Cubs’ Gloves Frustrate Padres in Ninth, 3-2

Ten minutes after the game ended, Chris Brown couldn’t leave. He sat alone in the Padres’ dugout, with his shirt unbuttoned and his eyes blank, directly under the green dugout roof upon which is printed, in white block letters, “Welcome To The Friendly Confines Of Wrigley Field.”

The irony on this Saturday afternoon was enough to make you laugh, but Chris Brown could not even speak.

So what about that last play? Silence.

What about that great catch? Silence.

Brown just stared into right field, staring as if he were trying to will it all back--the line drive, the catch, the final out.

A Padre win was stolen Saturday afternoon, and with it bits of hearts. With two out in the ninth inning, with the tying and go-ahead runs on base, Andre Dawson made a leaping, backhand grab of Brown’s line drive at the right-field warning track to give the Chicago Cubs a 3-2 victory.

It was such a feat that the only thing you could compare it to was, well, a play by Cub shortstop Shawon Dunston two batters earlier. With the tying run on base, he leaped and snared John Kruk’s line drive while parallel to the ground.

Said Brown, after he refused to speak for 30 minutes: “A man made a pitch, I hit the ball, he robbed me, game over.”

Said Kruk, rubbing his hand through his hair: “I guess all I can do is hit it. Wherever it goes, it goes.”

Thus the Padres, who just two days ago were on the verge of one of their best trips in recent history, need to defeat Rick Sutcliffe today to finish it 6-5, which would still be their first winning trip in a year.

To top it off, it was a day when catcher Benito Santiago, unhappy over being benched after he lost Friday’s game with a wild pick-off throw, expressed great disillusionment with Manager Jack McKeon and his team.

“They are making me put my head down, which will make me start hurting the club,” said Santiago, last season’s rookie of the year, after Mark Parent started in his place. “I love San Diego, but if things stay like this, I will want to get out of here.”

After Saturday’s loss, all the Padres may have felt like joining him.

With the Padres trailing, 3-2, Tony Gwynn led off the ninth with a one-out single off reliever Pat Perry. Speaking of Gwynn, he went 3 for 4 Saturday to extend his hitting streak to 18 games and his batting average to .313, third in the National League behind Atlanta’s Gerald Perry (.331) and Montreal’s Andres Galarraga (.325).

With Gwynn on first, Kruk stroked a 3-and-1 pitch to left field, a shot that appeared to be a single.

“I thought, we have runners on first and third for sure,” Kruk said.

Wrong. The ball never got to left. Dunston, who two innings earlier threw Keith Moreland out at first after nabbing a grounder nearly on the left-field line, intercepted Kruk’s shot.

He dove toward second and caught the ball while in mid-air. He actually caught only half of it; as he landed, a chunk of white was peeking out of the brown. It was not a baseball catch, it was a Jerry Rice catch.

“With that count, I was expecting Gwynn to steal, so I took a step that way (toward second) and had a little advantage,” Dunston said.

Kruk stopped running halfway down the first base line, walked slowly back to the dugout and, just as he reached the top step, ceremoniously flipped his helmet into the air.

With two out, up came Moreland, and into the game came former Padre Goose Gossage, who had blown a save opportunity Friday in an eventual 5-4 Cub victory. It looked as if it would happen again. Moreland met him with another shot to left field, but this one about two stories too high for Dunston. It was a single, moving Gwynn to third and setting up Brown, who didn’t waste time.

On Gossage’s first pitch, Brown swung. The sound was probably heard on Lake Michigan, and the ball seemed to be going nearly that far, rising into the right-center field gap.

“I thought it was gone,” said Gwynn, who had begun a trot home.

Brown never had a chance to think. Just as the ball seemed to be beginning its ascent over the ivy and into the bare chests in the bleachers, Dawson leaped and, with seemingly every one of his 6-feet 3-inches extended, caught the ball just as it crossed the warning track.

“Incredible,” Moreland said. “And I didn’t even say ‘Oh God’ or anything, because I’ve seen Andre do it before. I’ve seen him do it so many times, it’s routine.”

“I just tried to get a good jump,” said Dawson, the winner of seven Gold Gloves. “I was hoping the ball wouldn’t be right at the wall. If it was, I’d probably be dead right now. “

Which pretty much describes how Brown was feeling.

“I tell you, if I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck,” Brown said later. “I bet if I go out and try to cross the street and jump out of the way of a bus coming one way, another bus would hit me going the other way.”

That’s one way to look at what happened to the Padres as they lost their fourth one-run game on this trip. Another way to look at it came, as usual, from Tim Flannery.

“I know what it is. Dunston and Dawson had Flubber in their shoes,” Flannery said.

Flubber?

“You know, that Disney movie where guys are jumping through roofs,” Flannery. “They had those shoes. I want a pair of those shoes.”

Not everyone could dig up a smile Saturday. When Santiago arrived at Wrigley Field in the morning and saw his name missing from the lineup, he was incensed, particularly after he felt he received most of the blame Friday for an 11th-inning pick-off throw to second base that surprised his teammates and rolled into center field, allowing Manny Trillo to score from second to give the Cubs the 5-4 victory.

Quickly, coach Greg Riddoch told him that he was going to be benched no matter what had happened Friday, that it was Mark Parent’s regular turn to play. Santiago was still upset.

“If I was going to be benched today, why didn’t they tell me yesterday?” he said later. “And if they bench me, why don’t they ever bench a guy like Tony Gwynn? If they do that, Tony is in the (manager’s) office every day, I guarantee it.”

So just before the game, Santiago and McKeon met. It was not a fruitful meeting.

“I shook the man’s hand, but I still feel the same way,” Santiago said. “He told about using all 24 men on the team and all that, but it’s not doing me any good to put me on the bench.

“They didn’t give me a day off during the hitting streak (34 games) last year, did they? It’s hard to keep up your hitting when you don’t play every day.”

The problem here is simple. Santiago, who has played in more games than anybody on the team (87), has fewer homers (4) than five others and fewer RBIs (20) than seven. A .248 batting average is not the least bit consoling.

“I told him, you determine where you are,” McKeon said. “I’ve got the numbers where he can see them. The numbers are right here. We have 24 guys on this team and we’re going to use them. This is not one guy, this is a team.”