Padres Can’t Escape Haze, Stumble to 0-5

After hell week was extended for two more hours Saturday--yeah, they lost again--the Padres plodded into a visitors’ clubhouse filled with smoke. There was coughing and stumbling and wondering: Where was Joan Kroc, and was she carrying matches?

“Maybe it’s a sign,” said pitcher Mark Davis, his eyes red.

Of what?

“Does it matter?” Davis said. “We’ll take a sign of anything. “

Turns out it was nothing more than somebody accidentally setting fire to the postgame hamburgers. Maybe somebody who mistook them for a bat. The Padres scored just one run for the fourth consecutive game and were stoked again, 3-1, by the San Francisco Giants.

This means 0-5. Oh-for-1988. Oh me, oh my.

You thought last year’s start was bad? This ties it. This is one shy of the club record, set in 1974, when the Padres rebounded to win all of 60 games.

One game away from traveling to San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium for the first time this season, the Padres are playing like a team that doesn’t understand the meaning of the words tar and feathers.

If they don’t beat Dave Dravecky today--no big deal; he held the Dodgers to three hits in last week’s Giant opener--they are headed for the most unhealthy home opener in history. Welcome home, fellows, nice to see you 0 and 6. Who’s throwing out the ceremonial first catcall?

“Tell you what,” Tony Gwynn said to reporters, shaking his head while wringing a towel. “Just play back the tapes of Game 1, Game 2, Game 3, Game 4. Almost the same thing today.”

The only thing different is the adjective. In the four previous losses, they went through upset, agitated, flustered and distressed. After Saturday, add confused.

You see, they lost, but they out-hit an opponent for the first time this year (9-7). Better yet, they also had more hits than strikeouts (1) for the first time. Don’t laugh--they will take victories where they can get them.

Two Padre pitchers--Mark Grant and Mark Davis--allowed just seven hits. And in the field, the Padres continued their season-long errorless streak--five consecutive errorless games is four shy of the club record--and made several great catches.

Although before they were several minor-league classifications away from victory, Saturday’s loss came down to something new. One hit or one pitch.

At the beginning, with two Padres on base in the first inning, Keith Moreland lined a shot to left that was caught.

In the game’s middle, while spreading out six hits, Grant allowed runs on two pitches, home-run balls to Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell.

The game ended when, with two more Padres on base, Benito Santiago hit a sharp grounder up the middle that died in the infamous six inches of infield grass and was picked up by shortstop Jose Uribe for a double play.

“A couple of times after a great play, there was this feeling on the bench like, ‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ ” said Davis, who struck out the side in his one inning. “But then, boom, a ball to the wall was caught. Boom, a grounder was caught.

“Can’t we hit the fence just once? Can’t we get through the grass just once? We kept saying, ‘Damn, can’t we catch a break?’ ”

Thus the feeling is now confused, but that is certainly preferable to suicidal and certainly more digestible than the gloom that settled over Friday night’s fourth consecutive loss, a 5-1 stinker.

“On Friday, we were as down as any team I’ve been on,” Moreland said. “But today, I don’t know, we kind of came out of it. We didn’t make any mistakes, and we all busted our butts. I know it’s not a win, and it means nothing, but I think we’re going to get out of it.”

Moreland was part of a veteran contingent that spoke to the team before Saturday’s game in an impromptu 10-minute meeting held around a clubhouse picnic table. The message: Stop trying so hard.

“It was a great meeting. It got everyone relaxed,” said Gwynn, who broke an 0-for-11 slump with a homer and single. “I know myself, I was starting to wonder. But now I see it’s getting closer and closer.”

Manager Larry Bowa agreed. When is the last time you heard him say he would rest easy, even after a win?

“I could see today, every guy is busting his butt. There ain’t one guy out there dogging it, and I can sleep with that,” Bowa said. “Our hitters can’t guide the ball. There’s only so much you can do.”

For the first time this season, Padre hitters were hacking. Giant ace Rick Reuschel needed only three pitches to get out of one inning, five pitches in another and six pitches in another. In 8 innings, he threw just 80 pitches.

“I can’t blame our hitters for that,” Bowa said. “If you wait for his first pitch, you are down one strike. If you wait two pitches, you are down two strikes.”

Such hacking led to Gwynn’s third-inning homer, which moved the Padres within 2-1. It also led to Gwynn’s sixth-inning single, which was followed by a Randy Ready single, which set up one of those lousy Padre breaks. With two out, Moreland hit a fly ball to deep left center. At the wall, it was caught by Brett Butler.

“I thought it was gone, honest,” Moreland said.

“I was screaming,” Tim Flannery said. “I knew it was out of here, and we had finally gotten the break. And it wasn’t.”

Such Giant catches nullified a diving Moreland catch. And a diving Gwynn catch. And Santiago’s unusual double-play on a steal attempt, which many Padres thought was another turning point.

With one out in the second, because of a missed bunt sign by Reuschel, Uribe was caught between first and second, and Chris Speier was caught between second and third. Santiago ran down Speier all the way from home plate, throwing to Flannery for the tag at third, and Flannery then threw to Randy Ready for the tag at second.

“We were out of the inning, and I thought, this was the break we finally needed,” Davis said. “We were over the edge. We thought.”

Yes indeed, they may be, but in a much different way. Did you know that only 4% of teams that have ever won three or fewer of their first 10 games have come back to win a pennant?

Padre Notes

Although the nine hits actually improved the Padres’ batting average from .185 to .204, Stanley Jefferson remains in a slump that is becoming legendary. The only Padre regular yet to get a hit this year, he is 0 for 5. Dating back to the end of last season, he is 1 for 6, and 0 for 31 with men on base. “Nothing goes right, nothing,” Jefferson said. “I don’t know what I have to do.” . . . Injured pitcher Dave Leiper threw 10 minutes of batting practice Saturday and afterward declared, “I felt good, the best I’ve felt since this (elbow tendinitis) first happened.” He should return this week . . . Third baseman Chris Brown did not start for a second consecutive day, even though he is uninjured and has two of the club’s six extra-base hits. The Padres are still upset at his three-strikeout show Thursday, in which he was brushed back in his first at-bat by Giant pitcher Mike Krukow and proceeded to wildly swing or bail out on every ensuing pitch. Brown said he wants to play and said he would meet with Bowa if he was not in the lineup today.