Gwynn Helps Padres Weather Themselves and Cardinals, 7-3

Friday night, just another 100-degree day on the Mississippi River. Just another Padre game against the defending National League champion St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium, in front of thousands of people who clap in unison to songs about an alcoholic beverage.

Just another Padre victory, 7-3.

Stop.

OK, there will always be heat here, and beer here, but you know darn well there is no such thing as just another Padre win .

Friday night, the Padres’ second victory in a row, and 25th in 44 often-bizarre games under Manager Jack McKeon, was officially won thanks to a four-run ninth inning. Tony Gwynn had a two-run single and Carmelo Martinez added a two-run single, and we’ll talk more about this back-to-being-fabulous Gwynn later.

Enough of the hard stats. The real game, as played by those ever-so-human Padres, went something like this:

--The Padres failed to erase a 1-0 deficit in the fourth inning. Martinez saw third base coach Sandy Alomar sending him home on a single but was so set on stopping, he didn’t understand what all that waving was about. He stopped. The next batter hit into a double play, and Martinez never scored.

--The Padres tied it in the sixth when Martinez, with runners on second and third and none out, thought a bunt might be fun. Not only did it surprise McKeon, it surprised the Cardinals, and Gwynn scored from third.

--After Gwynn’s two-run single gave the Padres a 3-1 lead in the seventh, the Cardinals tied it in the bottom of the seventh, thanks to their own bunt. Reliever Mark Davis could have thrown a man out on the play--there were two on base at the time--but at first he couldn’t decide where to throw, and when he decided to go to third, there was nobody covering. By the time he threw to first, he was too late.

--The Padres came back to win it in the ninth, handing the Cardinals their eighth loss in a row. Slumping John Kruk drew a leadoff walk off Cardinal stopper Todd Worrell after falling behind 0 and 2, mainly because he was darn near praying for a walk. A sacrifice bunt and a base hit later, Worrell hit Randy Ready on an 0-and-2 pitch to load the bases.

Up stepped Gwynn, the real Tony Gwynn, the one who returned about two weeks ago. He hit a 1-and-0 pitch by reliever Ken Dayley into left field for a 5-3 lead and the game-winner. Martinez sealed it with his hit, which gave the Padres 15 for the night, tying a season high. Davis shut the Cardinals down in the bottom of the ninth with few complications, and that was that.

“Some doggone game, huh?” McKeon said afterward. “So many times tonight, we could have given up. We didn’t. For whatever reason, we didn’t.”

If you insist on finding a reason, you won’t have to look too hard. Just look at the real Tony Gwynn.

Gwynn’s four runs batted in tied a career high, and he has only done it two other times. His game-winning RBI gave him eight for the season, which also tied a career best.

After going 3 for 5 Friday, he has hit in 10 straight games, going 21 for 41 (.512) during that time, with seven multiple-hit games.

On June 13, wilting under the huge burden of carrying this team, he was hitting .237. After Friday night, with his left index finger hurting him again (spring surgery), with his right thumb aching again (May disabled list), he was hitting .287.

“Nothing I can do about it, and nothing I want to do about it,” Gwynn said of his pains. “When my finger hurts, I’m swinging well. And yeah, I’m swinging well. I’m seeing the ball better, I’m waiting on it better.”

As Gwynn goes, so it seems the Padres go. Friday’s win moved them within eight games of .500, at 41-49, the closest they have been to that level since May 9, when they were 10-18.

Please, said McKeon, call it a coincidence. The manager thinks Gwynn’s problem was that he worried too much about being responsible for too much.

“Tony has finally relaxed, and stopped feeling the weight on his shoulders,” McKeon said. “He thought the club was not winning because he was not hitting. He thought it was his fault. Now look. Just being himself, he is doing more for the club than he could if he was trying to do those things.”

Balderdash, Gwynn said. The major leagues’ leading hitter last year at .370, a guy who has never hit less than .317 in his four full major league seasons, said he has always been himself. He said the problem was he just didn’t like who he had become.

“Early on I was tasting failure for the first time, and it’s not a good-tasting thing,” Gwynn said. “Hitting is such a mental thing, and I had no confidence. It was like I had a .240-hitter mentality.

“A .370 hitter walks to the plate and knows that whatever they throw up there, he’s going to get his bat on the ball. A .240 hitter doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”

With bases loaded in the ninth inning Friday, after right-hander Worrell was lifted for left-hander Dayley, Gwynn knew exactly what was going to happen.

“I had some success against Dayley earlier this year, I knew he liked the fastball, and I figured I would get a fastball if I got anything,” Gwynn said. “That’s just what I got.”

The ball was looped to left field in typical Gwynn fashion. Across home plate trotted Kruk and Dickie Thon, who had three hits including a bloop single after Kruk’s leadoff walk.

Now, about that walk . . . Kruk, hitting .253, was pinch-hitting for Shane Mack and was blown away by two fastball strikes from Worrell.

“I knew, the way I’ve been swinging, the only chance I had was for a walk,” admitted Kruk, who waited for four balls sandwiched around a foul ball. “Not one of those pitches was close.”

The game shouldn’t have been close. The Padres battered around Cardinal starter John Tudor for nine hits before they could score a run, thanks in part to Martinez’s brain lapse in the fourth. With one out, he had singled, and Chris Brown had singled, and when Santiago singled to center, Martinez was sent home.

“I knew Vince Coleman gets a good jump on the ball out there, so I knew I could not score,” Martinez said. “That’s all I was thinking when I saw Sandy waving his arms. It was like, I saw, but couldn’t run home. My body wouldn’t do it.”

He made up for it with an equally weird play two innings later, after Gwynn had singled and Keith Moreland had doubled down the left-field line. With none out, he bunted. He was thrown out at first, but a surprised Gwynn scored.

“Hey, it worked, it was a good play,” McKeon said. “But in the future, well, I don’t know.”

Said Martinez, “I thought, what if I hit the ball to the third baseman and we can’t score. I figured, just bunt it to him, see what happens.”

After Gwynn’s two-out single past shortstop put the Padres ahead in the seventh, Davis relieved starter Dennis Rasmussen in the bottom of the seventh with runners on first and second and none out. He promptly botched a sacrifice bunt by Luis Alicea. He wanted to throw to third base, but nobody was on third, so he decided to throw to first and was late. After a double-play grounder, Coleman followed with a single that drove home two runs, the second of which caused a ruckus when Benito Santiago appeared to have tagged out Alicea. Umpire Terry Tata saw it differently, bringing McKeon out of the dugout and causing Davis to stomp around the mound. One inning later, none of that mattered.