First Shutout of Mets Comes--Surprise!--at Hands of Padres

NEW YORK — A few days and losses ago, Mark Davis and some Padre teammates were sitting around talking baseball. They were talking, as many National League players do these days, about the New York Mets.

Somebody brought up batting statistics. Somebody else got specific. Suddenly, jaws dropped.

Here it was, darn near June, and the Mets were the only National League team that had yet to be shut out.

“I know they are a great team and everything,” Davis said. “But we all thought, that is amazing. “

Cut to Friday night. As of 10:25 p.m. EDT, their were no National League teams who have yet to be shut out. And for that, the Mets and their 37,156 raving fans can thank Davis, Mark Grant and the Padres, who defeated them, 2-0.

Amazing is right.

“We’re talking about a team that will be playing for a world championship next fall, I imagine,” Tim Flannery said, shaking his head. “This is a great win.”

Here’s how great: The last time the Padres won a road game was the last time Tony Gwynn was in the lineup. Gwynn will be coming off the 21-day disabled list Sunday.

The last time the Padres shut somebody out, Garry Templeton was in the lineup.

And the last time winning pitcher Grant won a game, Larry Bowa still had not been rehired to manage this mess.

The appropriate dates are May 7 (road victory), April 26 (shutout) and Sept. 16, 1987 (Grant’s win).

But now, in the continuing saga of Bowa and a team that are on the verge of going under, the only date that matters is today.

“That’s all we have to concentrate on now,” said Grant, who allowed four hits over 6 innings. “The next game. The next batter. The next pitch.”

Bowa left the Shea Stadium clubhouse late last night also thinking about his next meeting. Padre owner Joan Kroc and President Chub Feeney were in town for the game, but neither contacted Bowa before or afterward. Whether Feeney wants to give him a vote of confidence or fire him or what, Bowa wants him to know that they also need to talk about something else.

You see, a decision needs to be made, Sunday morning at the latest, about whom to send down when Gwynn comes off the disabled list.

“I can’t find anybody,” said Bowa, shaking his head. “I haven’t talked to anybody. I wish somebody would talk to me. Can I activate Gwynn by myself? But then who do I send down?”

The likely candidate is outfielder Shawn Abner, who is hitting .181 after going 0 for 4 Friday. But this was not a night of demotions, it was a night of survivors.

Against the team that entered the game leading the National League in batting average (.261), runs scored (213) and homers (46)--not to mention wins (31)--the Padres threw out two pitchers who just didn’t give a hoot. About the Mets, about Bowa’s tenuous job situation, about anything.

Grant was coming off a surprise relief outing Tuesday in Montreal that was so frustrating--2 runs and 3 hits in one inning--he couldn’t talk.

Davis, who pitched 2 hitless innings for his fifth save in five save opportunities, had allowed two hits in one inning in his last outing in the same Montreal game.

“I don’t want to sound selfish,” Grant said, “but the bottom line is, I got to worry about myself. Every time I go out there, it’s my butt on the line. That’s all I’m thinking.”

“What happens in the clubhouse,” Davis said, “has nothing to do with what happens on the field. What happens to our manager, that’s for other people to think about.”

Thus, against a lineup that didn’t include regulars Darryl Strawberry (bruised thumb) or Kevin McReynolds or rookie Kevin Elster (both bruised bats), Grant nonetheless turned in a major league performance. Every time he found trouble, he found a way out.

“Mark has always had one or two innings that killed us,” Bowa said of his often-inconsistent pitcher, who suddenly finds himself with a 3.40 ERA despite a 1-4 record. “He has a good arm, but he has to use his head. Tonight he did. Tonight, he maintained.”

With runners on first and second in the first, he struck out Gary Carter.

With a runner on first and two out in the second, he got a ground ball from Met pitcher Sid Fernandez that Carmelo Martinez tipped to Roberto Alomar, who threw back to Martinez for the third out in the one of the great fielding plays in the season.

Then came the hump inning, the third, when with two out he walked Keith Hernandez and then allowed Howard Johnson to hit a towering 350-foot fly down the right-field line. The ball was headed for the upper deck in fair territory--a two-run homer--but suddenly swerved foul.

“By six inches, maybe,” a relieved Grant recalled. “I decided, ‘OK, I’ve got new life, no way am I giving him that same pitch again.’ ”

He didn’t, and in fact gave Johnson a pitch so different--a looping slow curve--that Johnson struck out.

“It was a great relief,” Grant said. “But right away, I was just thinking about the next hitter.”

Good thing. In the fourth, Grant needed a double-play grounder smack back to the mound by Wally Backman to keep his shutout. And then in the sixth, Martinez made a diving stop of a Johnson line drive with Hernandez on first to pull off another double play.

Grant survived into the seventh, when he was lifted after hitting pinch-hitter Strawberry in the foot and putting runners on first and second with two out. Enter Davis, whose first pitch was a fly out by pinch-hitter McReynolds to end the rally.

Davis then survived his own little battle with those big-money fans of New York.

“I was coming off the field after getting McReynolds and something hit me on the shoulder,” Davis recounted. “I looked down, and it was a penny.

“I get out to the mound the next inning and there are three quarters on the ground. Seventy-five cents. I placed the coins on the grass next to the dirt. What a profit.”

By then, it was obvious that back-to-back RBIs in the third inning by Dickie Thon (single) and Alomar (first major league triple) would hold up.

Padre Notes

Padre owner Joan Kroc and President Chub Feeney arrived at Shea Stadium just before the game, and watched from the private box of Met owner Nelson Doubleday. When reporters sent word that they wished to question Feeney about the state of the Padre franchise and Manager Larry Bowa’s future, Feeney sent back word that he wished not to be bothered. . . . Life in New York, Part I: That guy sitting in the Shea Stadium dugout interviewing Tony Gwynn Friday with a tiny tape recorder was George Will. This was the second Padre game Will has attended this year. Mark Grant pitched scoreless baseball in that other one too, May 11 in Chicago, giving Grant, a staunch Republican, 14 total scoreless innings with Will watching. Maybe it helped Friday that Richard Nixon was also in the park. . . . Life in New York, Part II: On the Shea Stadium right-field scoreboard, Dickie Thon was referred to as “Richard.” . . . Life in New York, Part III: This is backup catcher and Oregon native Mark Parent’s first look at New York City. In the 12 hours between the time he arrived with the team from Montreal on Thursday night and found refuge in the stadium clubhouse Friday afternoon, he had seen all he wanted to see. “This place is dirty, filthy,” Parent said. Part of his disgust has to do with the fact that it took him three cabs to get to the ballpark. “We get in one cab, the cabbie goes one block and says that he doesn’t know where Shea Stadium is. The next cab we get into, the driver doesn’t know what baseball is. Finally we get a guy who will give us a ride.” When Parent got to the park, he was only more flustered when he looked down the hall from the clubhouse and saw the New York City police office, complete with jail cell. “Their own precinct in the ballpark, can you believe that?” Parent said. “Like, we have that in San Diego? Right.”