Braves Stop the Padres With a Pair of Pitchers

Jack McKeon sat calmly behind his desk, unhappy about another defeat, but convinced that there wasn’t much the Padres could have done about it.

“Those two guys just stopped our bats today,” said the Padre manager. “They didn’t give us many chances. We did some good things, but they didn’t let us do any hitting.”

McKeon was referring to young Tom Glavine and veteran Bruce Sutter, who teamed for a four-hitter Sunday, as the Atlanta Braves scored a 3-1 victory in front of 14,414 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

And while McKeon paid proper tribute to Glavine, 22, a left-hander with a future, he reserved his superlatives for Sutter, 35, whose comeback from arm trouble has made him one of the most heart-warming stories of the season.

Sutter missed all of last season, and all but the first month of the 1986 season with ailments that required three operations.

His save on Sunday was his eighth in 10 opportunities, and he made it look ridiculously easy, retiring the six Padres he faced.

“Glavine kept us off balance,” McKeon said. “Then Sutter came in and it was over. The surprising thing about him is that he did it with a lot of fastballs. I saw a few of his split-finger pitches, but mainly they were balls. He’s amazing.”

Actually, as hard as it may be to comprehend, Sutter is throwing harder than ever. He used to rely almost solely on his split-finger fastball. Now he gets batters out with his regular fastball, which used to be, more or less, a throwaway pitch.

“It gives him a psychological advantage,” McKeon said. “The hitters had come to expect one pitch from him. Now they don’t know what’s coming.”

Sutter agreed: “When hitters are looking for the ball to go down and it’s straight, it helps me. I’m not sure I’m throwing my fastball any harder, but I know it looks that way to the hitters.”

After undergoing shoulder surgery for the third time in February of 1987, Sutter didn’t throw a ball until December. When he went to spring training this year, he had no idea what was ahead for him.

“This was going to be it for me,” Sutter said. “I was either going to be playing again or be done. I had had a torn rotator cuff, which was bad enough, but it was a pinched nerve that started everything. Now I have no pain at all.”

Atlanta Manager Russ Nixon, who recently replaced Chuck Tanner, said of Sutter, “I can’t give him enough credit. A lesser person would have taken a walk. I wish our kids would observe the way he goes about pitching.”

Although Glavine entered the game with a 6.18 earned-run average, this was his third straight fine performance after a horrendous start. He was scored on only in the third inning, when Shane Mack singled, moved up on pitcher Andy Hawkins’ sacrifice bunt and scored on Dickie Thon’s single.

“Control has been my biggest problem,” Glavine said. “But doing so well my last three times out, compared with my four terrible starts before that, has given me confidence I didn’t have before. Now even if I get my brain bashed in again, I’ll still know I can pitch in this league.”

Hawkins pitched even better than Glavine for six innings, blanking the Braves on four singles. But he gave up the tying run in the seventh on two singles and two infield outs, then yielded the lead run in the eighth on a single by Albert Hall and a double by Ken Oberkfell. Mark Davis came in after Oberkfell’s hit and was greeted with a run-scoring single by Gerald Perry.

“I made a bad pitch to Oberkfell,” Hawkins said. “I tried to backdoor him on 3-2, and I got the ball right over the plate.”

Oberkfell said, “Andy was throwing a real good game, but I’m not a strikeout person anyway, and he threw me a slider over the plate. I hit it good, and I was fortunate that Tony Gwynn didn’t run it down. For a second, I thought he might.”

Losing the series finale after winning the first two games balanced the Padres’ record under McKeon at 4-4 and left them a half-game ahead of the Braves in their duel to escape the cellar in the NL West.

But McKeon remains optimistic.

“I feel that this club is capable of playing .500 baseball,” he said.

“And don’t talk to me about battling for fifth place. I want to think a little higher than that.”

Padre Notes

Even at the age of 82, Leo Durocher remains a master of baseball strategy. Managing in the Equitable Old-Timers game before the Padre game Sunday, Durocher dug deep into his bag of tricks and came up with a maneuver that gave the Equitable All-Stars a 6-4 victory over the original Padres of 1969. He sent his best hitter, Hall of Famer Billy Williams, to the plate four times in the third inning, and the bizarre tactic produced a three-run rally that turned the game around.

Williams hit a home run in the first inning, and led off the third with a single. When he reached third, Durocher switched him from baserunner to pinch-hitter, and pitcher Juan Marichal ran for him. He walked, but again was called to pinch-hit, and that time broke a 4-4 tie with a two-run double. Given still another at-bat, he hit a long fly to left field. The game was called at that point because of the time limit, so the ex-Padres didn’t get a chance to retaliate.

“I did the same thing with Willie Mays one time,” Durocher said. “He had a single, two doubles and a triple in the same inning. We had some fun, and so did the people. Hitters like that are the ones they come to see.”

Williams said, “I was surprised when I saw Marichal coming out to run for me. I’m kind of faster than he is, and I didn’t know what was going on. But I loved it, and I thought that last one was a second home run. I don’t care when you hit a home run, you always get a chill. You accomplish something everybody wants to do.”

Johnny Podres, who managed the Padre old-timers, said, “It was a sweet win for Leo. He wanted me to protest, but it’s always a pleasure watching Billy Williams hit. His swing is a thing of beauty.” . . . Manny Sanguillen also provided extracurricular entertainment, with a head-first slide home in the second inning, although there wasn’t a play at the plate.