Padres’ Dozen Leaves Egg on Dodgers’ Faces : On Helmet Night at San Diego, Hershiser and Los Angeles Get Shelled, 12-0

Among the enterprises bearing Steve Garvey’s name is the selling of Orel Hershiser, the Dodger pitcher who signed last winter with the Garvey Marketing Group.

Garvey could have used himself as Exhibit A in extolling Hershiser’s virtues: With one hit and seven strikeouts in 20 at-bats against Hershiser, if Garv couldn’t hit him, who could?

For Exhibit B, Garvey could have tossed in Padre teammate Graig Nettles, who had just two hits in 15 at-bats.

But that all changed Saturday night, when the Padres sullied Hershiser’s image and did wonders for their own with a 12-0 win before a Helmet Night crowd of 40,785 at Jack Murphy Stadium.

With Eric Show throwing a three-hitter until his shoulder tightened on him in the eighth inning, the loss matched the Dodgers’ worst in the 18 seasons they’ve been playing the Padres. They also lost to San Diego, 12-0, on July 30, 1984.

Garvey delivered the first insult with a double over the head of center fielder Ken Landreaux that broke a scoreless tie in the fourth. Two innings later, after Hershiser’s own faulty footwork had him dancing with disaster, Nettles dropped the curtain on him with a three-run, opposite-field home run.

The Padres then teed off on Ed Vande Berg, whose reputation already was shaky, with Tony Gwynn hitting a two-run triple and Kevin McReynolds hitting a two-run homer, his 12th, in a four-run outburst in the seventh.

And for good measure, they poured it on Alejandro Pena with four more runs in the eighth, Gwynn driving in one with his second double of the night, pinch-hitter Dane Iorg singling home two and Garry Templeton singling home the other.

The Dodgers, who had won four in a row, started the night with a chance to reach .500 for the first time since May 25. Instead, they wound up dropping back into a fourth-place tie with the Padres, six games behind the Houston Astros in the National League West.

“This has been a strange eight or nine days,” said Gwynn, who had three extra-base hits in a game for the first time this season and raised his average to .339, putting him in a tie with the Montreal Expos’ Hubie Brooks for the league lead.

“Garv gets booted from a game, Steve (Boros) gets booted for the videotape, we have a seven-run lead (against Houston) and they come back to tie it. . . . Yelling at umpires, yelling at people in the stands, things you normally wouldn’t do.”

The reason for the aberrant behavior?

“Bad play,” Gwynn said. “We’re frustrated by the way we’re playing, and you do things you normally wouldn’t do.

“We’ve been playing terrible, and we’ve got to do something about it. Tonight, we did, and hopefully we will again tomorrow.”

June has been unkind not only to the Padres, who had lost 10 of their last 14 games, but also to Hershiser. The Dodger pitcher is 0-2 with an 8.10 earned-run average in three starts this month. Overall, he is 5-5 and hasn’t won since May 25.

“I’m concerned because I’m not contributing to the team,” Hershiser said. “I think I’ll turn it around, but I’m ready to get out of June.

“I’ve had four bad starts in a row for the first time. If I pitch another 10, 12, 15 years, I’ll probably have a few more slumps, but hopefully this will end pretty soon.”

For a while, it appeared that it would end Saturday, as Hershiser set down the first 10 Padres, seven on ground balls. But Gwynn doubled to center on a ball that Landreaux fielded and then slipped before throwing the ball into the infield.

Garvey then followed by rifling a 400-foot liner to left-center that momentarily appeared catchable, but not by Landreaux.

Garvey is batting .087 (2 for 23) against his opponent-client.

“I like to face him, it’s just the outcome I don’t like,” Garvey said. “I just keep trying different things.

“He didn’t throw that badly. I thought he’d throw a few more breaking balls, but he mainly stuck with his sinker. The ball I hit, I got it before it went down--that was the key.”

The screw turned in the fifth, when Tim Flannery opened the inning with a grounder to Dodger first baseman Greg Brock, who flipped to Hershiser for what should have been an easy out if Hershiser had stepped on the bag. He didn’t.

“I caught the ball and tried to look for the bag, but I was already by it,” Hershiser said. “I’d run too far.”

Hershiser was an out away from getting out of trouble, retiring Gwynn and Garvey around a walk to Kevin McReynolds. But then he threw a pitch that went too far as Nettles, who came into the game batting .207, lined his ninth home run of the season over the fence in left.

“A terrible pitch,” Hershiser said. “A 2-and-1 count, I threw a high fastball. I went strength against strength, and I made a bad pitch.

“Sure, if I make the play at first, he doesn’t come to bat. But you’ve got to live with your mistakes and make better pitches. I didn’t.”

The Padres had a season-high 15 hits.

“We haven’t been hitting the ball as a team,” Gwynn said. “This is the first time all season that we’ve strung together some innings. Maybe we’ll start to wake up our bats and get something going.

“And Eric pitched a great game. I don’t think we’ve had a guy go seven innings like that in a long time.”

Dodger Notes Is this the year that Fernando Valenzuela wins 20 games for the first time in his career? Only Houston’s Bob Knepper has more wins (10) than Valenzuela, who is 9-4 and leads the league in innings pitched (116) and complete games (9), is tied with Knepper for most shutouts (3) and is second to Houston’s Mike Scott in strikeouts (103 to Scott’s 122). “He could win 27,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said, “if his arm stays strong. I’ve seen a lot of good pitchers in my day, when a game got in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings, they’d look for help. A couple-run lead, and they’d want help. This guy, he’s amazing. He goes to the post. That’s what makes him a great pitcher, such a consistently great pitcher.” . . . Lasorda jokingly said that it was a national holiday in Mexico after Valenzuela and catcher Alex Trevino became what is believed to be the first all-Mexican battery in big league history. But Trevino suspects his native country was preoccupied with other matters. “They’ve got the World Cup (soccer),” he said. “I’m sure they weren’t paying much attention. But the Dodgers are Mexico’s team.” . . . Padre pitcher LaMarr Hoyt, who has made two appearances out of the bullpen, is back in the starting rotation. He’s scheduled to face the Giants here Tuesday night. . . . With right-hander Orel Hershiser pitching for the Dodgers, Graig Nettles was back at third base for the Padres.