Padres Lose, 2-1, and Bowa Loses His Cool

And so the Padres proved once again that, when faced with a journey of miles and miles, it’s never the miles that get to you. It’s the inches.

The Padres, who had won 13 of 18 and looked up to find themselves still with 15 1/2 games between them and first place, paused Friday night to throw up their hands.

They lost to the Montreal Expos, 2-1, when Expo center fielder Herm Winningham saved two runs with a catch off his shoe polish.

When Winningham saved another run by throwing out Tim Flannery at home plate by Flannery’s sleeve.

When Benito Santiago lost a homer to left field by a piece of blue wall. Inches. They got to the Padres for 2 1/2 hours last night, and then they got to Manager Larry Bowa, who had been relatively calm during the Padres’ hot streak.

In his office afterward, Bowa was asked by Detroit News reporter Lynn Henning about the frustrating seventh inning, which included Santiago’s double-that-thought-it-was-a-homer.

“Was tonight the story of your season, because it seemed like you had it won?” Henning asked.

“How did we have it won?” Bowa asked.

“In the seventh inning there, with the line drives . . . “

“That’s a stupid question,” Bowa said. “What do you want me to do, sit those guys down because they hit line drives? That was a stupid question.”

“It was not,” Henning retorted, and that’s when Bowa’s temper smacked head-on with the roof.

He shouted, the writer answered back; he cursed, the writer cursed. Finally, Henning left the office, and for a second, Bowa calmed. But soon Bowa started raving again about stupid questions. He left the room for something and there was Henning, still in the clubhouse foyer.

Bowa walked down the clubhouse hallway, then turned and began screaming that Henning leave his office and leave the premises. Henning refused. Bowa kept screaming and approaching Henning, who was standing outside the office screaming back. Club personnel finally ushered the writer away.

The whole incident took fewer than five minutes, but you could have served breakfast on the Padres’ eyes.

“What was the question?” they kept asking the other reporters, lest they make the same mistake. “What was the question?”

The question is, how much can one poor season take?

The Padres outran (5-1 in stolen bases) and outplayed their hosts, but lost because of three plays that were out-of-sorts.

The major one came in the eighth inning, with two out and the Padres trailing, 2-1. They had Marvell Wynne on third (single, stolen base, wild pitch) and Tony Gwynn on second (intentional walk, stolen base). Reliever Jeff Parrett busted Carmelo Martinez with two fastballs to go up 0-and-2. He thought Martinez would be looking for another heater, so he came with a curve. He was wrong. Martinez was waiting, leaned out and lofted a bloop single to right-center and . . .

Wrong. Winningham chased it down, leaned over and caught it in a style best described as Surf and Turf.

With both Wynne and Gwynn running, if that ball fell, the score would be 3-2, Padres. It wasn’t. It never would be.

Winningham left the field to a standing ovation from the crowd of 21,193.

“I didn’t think he had a chance ,” said Martinez with a shake of his head. “I didn’t think he was near it. He came from nowhere. Nowhere.”

Winningham, who has done this sort of thing a couple of times since he came from the New York Mets in the Gary Carter deal before the 1985 season, found room for the catch in one sentence.

“That catch was the ballgame,” he said. “Period.”

Now for the exclamation point, which came in the first inning.

Against Expo starter Floyd Youmans, making his first appearance in 24 days, Flannery took immediate advantage by drawing a one-out walk and going to second on a wild pitch. On the next pitch, Gwynn singled to center. Flannery headed for home. Winningham picked up the ball on one bounce and made a less-than-great throw home, pulling catcher Mike Fitzgerald several feet up the third-base line. Fitzgerald was pulled to the approximate point of Flannery’s entry into a head-first slide. At the last second, Flannery tried to hook around him, but he was tagged by the flap of his sleeve.

“If I only could have seen him, seen the ball, I could have tried one of those fade-away, finger-roll slides,” said Flannery, only half-kidding. “The bad thing about it was, it was a perfect throw considering where I was, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Youmans was saved there, and then saved himself in a two-run Expo second inning. Padre starter Andy Hawkins, who pitched well overall by allowing only four hits in seven innings, pitched very poorly just once. Once was all it took.

After Hubie Brooks led off with a single and stole second on a high throw from Santiago, Hawkins walked Fitzgerald (.232) on four pitches. There were two out, and he went 1-and-2 on Youmans. But then he hung a slider and the ball ended up against the wall in left-center, both runs scored, and that was that.

Santiago made up for the throw in the seventh with an RBI double that clanged off the left-field fence a foot from the top. This was after John Kruk had singled and stolen his sixth base of the year.

“You can’t let any of that stuff out there get to you,” Hawkins said, wincing. “All I had to do was make one pitch. One pitch. If I don’t hang that slider . . . well, that’s the game.

“Sometimes that ball in center is two feet to the left of Winningham. Sometimes he can’t get to it. That’s just, I guess, the game.”

Padre Notes

What do the National League’s two leading hitters, in the heat of a summer race, say to each other? Oh, the usual. When Montreal’s Tim Raines (.373) spotted Tony Gwynn (.377) outside the batting cage before Friday’s game, Raines ran over and placed him in a headlock. “I see you got hot there,” he said to the NL’s Player of the Month for June. Gwynn just smiled. “I see you got hot there, too.” In his last 26 games, Gwynn is hitting .458. In his last 26 games, Raines is hitting .408. After meeting with Gwynn, Raines talked at length with Deacon Jones, the Padre batting coach and an old friend, behind the batting cage. “We just get on each other,” said Jones with a smile. “No, I don’t help him a lot because he’s on, you know, the enemy. But sometimes, you just point out something he already knows, that his own coach has already told him.”

Although Jones says it was no record, there were 14 players out for early batting practice Friday, arriving at the park about 2 p.m., a full 2 1/2 hours before the team bus left the hotel. By midseason on a losing ballclub, usually you can’t get a seat on that bus. “At first, I would be telling one or two guys to come out and hit,” Jones said. “Then guys started asking me. Now everybody just comes. Problem is, now we don’t have enough time (one hour) to let everybody get their cuts. And the coaches, our arms get too tired.” Early batting practice is worth watching if only because Manager Larry Bowa takes grounders at shortstop, moving around just enough so nobody will forget. . . . Although Gwynn is an incredible eighth on the All-Star balloting for outfielders, Bowa, who played in five All-Star games and was elected a starter twice, is not so quick to call for an end to the current selection method. “I think the fans should still vote, but I think somehow the managers and coaches should be counted in,” said Bowa, who calls Gwynn one of the three best outfielders in baseball. “The problem this year is us being in San Diego, and being in last place, and the people on the East Coast don’t ever see Tony in a box score or anything.”