This Game Was a Real Nothing, Which Meant It Was Something Special

Multiple choice:

A.) 0 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 0

B.) 79-78

Guess which figures made the final home game of the Padres’ 1988 season an occasion worthy of red, white and blue bunting?

The non-number, of course.

OK, so the Padres’ won-lost record is rather amazing, considering that they were 16-30 before they removed the paralyzing presence of Larry Bowa.

But the Padres’ finale did not belong to them. It did not belong to the Dodgers either, for that matter.

The occasion belonged to Orel Hershiser IV as he attempted to stretch his streak of shutout innings from IL to LVIII and tie Don Drysdale’s all-time record.

Hershiser was the reason the press box was jammed for a game of no consequence in the NL West, unless writers were in town from New York and Philadelphia to see if the Padres really could pull off a Mini-Miracle of Mission Valley and finish in the first division.

Hershiser was also the reason the Padres ran out of complimentary tickets for the first time this year, including Opening Night.

No, Closing Night was the biggest baseball game in this ballpark since the 1984 World Series.

Thanks to Orel IV.

This was a flirtation with history. All of the Dodgers would play pawns to this king. Just catch the third strikes, turn the double plays and chase down the fly balls. No one could have cared less what the Dodgers did in their times at bat,

Just get them up and down and out of the way and get the ball to Orel IV.

Hershiser was the one who could finish the evening with a share of a record darn near as intimidating as Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak and Henry Aaron’s home runs and Pete Rose’s hits.

If anything, Drysdale’s record was probably most comparable to DiMaggio’s.

You knew that if Aaron and Rose played long enough they would pass Ruth and Cobb.

What DiMaggio did was different. He could not afford one bad game. But he had the luxury, if you can call it that, of looking at maybe 12 to 15 pitches.

What Drysdale did and what Hershiser was attempting was much more fragile than that. He could not have one bad inning. Heck, he could not throw one bad pitch. One run was all it would take to end it.

And so it was that a meaningless game became a meaningful event.

This was what Bill Shakespeare REALLY had in mind when he wrote “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Nothing, to be sure, was what this was all about. Anything more than nothing and Hershiser’s magnificent string of pearls would be snapped.

Standing in his way were those villainous Padres. A few months ago, matching the Padres against a guy as hot as Orel IV would have been about as one-sided as sending Janet Evans into the ring against Mike Tyson.

But these Padres are different than the Padres of June, when Hershiser beat them, 12-2. If anything, they were hitting as if they had a chance at first place, not the first division.

In fact, in the previous five games, they had averaged more than five runs a game. And they had scored 19 runs and batted .294 for the past three.

So this was the team and this was the situation Hershiser faced as he took the mound on an uncharacteristically hazy late September evening.

Nothing at stake except nothing, which was to say everything in this most fragile of quests.

Could he do?

Time would tell . . .

7:23--50 innings down and 8 to go. An easy first. A loud fly ball by Roberto Alomar and a bouncing single by Tim Flannery, but nary a Padre as far as second.

7:35--51 down and 7 to go. Not much of scare, but Franklin Stubbs’ blood pressure was up after he booted a two-out grounder by Randy Ready. Orel IV quickly took him off the hook by getting Garry Templeton to tap back to the mound. Stubbs’ sigh of relief raised a dust devil at first base.

7:47--52 down and 6 to go. Not a ripple of a threat. Three up and three down.

8:02--53 down and 5 to go. A two-out single by Marvell Wynne, but Orel IV was too marvelous to let that stop him.

8:14--54 down and 4 to go. Yawn. One, two, three and out.

8:37--55 down and 3 to go. Another yawner. Three up and three down.

8:54--56 down and 2 to go. Orel IV ties Joe DiMaggio’s record. OK, wrong category.

9:11--57 down and you know how many to go. Orel IV gave up a hit to Alomar, and then picked him off.

9:27--58 down, but wait a minute. He’s getting a Standing O for his 58 consecutive 0s, and his teammates are streaming from the dugout with hugs and handshakes, but the Padres are going out onto the field. Melton Andrew Hawkins I had matched him 0 for 0, and so he would have a chance to make the night a little more special by breaking the record.

9:48--58 PLUS 1. Another Standing O for yet another 0, this one with the streak-breaking run on third. Tommy Lasorda met him at the third-base line, a battery of cameras right behind.

9:54--Good night, Orel IV. A good night’s work? This was a good month’s work.

What was would have been a meaningless late-season game was suddenly what it would have been all along, but for Orel IV.