Phillies Dust Off Padres : Bedrosian Stops Hot Martinez in the Ninth Inning

The setting couldn’t have been more dramatic if a scriptwriter had dreamed it up.

There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning Monday night, runners on first and second, the Padres down by one run against the Philadelphia Phillies, and none other than Carmelo Martinez coming to bat.

Martinez in the past three games had won with late-inning heroics, and here he was with a chance to do it again. A double almost certainly would have turned the game around and sent the crowd of 20,577 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium into hysteria. Just a single would have created a 6-6 tie.

Steve Bedrosian, the Phillies’ ace reliever, was having one of his shakier outings. He had yielded a home run to Benito Santiago in the eighth and singles by John Kruk and Tony Gwynn in the ninth.

When Bedrosian ran the count to 3-1 on Martinez, the feeling of anticipation in the stands soared higher than ever. Now Martinez would get his pitch, one he could drive.

But Bedrosian met the challenge, and Martinez ran out of miracles. The San Diego left fielder lofted the 3-1 pitch to center field for the out that saddled the Padres with a 6-5 defeat.

Afterward, Martinez said, “I was more excited this at-bat. I mean, four in a row? I said, ‘Wait a minute. What is this?’ Then I took about 10 deep breaths.

“On the 3-1 pitch, I was trying to hit it back up the middle. It got in on me a little bit.”

Martinez said that he had thought about a another game-winner before the inning began.

“I was talking to Amos (Otis, batting coach),” Martinez said. “I said this might come down to me again.”

Martinez’s streak was only one of several that ended when centerfielder Chris James caught his lazy fly. The outcome broke the Padres’ five-game winning streak and the Phillies’ eight-game losing streak at eight, and Larry Bowa’s drought as their new third base coach at six. Bowa, of course, is accustomed to slow starts, the Padres having begun both the 1987 and 1988 seasons with five straight defeats when he was their manager.

This was an especially tough game for the Padres to lose, on two counts. They blew a 4-1 lead behind Jimmy Jones, and contributed to their demise with some uncharacteristic misadventures on defense. They lead the National League in fielding, but you wouldn’t have known it from their deportment during the Phillies’ five-run uprising in the seventh.

Shortstop Garry Templeton began the bizarre inning with miscues on the first two batters, one physical and one mental. He booted Ricky Jordan’s grounder, then underestimated Jordan’s speed and threw too late to second on a bounder by Juan Samuel. He almost certainly could have thrown out Samuel at first.

With the gates now open, the Phillies rushed through with three hits in a row--a double by Milt Thompson and singles by Darren Daulton and Steve Jeltz. This pulled them into a 4-4 tie, and sent Lance McCullers to the rescue of Jones.

Pinch hitter Bob Dernier bunted, and when McCullers threw past first base, Daulton scored and Jeltz went to third. Phil Bradley followed with a groundout that sent Jeltz across with what proved to be the winning run.

McCullers said there had been a breakdown in communication on the misplayed bunt.

“(Third baseman Randy) Ready said he called me off, but I didn’t hear him.I looked at third, then I spun to throw to first. Dernier is fast. Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown it.”

Padre Manager Jack McKeon said of the lamentable seventh, “That was the first bad inning I can remember since I’ve been here. I don’t remember anything close to that.”

Of the near-miss with Martinez in the ninth, McKeon said, “We had the right guy up there. He hit it good, but he got under it just a little.”

Jones’ seventh-inning collapse took away much of the pleasure of hitting his first home run of the season off Mike Maddux in the fifth inning. It was the second of his career, the other having come off Guy Hoffman of Cincinnati last July 30.

“I didn’t think it was going to make it,” Jones said. “Of course, I’ve hit so many that I know how they feel.”

For five innings, the game was a fast-moving pitchers’ duel.

After blanking the Phillies for three innings, Jones gave up a run in the fourth on singles by James and Jordan, a wild pitch and Samuel’s sacrifice fly.

Jones’ teammates managed just one hit, a third-inning single by Templeton, off Maddux until he took matters into his own hands in the fifth. He ran the count to 3-2, then sent a towering shot over the left-field wall.

Inspired by this show of power by their pitcher, the Padres who are paid to hit broke the 1-1 tie with three runs in the sixth. They chased Maddux in the process.

Roberto Alomar began the uprising with a single and went all the way home on Gwynn’s double. Gwynn took third on the throw to the plate and continued to the plate when third baseman Shane Turner, just in from Double-A Reading to fill in for the injured Mike Schmidt, let catcher Daulton’s throw carom off his glove to short left field.

Martinez walked, Keith Moreland singled, and both moved up on a wild pitch. Santiago’s sacrifice fly made it 4-1, and when Ready walked, former Padre Greg Harris, the winning pitcher, replaced Maddux. Harris prevented the rally from going any further by striking out Templeton and retiring Jones on a pop foul.

It was then, just when it looked as though Jones might be able to breeze home, that the Padres let the game get out of hand.

Padre Notes

Manager Jack McKeon said he didn’t think the knee injury that ended Sandy Alomar Jr.’s triple-A season early would affect the promising catcher’s trade value in the off-season. “It’s not that serious,” McKeon said. Alomar underwent arthroscopic surgery Aug. 14 for loose tendons in his left knee, suffered in a game in Las Vegas. The Padres had planned to call him up in September, but McKeon said, “We can’t do it now. He won’t be ready.” There is tremendous interest in Alomar. “They (other teams) all scouted him. They know what he can do.”

McKeon said he didn’t expect many September roster moves. “Las Vegas won’t finish its season until Labor Day, and it’s going to be in the playoffs.”