Kruk Lifts Padres to 3-2 Victory

In a season of insults, a season in which the Padres were even jeered from the back of their commercial aircraft Sunday night, John Kruk has stopped listening.

“They always say that if a hitter can’t pull the ball, he’s not a man,” said Kruk, the Padres’ first baseman. “Well, OK. I’m not a man.”

On Sunday, Kruk had enough satisfaction from a two-out, ninth-inning home run to beat the Montreal Expos, 3-2.

The hit, on a 3-and-0 fastball from reliever Jeff Parrett, carried to the deepest part of left-center field. Kruk is a left-handed hitter. In dugout parlance, that means the ball went to the opposite field, which is opposite of what baseball coaches teach.

But Kruk has hit all 12 of his career big-league homers to the opposite field. This includes eight this year, with two in his last seven at-bats.

Then there was this page from Kruk’s Sunday Primer: “It being a 3-and-0 pitch with nobody on base, if I walk, it would have taken an extra-base hit to score me. So I figured, what the heck, go ahead and go for it. I just closed my eyes and swung and hoped it fell somewhere.”

When Kruk opened his eyes, he saw a team that finally beat the Expos here in its sixth and final chance. Now it’s on to Chicago, where the Padres have yet to beat the Cubs in three tries.

“It seems like everything we did here goes wrong,” Manager Larry Bowa said. “We could finally use some luck.”

That wasn’t the case with Kruk.

“I’ve tried going to right field and it just doesn’t work,” he said. “The first day this spring, Tony (Gwynn) said it was obvious that my power was to the opposite field, and that I should try to work everything in that direction, that I should stay within myself.”

Also following that advice Sunday was Goose Gossage, who in less than 24 hours, after getting his first loss on a ninth-inning homer by Hubie Brooks, got his first victory with two shutout innings. This included striking out the side in the eighth, the third time in 24 innings he’s accomplished that.

“That really shows us something, him coming back like that,” said Kruk, 26. “Now, that’s what a man’s made of.”