Martinez’s Hit Steers Padres Past Dodgers

It was as if Carmelo Martinez’s fly ball, climbing high into the night air, suddenly looked down and spotted the Dodger outfielders. It was as if, at the point when it could have sat up there and been an easy out, it changed its mind.

It was as if it suddenly said, “Here, catch this.”

A diving John Shelby didn’t, a racing Kirk Gibson didn’t, and catch this: The Padres defeated the Dodgers, 4-3, Friday on a ninth-inning, two-out, two-run, drifting RBI double by Martinez that could just as easily have been the third out.

Fate, which wrecked the home team one inning earlier when the Dodgers took a 3-2 lead on a bad hop and passed ball, took its first and biggest swing of the season for the struggling Padres.

Against reliever Jay Howell in the ninth, Tony Gwynn had grounded out to first. Keith Moreland had struck out looking.

But then, on four pitches, Howell walked John Kruk. Six pitches later, Howell walked Benito Santiago, who had walked once in his first 162 plate appearances this season.

Up stepped pinch-hitter Martinez, hitting .200 with 10 RBIs. He knocked Howell’s first pitch to shallow center field, but then the ball suddenly drifted to left center.

Stunned, Shelby and Gibson both gave chase. Shelby could have held up and caught the ball on a bounce, and Santiago would not have scored the winning run. But he dove, the ball bounced and shot under his glove, and by the time it stopped rolling at the outfield wall, the game was over.

“He had to do what he thought was best, but you can’t let the ball get behind you,” Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda said. “No question about it. You hate to lose a game like that, two out, nobody on.”

Said Shelby: “You either let it drop, or you go for it. When it came off the bat, it looked like it was hit harder, so I dove. It was a judgment call.”

In the end, what was remaining of the original 20,912 fans at San Diego Murphy Stadium jumped to their feet. The Padres jumped from the dugout. And Howell froze.

“It was a good pitch . . . On my way to first, I was praying,” Martinez said. “I don’t think he made a good play on it. The ball got away from him. When it’s that close, you should try to keep it in front of of you. I was happy he did that.”

It was the Padres biggest hit of the season and, in some ways, one of the Dodgers’ biggest losses. One out from sitting on a season-high 3 1/2-game lead this morning, they are back to 2 1/2 games up, and probably are wondering: Can’t a top team treat a bottom team any worse than this?

In the first seven innings, the Dodgers had struggled to get four hits, made a two-base error and blown a 2-0 lead thanks in part to an awful pitch by struggling reliever Jesse Orosco.

But it didn’t matter, because they had broken the 2-all tie with a run in their eighth on two bad Padre breaks.

Mike Sharperson, a defensive replacement at shortstop, had led off with a grounder that took a bad bounce over shortstop Garry Templeton’s head for a single off reliever Mark Grant. He had moved to second on a passed ball by Santiago and scored on a two-out single by Mike Marshall on the first pitch from just-entered reliever Lance McCullers, who ended up getting the win.

It had started so simply, too, a pitching struggle between Dodger Tim Leary and Padre Andy Hawkins.

The Dodgers had taken a 2-0 lead in the fifth on RBI singles by fill-ins Jeff Hamilton and Dave Anderson, who are replacing Pedro Guerrero and Alfredo Griffin, which you may have forgotten.

The Padres came back to tie it with two runs in the seventh, the tying run coming against Orosco, who has a tender elbow, had not pitched in nine days and looked like it.

Entering the seventh, Leary was rolling along with 16 consecutive shutout innings against the Padres this season, with his most recent start against them being a three-hit shutout in Los Angeles April 18.

He had survived the first three innings, despite allowing one hit in each, with an inning-ending double-play in each. A Gwynn grounder in the first, a Santiago grounder in the second, and a Hawkins pop bunt in the third were enough to get him out of trouble.

In the fourth, he even survived Steve Sax’s seventh error of the season--a bad throw to first--that put Gwynn on second base with two out. Moreland hit an 0-and-1 pitch into the dirt in front of Sax for the third out. Leary retired the next six batters after that and entered the seventh strong.

Five pitches later, strength became strain. He had walked Roberto Alomar on a 3-and-1 count, and the crowd was on its feet. Up stepped slumping Gwynn, hitting .241 with only six extra base hits all season. Make that seven. He lined a pitch into the right-field gap, beyond the reach of Mike Marshall and to the wall for a double, with Alomar stopping at third. A Moreland grounder later, one run had scored, and Gwynn was on third.

Out came Leary and in came Orosco, who had allowed two runs in two innings in that last appearance, in New York June 1. This time he did just as poorly, it just didn’t take him as long.

Kruk hit his third pitch to right field for an RBI flyout. Six pitches later, Santiago doubled to left and Orosco was gone. Only Alejandro Pena and a groundout by Chris Brown on an 0-and-2 pitch saved the Dodgers.

The Dodgers should have known from the start, though, that this night would be trouble. Hawkins, a pitcher whose name has rarely been mentioned this year without the word “reborn” somewhere in the sentence, entered with a 3.59 ERA and a one-hitter and four-hitter already on his 1988 resume. The Dodgers, having dispatched of Houston’s Mike Scott and Nolan Ryan in the previous two nights, had no idea what to with him.

Padre Notes

The Padres’ newest pitcher, Dennis Rasmussen, will make his first start tonight against the Dodgers, which means that the first thing fans will see is his ability to bounce back. Rasmussen’s last start was eight days ago against the Dodgers while he was still pitching for Cincinnati, and it was something of a nightmare. Rasmussen lasted just 1 innings allowing six runs on eight hits in an eventual 13-5 loss. What happened? “Everything I threw, they hit,” Rasmussen said. So what has he done differently since then? “I threw on the side (Thursday) and felt a little more comfortable,” he said. “But it’s such a fine line. So many little things between winning or losing. When you’re winning, you get breaks. When you’re losing, you don’t. Who knows? I might throw the exact same pitches this time and have different results.”

Mark Grant, who moved to the bullpen to make room for Rasmussen, is taking things pretty calmly. “It’s not a big deal. I can make the adjustment,” said Grant, who pitched in eight games out of the bullpen for the San Francisco Giants last year when their manager, Roger Craig, became just as frustrated with his inconsistency as the Padres have become. “I knew when they made the trade (for Rasmussen), something would have to happen. I knew I was struggling. I’ll just have to make something positive out of it.