It Gets Wilder for Padres : Bizarre Commonplace as Expos Win, 6-2

Fifth inning, Padres trailing the Montreal Expos by one run, Expo runners on first and third. Padre pitcher Ed Whitson winds up and begins his delivery to Tim Wallach and--oh, no--his spikes are caught in the dirt in front of the mound. He’s off balance and falling and . . . look out, he’s pitching it anyway.

“I have to pitch it,” Whitson said. “If I stop right there and don’t pitch, it’s a balk, and the run scores.”

This then, is what the Padres have become: a wild pitch the approximate height of a small office building. A wild pitch that sails directly from Whitson’s hand to the backstop net.

A wild pitch so incredibly wild that catcher Benito Santiago thought it was a dead ball. While Santiago stood there and stared in astonishment at Whitson, not only did Tim Raines score from third base, but Mitch Webster went all the way from first to third.

A couple of pitches later, Webster scored on a fly ball that would not have scored him if he had stopped at second. It proved to be the killing run in the Expos’ 6-2 victory in front of a paid crowd of 10,586 at Olympic Stadium.

For the second consecutive night, many of the Padres saw something they had never seen before.

“Or will ever see again,” pitching coach Pat Dobson predicted.

He paused.

“Well, maybe I better not say that.”

Perhaps not. The Padres lost for the second consecutive night and the 14th time in 16 games on the road. This is a record so poor that the Padres have the same number of road wins as the Baltimore Orioles.

This is a record so poor that the last time the Padres won on the road was the last time third baseman Chris Brown got a hit--May 7 in Pittsburgh.

Speaking of which, while standing in the infield during batting practice Wednesday, Brown was plopped above the eye by a bouncing relay toss from Mark Parent. He crumpled and was helped off the field, and the man who has missed 14 consecutive starts with tendinitis and other injuries may not play for who knows how long.

(The pain later moved from above Brown’s right eye to his right cheek, and doctors diagnosed it as a bruised tooth root. Brown, who spent the game with an ice bag on his cheek, is listed as day-to-day.)

“This,” proclaimed Whitson, “has been the craziest damn year.”

He was mainly speaking of his craziest pitch, which essentially put the Padres to sleep after they had taken a 2-1 lead in the third on Marvell Wynne’s RBI single, then lost that lead on three consecutive Expo hits off Whitson in the fourth. But Whitson retired the last three batters that inning and entered the fifth still looking strong.

Up stepped Raines, who sent a single up the middle. Up stepped Webster, who blasted a ball up the middle.

Up stepped Tim Wallach, who already had tripled in a first-inning run and singled and scored in the fourth. Thinking that the Expos might be running, Manager Larry Bowa called for a pitchout. Fine, but let’s not get ridiculous. As the ball sailed out of Whitson’s right hand and underwent a midair transformation from wild pitch to forward pass, the veteran pitcher’s eyes got big.

“I’ve seen it done, but I never thought it would happen to me,” Whitson said. “That ball must have been 40 feet over his head (more like 20). It was freaky.”

As the ball crossed home plate, it was time for the young catcher’s eyes to be big.

“I look up and say, ‘Gosh dang, look at that!’ ” Santiago said. “The ball went into the screen, I thought it was a dead ball. It was so high, I thought it was dead.”

The ball hit the screen and dropped softly to the ground. And then it just stayed there while Santiago stood at the plate and shook his head. Although Raines would have scored anyway, Webster took advantage of the mental error to move all the way to third.

“Why would he think it was dead?” Dobson wondered. “The ball bounces and hits the screen, it’s not dead.”

Said Whitson: “Benny came to the mound after the play and told me he thought it was dead. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ ”

Said Santiago: “This damn baseball. I just don’t know . . . “

After allowing the run-scoring fly to Wallach, Whitson struck out Andres Galarraga, meaning Webster would not have scored and the Padres still would have been in the game.

But that one bit of misfortune is usually enough to doom this team, and, sure enough, in their final four innings against Dennis Martinez, the Padres had just two singles. The last 11 hitters went down without a peep.

“We are not a good come-from-behind team because we lack power,” Bowa said. “We don’t have the one guy who can get you two or three runs in a hurry.”

One of his players offered another opinion.

“Right now, we don’t have that attitude like we’re going to win,” said Tony Gwynn, observing from the dugout as he completes his final week on the disabled list with a sprained right thumb. “It’s like, ‘Let’s see how we’re going to lose tonight.’ It was the same attitude we had last year in our first 58 games (the Padres were 15-43).

“We’ve been talking about the same things for a year and a half and look--we’re still getting beat. What this team needs is some confidence. We don’t have confidence.”

As a confidence builder, the Padre can look to reliever Greg Booker, who allowed one run in the final three innings while tying a career high with four strikeouts. They can look at Wynne, who has seven RBIs in his past five games. Dickie Thon made several good fielding plays again at shortstop besides leading off the game with a hit for the third time since he became a leadoff batter five games ago.

But then they also can look at Whitson, who probably shouldn’t have been pitching, what with a flu that didn’t let him leave bed all day, and a still-sprained ankle.

Regardless of his guttiness, a department in which he certainly leads the starting staff, Whitson is also leading it with the highest ERA at 5.94. He also leads with the longest slump, as he has lost four consecutive decisions after winning his first three. In his last six starts, he has lasted an average of four innings per outing, allowing 27 runs and 39 hits in 25 innings for a 9.72 ERA.

“Hey,” Gwynn said late Wednesday, “this will turn around. It has to.

“When? I don’t know. But it just has to.”