Some New Faces Give Padres Lift in 9-1 Win

Kids’ Day isn’t on the Padres’ promotional calendar for 1988, but Manager Jack McKeon staged one anyway Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Flipping through his list of new arrivals from the Padres’ minor league team at Las Vegas, McKeon inserted three of them into the starting lineup. Greg Harris was the starting pitcher, Bip Roberts played third base and Rob Nelson was at first base. Jerald Clark was inserted into the game to pinch-hit for, of all people, Tony Gwynn.

The result was a 9-1 victory over the slumbering Houston Astros in front of 11,796 fans. The youngsters frolicked the way kids are supposed to on Sunday afternoons.

“Hey, you know how Sundays are,” McKeon said. “Family picnics, days of relaxation. I thought the kids should play.”

There were no toys or fake accessories on this afternoon, however, only some imaginations and dreams fulfilled.

That was a real-live fastball and sharp-breaking curveball that Harris used to gun down 11 of the Astros’ batters and set a new Padre strikeout record for pitchers making their first start.

That was real lumber used by Roberts (three hits) and Nelson (two hits) as the two combined to help knock out Astro starter Bob Forsch in the fifth inning.

And that was some real timing on Clark’s part, who hit for Gwynn, the National League’s leading hitter, in the seventh inning, and got his first major league hit, a two-run double that knocked in the final two runs of the Padres’ fourth consecutive victory.

“I’m real happy for the young players,” McKeon said. “It was good to see them get out there and do the job. You feel good for them.”

Afterward, nobody felt better than Harris, who limited the Astros to four hits and won in his first major league start.

Harris, who was the Padres’ minor league pitcher of the year the past two seasons, had made his big league debut last Monday in Cincinnati, allowing four hits and two runs in two innings.

In his second appearance, he would allow four hits again. But, this time, he would go nine innings.

“I’m ecstatic about this,” Harris said. “I went into the game hoping for my first big league win, but I never imagined I’d pitch this well.”

Harris allowed only Ken Caminiti’s ground-ball single up the middle in the second inning, Craig Reynolds’ RBI single in the third, Glenn Davis’ opposite-field single in the sixth and Kevin Bass’ double to left-center in the ninth.

“The way things are going right now, I think anybody could get us out,” said Davis, whose team has lost 9 of its last 11 games. “But you’ve got to give him (Harris) credit. He made the pitches he had to and he didn’t make any mistakes.”

The Astros, whose biggest mistake the past two seasons has been showing up here, are now 3-15 in San Diego since their division-winning season of 1986.

And Sunday, they were down and out early.

In the second, Carmelo Martinez, Marvell Wynne, Nelson and Dickie Thon all singled and Mark Parent hit a three-run homer to right field, his fourth of the year.

Already ahead, 5-0, the Padres added two more hits, singles by Roberts and Gwynn, giving them a season-high total of seven hits in the inning.

Harris, enjoying this early cushion, settled in and had his 10th strikeout by the eighth inning.

By then, Parent had homered again, Clark had driven in two with his double and the Padres were back over the .500 mark with a 78-77 record.

The Padres finish the season this week with three games at home against the Dodgers and three games at Houston next weekend.

The three games next weekend are good news for Parent, who has now hit four of his five home runs this season against Houston.

He hit the first two in one game Aug. 14 in the Astrodome.

“I’m glad we’re going back there,” he said.