 1-0, on Glenn Hubbard’s second-inning RBI single, and, then in the sixth, Hoyt gave up a single to Mahler and walked Omar Moreno.

Oberkfell fell behind 1 and 2 in the count.

The crowd got up and waved.

Pow! A Hoyt breaking ball got up.

“I wasn’t trying for a home run,” said Oberkfell, who has three homers this year. “I never do. Except in exhibition games. If I try to hit home runs, I’ll mess my whole swing up. I’m a line-drive hitter.”

Hoyt had avoided catastrophe so many times Saturday. In the first five innings, Atlanta--now 28-26 and 2 1/2 out of first place--stranded nine. There were runners every inning, but Hoyt struck out Gerald Perry to end the first, struck out Moreno to end the second, got a good double-play throw to the plate from Steve Garvey to end the third, got Oberkfell to fly out to end the fourth and got Ozzie Virgil to ground out to end the fifth.

Still, 1-0.

Other than center fielder Marvell Wynne--whose two hits and three RBIs Friday night earned him a start Saturday--Padre bats took the night off, though four long fly balls were caught on the warning track.

Saturday, Wynne had two singles and a seventh-inning double that set up Nettles’ RBI single. Tim Flannery’s ensuing walk got Nettles in scoring position in the seventh inning, but Bip Roberts grounded Mahler’s first junk ball to first base to end the rally.

“Yeah, I’m seeing the ball real good now,” Wynne said. “I’m not swinging at bad pitches.”

Garvey singled in the eighth, but was stranded at first. In the ninth, Assenmacher finally got Wynne out, but then former Brave Jerry Royster singled. Assenmacher, who was pitching in A ball at this time last year, struck out Garry Templeton and Dane Iorg to end the game.

“Way to go baby!” Brave Manager Chuck Tanner yelled to Assenmacher. Tanner’s the guy who turned Goose Gossage into a reliever, and Assenmacher also is a starter turned ender. After pitching some A ball last year, he moved to Double-A, then spent the winter in the Dominican Republic and improved.

“Cinderella story, huh?” he said.

The Braves originally signed him because they needed a lefty to fill out their rookie team.

“Incredible story, huh?” he said.

Really, this game was so calm.

On Thursday and Friday, umpire Charlie Williams had ejected two players and Boros, so Boros asked third base coach Jack Krol to deliver the lineup card to the umpires. Krol went out there, stood right next to Williams, who said nothing to Krol or anyone.

Before the game, Krol had wondered what to do: “I might bring a bag of video cassettes, plus a mini-cam (he giggled because Boros had been tossed for bringing out a taped replay of the call Williams supposedly missed). He’d probably laugh. No, maybe not. I think I’ll have some fun. I’ll try to crack a joke or something.”

Many of the Padres were, anyhow. Catcher Terry Kennedy said: “You know why Steve (Boros) got thrown out? He brought out a VHS tape, and Charlie said: ‘Hell, I don’t use VHS. I have Beta!’ ”

Unfortunately for San Diego this was a replay of so many previous games.

“Anything would be dull after the last two nights,” Boros said. “But this was too dull, especially on our part.”

Padre Notes When he last pitched Monday in New York, LaMarr Hoyt was burdened with worry. Having earlier spent 30 days in rehabilitation with an alleged alcohol problem, he had to meet with Commissioner Peter Ueberroth the next day and he didn’t want to go. “A lot of things happen to you in life, and you feel uncertain,” said Hoyt, explaining his apprehension. “You get caught in precarious situations and, hell, the next thing you know you’re suspended from baseball. I had spoken to the (players’) association before I went, and they said there were all kind of approaches he (Ueberroth) could take.” But it was nothing at all. Hoyt said he left the 10- to 15-minute meeting feeling “really upbeat, really good about the whole thing. . . . I don’t want it to sound like he did me any favors, but he just let me know exactly where I stood in his eyes and in the eyes of baseball. He seemed genuinely concerned about me as a person, about my welfare, about my frame of mind. He told me I was one of the star players in the game whether I liked it or not, that people look up to me, and I should understand that and shouldn’t do anything to embarrass myself or baseball. I just wish it had happened before I pitched (Hoyt lost, 11-2). I was nervous while I pitched. I must say I wasn’t happy about having a meeting.” . . . Dave Dravecky’s reign as team player representative lasted one day. Tim Flannery has replaced him. In Friday night’s team meeting, players kept saying: “C’mon, Flann. Take the job!” But Flannery backed off, and Dravecky won the election. But Flannery saw Dravecky looking spacey-eyed during Friday’s game. “He’s in the last year of his contract, you know,” said Flannery, who has three years remaining on his. “He has a lot of things on his mind. So I said, ‘Davey, if you don’t want it, I’ll do it.’ He said he appreciated that.”