MIDSEASON LOOK AT PADRES : It Has Been Bigger; Now Better Is Goal : Team Revived Under Jack McKeon Looks at 81-81 Record as Possibility

Ho-hum. Just another first half for those hot-footing, fistfighting, manager-ripping, hugging, kissing, streaking, slumping Padres, a major league team disguised as a fraternity.

As the Padres begin their mythical second half tonight against the St. Louis Cardinals, only one thing is certain about the previous 3 1/2 months:

In the history of minimally recognized teams of minimal accomplishment, rarely has the word big been needed so much.

A quick look at the season thus far, in order: Big hopes. Big crash. Big managerial firing. Big managerial hiring. Big clubhouse pranks. Big clubhouse rips. Big fight.

Now, with 74 games left: Big promises.

The club is 10 games under .500, at 39-49, but since Manager Jack McKeon took over from Larry Bowa May 28, the team has gone 23-19, second-best in the National League West during that time behind San Francisco (22-16).

That performance has landed the Padres in fifth place in the division, 11 games behind the first-place Dodgers, 3 1/2 games behind the fourth-place Cincinnati Reds.

The whispered phrase in baseball clubhouses around midseason is “single digits.” Most players privately feel that if their team is fewer than 10 games behind at the All-Star break, they still have a chance.

The Padres weren’t able to reach that and are no longer kidding themselves about being contenders. Their goal has been set at just breaking even, finishing at 81-81, with 16 more victories than last season.

“That’s all we can shoot for, all we should shoot for,” Keith Moreland said. “Get to .500. Just get to .500 and then worry about anything else. Get to .500, and nobody can call you a loser.”

McKeon concedes that that is a high-minded ideal. “Remember, we were 14 games under .500 just a couple of months ago,” he said. “That’s a long way to come back.”

But he also is aware that since he has taken over, just about anything has happened, and just about all of it has been unusual.

“We’re in every game now. We’re not getting blown out much anymore,” McKeon said. “Who knows, maybe we’ll start getting that extra push in the late inning to turn that one-run game our way. Maybe some of these guys will reach that point where they understand how to win.”

In order to better understand this first half, in which the Padres may have been second only to the New York Yankees in big things happening, we offer a ranking of the biggest and the best.

And, of course, the biggest and the worst.

Three Biggest Victories:

1) The doubleheader sweep of the first-place Dodgers in Los Angeles June 17 (OK, so it’s two wins--it felt like one).

The Padres won by scores of 7-4 and 4-3. Marvell Wynne went 5 for 9 for the two games. Tony Gwynn went 4 for 7 with three RBIs. Ed Whitson and Dennis Rasmussen each earned well-pitched wins.

The Padres left Dodger Stadium that night almost giddy, floating through the rarefied air of a team 6 1/2 games out of first place.

Less than 48 hours later, they left Los Angeles mumbling and cursing and 9 1/2 games out of first after three consecutive losses, including a doubleheader sweep. Oh well.

2) The five-run comeback against San Francisco June 14.

This was the game, an 8-5 victory, that sold the Padres on the notion that they really were a different team under McKeon. Looking for a sixth consecutive victory during the first two weeks of the McKeon reign, they fell behind, 5-0, after four innings at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. But then came a seven-run sixth inning, highlighted by Wynne’s three-run homer. Padre radio announcer Dave Campbell screamed, some say for the first time in two years.

Even more amazing, pitcher Greg Booker happened to be in the game during the comeback, and for his scoreless inning, he was given the victory, his first since Aug. 14 and only the fourth of a three-year big-league career filled with mop-up work.

3) Larry Bowa convincing management to recall Roberto Alomar from triple-A Las Vegas.

The fight that Bowa lost on March 28 when Alomar was sent to Las Vegas--a fight he never stopped fighting--was finally won on rainy April 20 in Los Angeles. After watching Randy Ready struggle at second base for the Padres, who struggled to four victories in their first 13 games, President Chub Feeney finally agreed with Bowa that the Alomar kid couldn’t make things any worse.

It is still uncertain whether Bowa, in his daily arguments with management, finally brandished a weapon. No matter. In Alomar’s debut April 22 against Houston in San Diego, he went 1 for 4, with a base hit in his first big-league at-bat and a great double-play turn in the ninth to save a 3-1 victory.

If you choose to thank Bowa for nothing else currently happening with these Padres, thank him for Roberto Alomar. Again and again.

Three Biggest Losses:

1) The ninth-inning failure in San Francisco June 22.

With the Padres one out from sweeping a three-game series from the Giants, reliever Mark Davis was asked to hold a three-run lead and collapsed. He allowed an RBI single to Brett Butler, a 3-and-0 walk to Earnest Riles and a three-run, game-winning double to Will Clark.

The Giants won 12 of their next 15 games and now are 2 1/2 games out of first. The Padres went on to lose 2 of 3 in Atlanta. Enough said.

2) Four blown leads in the final five innings in Montreal on May 24.

This will be forever known as the day Bowa unofficially lost his job. The Padre bullpen let him down in the worst way, blowing leads in the ninth, 11th, 12th and 13th innings and finally losing, 7-6, on Hubie Brooks’ RBI single in the 13th after the Padres led, 6-4, going into the bottom of the inning.

Bowa was so mad at reliever Candy Sierra--who allowed three hits and a run in one-third of an winning for the loss--that he vowed to never use Sierra again “unless we’re up or down by 12 runs.”

Didn’t matter. Four days later, Bowa was fired. One of the first major things McKeon did after he became manager? Traded Candy Sierra.

3) McKeon’s waistline.

Just before he took the over the club May 28, McKeon weighed around 238 pounds, or enough to fill a couple of uniforms. He immediately decreed that pitching coach Pat Dobson would make the pitching changes, veteran players would take out the lineup cards before the games . . . and he would essentially remain unseen on the field in uniform.

On July 4, thanks to a diet that consisted mostly of salad, he checked in at 202. Perhaps not coincidentally, a couple of days later he was spotted in uniform on the field during a game, arguing with an umpire.

Three biggest hits:

1) John Kruk’s grand slam April 12 in the home opener.

It happened in the fifth inning, with the Padres down, 3-1, to the Dodgers in front of 52,395 fans. With the bases loaded, Kruk took a 1-0 pitch from Brad Havens deep to left center for a grand slam that eventually resulted in a 5-3 victory, not to mention several standing ovations.

It gave Kruk the National League lead in grand slams, a lead he still shares. He still has one.

2) Tony Gwynn on the Three Rivers Stadium turf in Pittsburgh, May 7.

Call this the beginning of the end for Larry Bowa. Heading for second base on a hit-and-run single by Chris Brown in the eighth inning, Gwynn fell over his feet and rolled into the bag, holding his right thumb. The Padres eventually won, 3-2, on Gwynn’s earlier RBI single, and afterward Gwynn said he was fine.

The next day, the thumb was the size of a desk globe. And the Padres’ best player was immediately placed on the 21-day disabled list.

He didn’t take his next official swing until May 28, exactly nine hours after Larry Bowa was fired because, in part, his team couldn’t hit.

3) Chris Brown on Marvell Wynne’s face.

This will be remembered simply as baseball’s 10-second preliminary to the 91-second Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks fight. On June 27 in Atlanta, Brown belted Wynne with a right jab after tiring of Wynne’s clubhouse ribbing.

The most amazing thing about the fight was not the punch or the separation of the enraged combatants by teammates, or even the aftermath, when Wynne promised revenge.

The most amazing thing was that, with his left eye nearly swollen shut, Wynne was sent into that night’s game with the Reds in the eighth inning as a defensive replacement for left fielder Keith Moreland. The next day, Moreland was moved to first base, and he may remain there the rest of the season.

Three Biggest Pitches:

1) Lance McCullers’ 1-and-0 fastball to Houston’s Kevin Bass, opening night, April 5.

Eighth inning, Padres defeating the Astros and Mike Scott, 3-1. Starter Ed Whitson takes a leadoff line-drive single by Terry Puhl off his right hand, injuring the thumb and forcing him out of the game. In comes McCullers, touted all spring as the stopper.

He allows a double to Rafael Ramirez, moving Puhl to third. Then, on a 1-and-0 pitch to Bass, he allows a rocket to center field, a two-run double that ties the game and sets up three more runs that inning for a 6-3 Astro victory.

The loss was so devastating, it took the Padres a week to recover. They didn’t come close to winning again until the season’s sixth game, when they finally won after five consecutive losses.

2) McCullers’ full-count fastball to St. Louis’ Tom Brunansky July 3.

One pitch from a sweep of the Cardinals, just as the Padres had been one out from sweeping San Francisco earlier in the year, McCullers was beaten with a two-out, full-count, ninth-inning, two-run homer by Brunansky in front of 15,467 stunned fans at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. It gave the Cardinals a 5-4 victory and, as expected, the Padres lost 2 of the next 3 en route to a disappointing 5-4 home stand that brought them to the All-Star break.

3) Pat Dobson convincing Dennis Rasmussen that he could throw.

In the trade that sent away Sierra, Rasmussen, who is 6-feet 7-inches tall, arrived from Cincinnati on June 8 as an enigma, or at least a bad pitcher. He was 2-6 with a 5.75 ERA.

He visited Dobson early one afternoon down in the bullpen, where Dobson pitched him on new mechanics and the idea that he wasn’t so bad. A month later, he has gone 5-0 for the Padres with a 2.88 ERA and three complete games in six starts.

“Aw,” Dobson said in the understatement of the first half, “it wasn’t nothing.”

Three Biggest Surprises:

1) Marvell Wynne.

Last year he hit .250 with two homers and 24 RBIs. This spring, he hit .182 with no homers and two RBIs.

Thus far this year he is leading the club in hitting (.288) and homers (9) and is second in RBIs with 31.

Plain enough.

2) Andy Hawkins.

Last season, fighting a sore shoulder, he was 3-10 with a 5.05 ERA. This spring, fighting a move by Bowa to release him, he was 2-2 with a 6.49 ERA.

Thus far this year he is the club’s top starter, at 8-7 with a 3.12 ERA.

Plain enough.

3) That fact that Bowa has not returned in the middle of the night to throw discourses on baseball in the 20th Century through Feeney’s window, at which point Feeney would have jumped out of bed, run to the window, spotted Bowa and shouted, “What are you doing out there, Rick?”

Three Biggest Disappointments:

1) Lance McCullers.

Touted all spring as the new Goose Gossage, with contract negotiations that even involved Yuma news conferences with agent Jerry Kapstein, McCullers has gone quickly downhill. Not only has he lost his stopper role to Davis, he could be fast losing trust from the bench with his many late blowups.

At last count, he had helped cost the Padres six sure victories with final-inning fastballs. Overall, he is 1-5 with 46 strikeouts, 35 walks and just 6 saves.

McCullers is just 24, much too young and with too much potential for something like this to happen. If anyone on this team faces an important second half, it is him.

2) John Kruk.

At least the Padres’ other top hitter, Tony Gwynn, has the excuse of two major disabled-list injuries. Although Kruk has been nursing an aching shoulder most of the year, he refuses to blame his hitting problems on it, so we won’t, either.

After finishing fourth in the league last season with a .313 average, 20 homers and 91 RBIs, this year he is hitting .256 with 6 homers and 28 RBIs.

And that swing . . .

“That swing is way off,” said Amos Otis, the batting coach. “It hasn’t been close all year.”

As Kruk has suffered, the Padres have suffered. How much of the load he can shoulder in the second half, while trying to become an everyday left fielder again, probably will determine whether the Padres can become a good hitting team.

3) That Mark Grant was never able to properly set Wynne’s shoelaces on fire in Philadelphia May 30.

The incident that marked the start of McKeon’s reign as manager wouldn’t have been so terrible, except:

It was just the third inning, and the Padres were trailing, 1-0. Grant insisted on crawling under the bench and using a lighter. The entire thing was shown, via local cable television, on the big-screen scoreboard in center field.

And Wynne felt the heat quickly enough to put his shoelaces out.

Three Biggest Reasons to Be a Padre Fan in the Second Half of the Season.

1) Roberto Alomar makes a run at rookie of the year.

2) Tony Gwynn makes a run at .300.

3) At any moment in the Padres’ clubhouse, somebody is liable to tie somebody else up and cover him with shaving cream and give him massive noogies. If it hasn’t happened already.