Santiago and Leiper Rescue Padres in 16

When it’s the 16th inning and you’re nearly out of players and energy and patience, sometimes this is what it takes to win a baseball game: a relief pitcher. In his first big-league plate appearance. Using the bat of a player who had not had a base hit in the previous four hours.

Wednesday night, it took Dave Leiper, who was fairly sure he wouldn’t touch the ball, swinging hard into the night and blooping a single to right field. Besides causing great laughter on the Padres’ bench and in the clubhouse, it scored Randy Ready.

Added to Benito Santiago’s bases-empty homer earlier in the inning, it supplied the Padres with just enough to survive a major error in the bottom of the 16th and defeat the Atlanta Braves, 5-4, in front of 6,070, most of whom had departed by the time this monster ended at 12:05 a.m. EDT.

What a game. What a team. Leiper and Santiago, what angels of mercy.

Said Tony Gwynn: “When Benito got his hit, I sat there and thought, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ ”

Said Mark Davis: “When Leiper got his hit, I laughed.”

The 4:23 screamer was the longest game for the Padres this year, and in terms of innings, it tied for the 10th-longest in Padre history. And that’s not even the weird stuff. When the two worst teams in one division get together, you can’t walk without running into the weird stuff.

Such as:

--The Padres would have left the field after two hours, 3-1 losers on a four-hitter by Rick Mahler, had the Braves not committed three errors in the bottom of the ninth, allowing the Padres to tie the score. Two were bad throws by shortstop Andres Thomas, and then Gerald Perry let Garry Templeton’s grounder skip under his glove to allow the tying run to score.

“I’ve been in more unusual games,” Gwynn said, “but that’s the weirdest inning I’ve seen in a long time.”

Weird was followed by weirder, because after the Padres’ ninth, the two teams locked themselves in a six-inning scoreless duel.

--The saddest man to see the game continue was Padre first baseman John Kruk. Batting leadoff, he had what may have been the worst day at the plate in Padre history.

Oh-for-8. Four flyouts, two strikeouts, one lineout, one groundout.

“Oh-for-8, that’s the consummate leadoff hitter for you,” said Kruk, whose average dropped eight points, from .251 to .243. “The part that really stinks is, I was trying. You couldn’t tell, but I was really up there trying.”

Guess whose bat Leiper used for the eventual winning hit? Kruk was so frustrated after Leiper got it, breaking the bat in the process, that after his ensuing flyout, he met Leiper at first base and cursed at him.

“You’re darn right I cussed at him,” Kruk said with a smile. ‘I’ve been out there all night doing nothing, and he gets his first hit with my bat? What’s going on here, anyway?”

--The Padres’ usual starting third baseman was one of only two position players who did not play, while his usual fill-in played 16 innings of the best defense the Padres have seen this season.

While Chris Brown watched, Randy Ready made six plays next to which you would have put a star in your scorebook.

In the ninth, he made a backhanded stop with the bases loaded to save a run. In the 10th, he made a backhanded stop to start a double play.

In the 12th, he made a lunging stop and stepped on third to start another double play. In the 14th, he made a running stop to his left to end the inning. Finally, in the 16th, he ended the game, with the tying run on third base, with two great running catch-and-throws.

“This was the best third base that has been played for us all year,” said Andy Hawkins, who started and allowed three runs in seven innings. Incidentally, after the Braves scored those three on Dale Murphy’s 20th homer in the third, they didn’t score again for 13 innings.

“Randy didn’t just make great plays, he made beyond great plays,” added Hawkins, who was victimized by an error by Brown in his last start.

Ready, like most of the Padres in a jubilant clubhouse afterward, just laughed.

“I got tired in the eighth inning. Then I thought, what the heck,” said Ready. “After a while, it was actually fun.”

After both teams blew enough scoring chances to last them the rest of the week--a total of 28 men were left on base, including 16 by the Braves--the fun finally ended in the 16th.

In the 16th, against Braves reliever German Jimenez--a 200-pound-plus pitcher recently signed from the Mexican League and known as “La Bamba”--Santiago hit a one-out homer on a full-count fastball to make the Padres rest a bit easier.

“You think they trade me now?” Santiago asked after his third homer in two nights.

But as if they knew it wouldn’t be enough, Ready followed with a single to break an 0-for-6 evening, and then Templeton, who had his first four-hit game in three years, singled Ready to third.

Up stepped Leiper, who had not allowed a run in his previous two innings of work.

“I was numb, I was blank . . . I really didn’t think I’d make contact,” Leiper said. “Honestly, I was just hoping he would throw the ball over the plate. I got lucky, real lucky.”

So did the Padres, who gave the Braves a run in the bottom of the 16th when Gwynn and Marvell Wynne bumped each other under a fly ball by Perry in right-center and allowed it to drop. This led to one run on Murphy’s RBI fly, and Leiper needed to retire Thomas on a grounder to end it.

“That’s OK,” Manager Jack McKeon said. “We’ll play all night if we have to.”

Padre Notes

The Padres were thrown into a near panic late Tuesday night when their top triple-A catcher, Sandy Alomar Jr. of Las Vegas, the key to their winter trade hopes, went down with an injured knee after a vicious home plate collision in the second inning against Albuquerque. They at first feared serious knee damage, but initial X-rays and then a visit Wednesday to the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla showed that it was just a bruise. He was placed on the 10-day disabled list. One overreacting Las Vegas TV announcer later compared the play to the one on which Washington Redskin quarterback Joe Theismann had his leg broken by Lawrence Taylor. Alomar’s left knee was snapped back by Albuquerque’s Juan Bell when Bell refused to slide, and Alomar, who held the ball and still tagged Bell out, refused to yield. Alomar was helped from the field and rushed to the hospital, much to the horror of Padre President Chub Feeney, who was on his first trip to Las Vegas this season. According to Las Vegas sources, one of the last things Alomar said before entering the emergency room was, “I don’t want Chub Feeney to come here anymore.” There wasn’t much joking around the Padre front office until Wednesday afternoon, when the star pupil was judged to be in one piece. “I feel fine now. About 1 a.m. today, I wasn’t too good,” Tom Romenesko, the Padre farm director, said Wednesday afternoon. “The thing about Sandy Jr. is he’s going to be like Mike Scioscia (the Dodger catcher noted for blocking the plate) one day. This kind of thing will happen. I’ve seen him bury guys before. They said the reason Wichita won the (double-A) Texas League last year is because he buried two different guys at the plate.” This is not the first time this has happened to Alomar. He bruised a knee in Beaumont in 1986. But the closer he gets to the big leagues, the more serious it becomes. At the time of Tuesday’s injury, he was hitting .297 with 16 homers and 71 RBIs and was attracting the attention of every major league team in need of a catcher next season.

If you were surprised by John Kruk’s triple in last Saturday’s 4-1 win in Cincinnati, well, you are not alone. Not only was it his first triple this year, it was only the fifth in his three-year big league career. Kruk remembered that the last time he tripled, he nearly killed himself. “At least this time when I slid into third base, I got there,” Kruk said Saturday night. “I remember my first triple in the big leagues, I went into a head-first slide in front of third base, but the dirt was real hard there, and I didn’t slide. I just stuck. By the time I had got to the base, I had cut my forehead all up.” . . . Incredible Statistic Department: Mike Swanson, Padre media relations assistant, figured that entering Wednesday, Tony Gwynn was hitting .415 against the National League’s top 10 ERA leaders.