Padres Lose One for the Comic Book : Intentional Walk Goes Awry as Cubs Win, 5-4, in 11th

Tony Gwynn said there may be worse or weirder or more incredible ways to lose a baseball game.

“I just hope I only watch them on TV,” he said.

Right about now, you might want to grab something: The Padres lost, 5-4, to the Chicago Cubs in the 11th inning Friday when, on a simple intentional walk to Cub hitter Damon Berryhill, Padre catcher Benito Santiago inexplicably threw a ball 200 feet from home plate into center field. Manny Trillo scored the winning run from second when Santiago dropped the ensuing return throw from Marvell Wynne.

Two things to understand:

1) We are not making this up.

2) It gets better.

Santiago’s throw was supposed to be a pickoff play, but pickoff plays require the advance knowledge of more than one player. Only one among the 24 Padre players, five coaches and one manager knew. And Santiago wasn’t telling.

It was supposed to be a pickoff play, but pickoff plays also require that somebody be available to be picked off. Trillo was standing within a few feet of second base at the time and, as far as anyone can remember, there were no baserunners in center field.

And this, incidentally, is supposed to be major league baseball.

“I can’t believe it,” pitching coach Pat Dobson said with an amazed stare. “Around here we can’t even relax on an intentional walk.”

Manager Jack McKeon summed it up with two simple answers.

Ever seen anything like this before?

“No.”

How long have you been in organized baseball?

“Forty years.”

There were two out in the 11th inning. The Padres had fought back from a 3-0 deficit to tie the game in the top of the ninth on Tim Flannery’s RBI grounder after Randy Ready and Garry Templeton had singled.

Trillo had led off the 11th with a single off Lance McCullers. He had been bunted to second base by Vance Law, but then Darrin Jackson was retired on a grounder to McCullers. After the intentional walk to Berryhill, the Padres were going to take their chances on .154-hitting Jerry Mumphrey.

“I think we get out of the inning, and we take this game,” McKeon said.

Not so fast. On the second pitch of the intentional walk to Berryhill, from his standing position on the outside of home plate, Santiago fires.

The ball first sails over a stunned McCullers--”I thought he was throwing to me, but then I realize, ‘Hey, that ball is way over my head.’ ”

The ball then hits the ground to the right of second base and skips past unsuspecting second baseman Roberto Alomar. As Alomar later confirmed, if the ball had been on target, this might not be a game story but an obituary.

“If I’m on the base, that ball hits me,” said Alomar, who was still given a two-base error on the play. “I never saw it.”

The ball finally ends up in shallow right-center field, where Wynne makes a belated chase.

“You know, an intentional walk, we’re all just kind of standing around,” Wynne said. “I pick up my head, and here comes the ball.”

Trillo, being no fool, takes off from second and rounds third and attempts to score. Wynne’s throw to the plate is perfect. But it bounces off the edge of the grass and off Santiago’s glove, and the Cubs win.

And McCullers, by allowing one baserunner in two-thirds of an inning, gets the loss, making him 1-6.

“I was asking somebody if they couldn’t put this a under a question-mark loss,” said McCullers jokingly. “Hey, at least we made ‘This Week in Baseball.’ ”

Oh yes, in this game, Gwynn had two more hits to extend his hitting streak to 17 games with a .500 average (36 for 72) during that time and an overall average of .307.

But the open mouths in the Padre clubhouse afterward didn’t want to talk about that.

“This was the strangest ending I’ve ever been in,” Wynne said. “And I hope I never have to be in one like that again.”

Said Cub Manager Don Zimmer: “He (Santiago) tried to catch us napping, but he caught his own player napping. We’ll take it.”

So what really did happened?

“I was just trying to pick him off, I do that a lot,” Santiago said. “I’m not going to say it’s his (Alomar’s) fault or my fault. He’s a rookie; I was a rookie last year, I know what it’s like to make mistakes.

“No, I didn’t give anybody a signal. But they have to know I like to throw down there.”

Didn’t give anybody a signal? According to several Padres, that’s like saying the Midwest hasn’t had much rain.

“Sure, he throws a lot, and I’m usually ready,” Alomar said. “But I never thought he would throw it this time.”

“He surprised everybody, everybody,” said Sandy Alomar, the third base coach. “Trillo was a few feet off the bag. He was so close, I think Robbie was talking to him.”

Summed Gwynn: “I’m waiting for an intentional walk, and the next thing I know, the game is over. You can say I was surprised.”

McKeon was just plain mad. As mad as he’s been since taking over as manager.

“Trickery, trickery, you don’t have to be tricky,” McKeon said, throwing a pen down on his desk. “The game ain’t that tough. I don’t mind getting beat--if you beat us, you beat us--but I don’t want to give it away.

“We just had to be too darn tricky.”

Somebody asked if this wasn’t just a by-product of a defensive aggressiveness that the Padres love in Santiago.

“I don’t know if it’s aggressiveness when the guy you’re trying to pick off the base is standing on the base,” said McKeon, who will discuss the incident with Santiago today.

Friday’s confusing finish appropriately ended with this confession from Santiago, who had a similarly unusual experience earlier this year when he forgot to chase a passed ball in Montreal.

Not to worry, said Santiago. All the fuss over this bad throw wouldn’t keep him from making the same throw again.

“I would do it again in a minute,” Santiago said. “Sometimes I get the guy, sometimes I don’t. But that’s baseball.”

Overshadowed in all this was the Padres’ comeback and fine relief pitching appearances that supported it. After Eric Show was erratic again in allowing four runs in 5 innings, Dave Leiper threw 1 scoreless innings, followed by 3 scoreless inning for Mark Davis, who was replaced by McCullers after being lifted for a pinch-hitter.

The loss made the Padre 5-4 on this trip with two games remaining here. They need to win one to ensure their first winning trip in a year.

Padre Notes

As perhaps an omen of things to come, Padre catcher Benito Santiago was upset before Friday’s game, this time about his position in the batting order. He said he was tired of batting seventh, a position he has held since since his average went from .315 (April 26) to .217 (June 8). Santiago, who batted fifth for much of last season when he had 18 homers and 79 RBIs and was named rookie of the year, says that batting seventh is “like being a leadoff hitter. There’s nobody on base when you come up. You lead off every inning.” Santiago said, “Why can’t this be like last year? Why have me so low?” Santiago said he has talked to Manager Jack McKeon about it once but will bring it up no more. “I can’t be in that man’s office every day,” Santiago said. “I have been talking all the time, and they haven’t been listening. So I’m going to stop trying. I don’t care anymore. I’m just going to come to the ballpark and play and have fun. I’ve got a nice family, a good life, I can’t worry about this anymore.” When told of Santiago’s distress, McKeon was not surprised. “Yeah, I talked to him, and if he’s still unhappy, tell him to look at the stats,” McKeon said. “I’ve got them written down somewhere.” McKeon makes a valid point. After Friday’s game, in 74 at-bats with runners in scoring position, Santiago had collected just 10 hits (.135), driving in just 12 runs. With runners in scoring position and two outs--an even more indicative stat--Santiago was 1 for 31 with one RBI. “I told him, you determine where you are,” McKeon said.