Garvey’s Home Run Gives Padres First Victory and Bowa Some Relief

The phone rang. It was Pete Rose, not the President.

Rose said: “You feel better?”

Larry Bowa said: “Yeah. . . . A lot.”

So get the mantelpiece ready, because here comes a game ball. Bowa, the Padre manager, got victory No. 1, which means he’ll sleep for once. The Padres defeated the Cincinnati Reds, 5-2, Sunday, ending their five-game season-opening losing streak. It was 13 straight losses if you count spring training, and Bowa does.

And their five-game whining streak is over as well, for this had been a cranky group. On the excursion to San Francisco and Cincinnati, there had been team meetings, team tantrums and so on. Basically, though, it was Bowa whining the most. He was worried about what people thought of him. Here he was, in his first big league job, and he was 0 for 5.

Finally, Steve Garvey--who had been 0 for 14 until Saturday--unleashed a three-run homer in the first inning, and there was hope.

Finally, Ed Whitson--1 for his last 9 as a Padre pitcher--looked like the 1984 Ed Whitson, as he found his slider, went six strong innings and escaped from two jams. There was more hope.

Finally, Kevin Mitchell--who had no home runs--led off the ninth with one, and the Padres had more than hope; they had a 4-2 lead and a chance. Then John Kruk added an RBI double.

Finally, a Padre reliever earned a save. It was Lance McCullers, who set down Eric Davis, Buddy Bell and Bo Diaz 1-2-3 in the ninth. Bowa ran straight for the mound, shook a hand, any hand, and then found the game ball.

“With one out to go, I said, ‘If we get this out, I’m getting the ball,’ ” Bowa said. “Then Pete looked over to say ‘There’s your first one.’ And I said, ‘We still need one more out.’. . ..

“Phew. I knew it would be hard to be successful, but not that hard to win a game. . . . That’s like a 10,000-pound weight off my neck. . . . It’s going to make the food taste better, the bed feel better. These have been the most miserable days of my life. I know there’s going to be another five-game losing streak, but our timing wasn’t real good, like right out of the chute. Right out of the gate, people are saying, ‘Look at these guys.’ ”

When the team arrived in Cincinnati, someone had pasted Bowa’s picture to a clubhouse door with the caption: “Sleep much?”

And, no, he hadn’t slept much.

“You can count (the hours of sleep) on one hand,” he said.

“I say it’s time to go to sleep, and I wake up and it’s 4:30, quarter-to-five, and I’m trying to make out another lineup.”

The lineup he made out for Sunday’s game was interesting. Against left-hander Guy Hoffman (7-0 career record in day games), Bowa inserted left-handed-hitting Tim Flannery at second base. Why? Part of it is Flannery’s personality--which is uplifting, to say the least.

“It’s nothing against Joey (Cora, the normal second baseman), but he (Flannery) has got that makeup that gets people fired up,” Bowa said. “I don’t know what it is about him. He reminds me a lot of me, is what he does.”

Flannery went hitless, but the Padres are no longer winless.

“Whether he got any hits or not, he did what he was supposed to do,” Bowa said.

Will he stay with Flannery, his good-luck charm?

“I’ll see what happens tomorrow when I wake up,” Bowa said. “If I wake up.”

Flannery wouldn’t mind being back in the lineup for tonight’s home opener against the Giants.

“I’d love it,” he said. “I don’t expect it. After what happened this spring (Cora won the job), I don’t know what they are doing. But I got to play once a week, just to keep from going crazy. I love playing. I need the fix.”

As for Garvey, the home run couldn’t have come at a better time.

“You have a lot of pride,” he said of being in a slump. “You’re determined. But I’ve been playing too long to get down on myself.”

A bigger home run may have been Mitchell’s, which came in the ninth off reliever Ron Robinson. It barely cleared the right-field fence, and when the former Met arrived at home plate, he looked up and saw . . .

An entire team standing up and applauding in the dugout.

“It felt like the World Series again,” he said. “It was like in New York.”

Bowa gave him the first high-five.

“I hadn’t done that in two weeks,” Bowa said.

Whitson got a few handshakes when he stranded runners on third in the fifth and sixth innings. In the fifth, Leo Garcia was on third when Whitson struck out the dangerous Kal Daniels with two out. And he did it with a slider.

In the sixth, Davis was on third when Whitson struck out the dangerous Diaz with two out. And he did that with a slider too.

“The two biggest outs of the game,” Whitson said. “That’s what I call money pitches. Last year, I couldn’t throw sliders for strikes when I needed it. My confidence was shot. But this spring has been positive. Let’s keep it this way.”

So now they come home conquering heroes.

“If we had lost today, it would have been terrible,” said right fielder Tony Gwynn. “It would have been our home opener, and the fans would have been down on us. We would have been down on us. . . . But I bet we go home and play our best game of the year. Just being home, just being relaxed, just not being in a hotel room. Today’s win was so big, I can’t explain it.”

Bowa tried.

He held up his game ball. “I got it,” he said. “I got it.”

Padre Notes

Cincinnati shortstop Barry Larkin hyperextended his left knee Sunday when he was taken out on a double play by Padre center fielder Stan Jefferson and had to be carried off on a stretcher. “I’m more upset than hurt,” Larkin said later. “I was behind the bag. He jumped over the bag and hit me in the knee. I’ll be jumping from now on.” . . . Jefferson, by the way, was limping around afterward on his ankle, the same one he hurt March 30 in Palm Springs. It had swelled to the size of a tennis ball, and he said he’s not sure how much longer he can go on it. He asked to come out in the eighth inning, but Bowa told him, “We don’t have anyone else.” So he played. Bowa thinks playing on the artificial turf here may have aggravated it.