Padres Out of Jam With First Victory : Harris Engineers Escape From Giants but Then Leaves Game With Rib Injury

This was a team badly in need of a pitch, and not just any pitch. This was a team, dangling above 0-3, in need of a pitch with no conscience.

Wednesday afternoon, seventh inning, Padres leading the San Francisco Giants, 4-3. The Giants have loaded the bases, two out. Up steps pinch-hitter Tracy Jones, who last year with the Cincinnati Reds was walked twice by Padre pitchers in similar situations, both times forcing in game-winning runs.

In comes Greg Harris, the Padres’ rookie reliever. Out runs pitching coach Pat Dobson, who knows that Jones likes to lean over the plate and step into the ball.

“He told me to throw it inside, which tells me one thing,” Harris recalled. “To me, that means, inside. Not over the plate. Not over the inside of the plate. But inside .”

So that’s where Harris throws it. Right smack at Jones.

Jones ducks and eludes the ball but not the message. Two weak fouls and a wild swing on a curveball later, Jones strikes out and the inning is over. It was a pitch, but not just any pitch, and today the Padres are no longer just any deadbeats--they have recorded their first victory of 1989, 4-3, in front of a paid crowd of 24,309 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

“If I was going to hit him in that situation,” Harris said, “there was nothing I could do about it. I pitched him where I had to.”

The smiles in the clubhouse afterward were a bit tight. Harris was forced out of the game with one out in the eighth with a sore right rib cage that, he said, “felt like a knife on my last pitch.” It could be just a slight pull, which would only sideline him for a couple of days, or it could be torn cartilage, which could put him out for a couple of weeks.

According to Harris, the Padre trainers want him to sleep on it and will examine it again today, probably after the Padres have arrived in Houston, where they open a three-game series Friday.

“All I can do is hope it’s nothing,” Harris said.

He and about 29 other guys wearing Padre uniforms.

When looking at Wednesday, you see starter Ed Whitson’s nice work (6 2/3 innings, three runs). You see Mark Davis’ nice save (three strikeouts in 1 2/3 innings). You see fine hitting by surprise starters Marvell Wynne (three for four) and Luis Salazar (two for four) and even Jack Clark’s first Padre hit (single) and RBI.

But more than anything you see Harris, who hasn’t allowed a run in his two appearances this year (2 2/3 innings) and has struck out three. He has been the perfect rookie this spring, in everything from keeping his mouth shut to studying hitters cards in the bullpen.

“The guys down there give me a hard time about reading those cards, but I want to keep my mind in the game,” said Harris, 25.

Wednesday was a good game for that because, although the Padres jumped to a 4-1 lead after three innings, things were never quite secure. Whitson battled his way into the seventh, only retiring the Giants one-two-three once, and memories of the two losses in the season’s first two games this week were prevalent.

“This was one of those games where we got an early lead but we were playing like we were waiting for the other guys to catch up,” Tony Gwynn said.

Sure enough, it almost happened in the seventh. After Whitson allowed a leadoff single to Jose Uribe, he gave up a two-out homer to Robby Thompson, who only had seven home runs last season.

(In the second, Whitson had given up a homer to ex-Padre Terry Kennedy, who had just three last year. Meanwhile, Whitson had held Giants Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell, who racked the Padres for a combined 10 for 19 with nine RBIs in the first two games, to zero for five with three Mitchell strikeouts.)

Weirdness aside, the score was suddenly 4-3 in the seventh, and Whitson was gone. In came Dave Leiper, who promptly plunked Clark in the arm. Then, on a grounder by Mitchell, Roberto Alomar missed a throw at second base from third baseman Randy Ready. An intentional walk to Candy Maldonado loaded the bases for Kennedy, who was replaced by pinch-hitter Jones, which made Manager Jack McKeon go for Harris.

“It was a tough situation for the kid,” Dobson said. “But those are the situations where we can learn about a guy, and the guy can learn about himself.”

And what did the Padres learn? “That the kid has guts,” said Dobson, who added he wasn’t worried about Jones drawing another run-scoring walk, such as those issued last year by Mark Davis and since-departed Lance McCullers.

“I’d have been worried about another walk if McCullers was pitching again, but he wasn’t, so I wasn’t,” Dobson said.

Said Harris: “I was nervous, but that’s the type of situation I want to be in. That’s where I can show them what I can do. If they are looking for a guy to come out of the bullpen in that situation, I want to be the guy.”

And so he was, using his slider and then finally his curveball to fool Jones and get the Padres jumping off their seats.

Said Jones: “It’s just one of those things where I didn’t hit it.”

Said Gwynn: “It’s that kind of inning where, once you get through it, you know you are going to find a way to win.”

“Was that an awesome job or what?” Mark Davis said. “He gets out there and pitches to him like he’s been doing it for a long time. We were all impressed.”

Perhaps Harris tried to impress them too much. In the next inning, while trying to throw a fastball past Kirt Manwaring with a runner on second and one out, he felt a twinge in his side. Then he felt the knife. Then he walked off the mound and wrapped his torso in ice. If he is disabled, look for the recall of left-hander Pat Clements from triple-A Las Vegas.

“Because Manwaring knows me and expects the curve, I was trying to hump up my fastball, and I think I tried too hard; all of a sudden I really felt it,” said Harris, who left after getting ahead of Manwaring one-and-two.

In ran Davis, who struck out Manwaring with one pitch and then, after walking Brett Butler, struck out Thompson to end the eighth. He finished the ninth one-two-three, and while the Padres did not visibly celebrate, there was detected a collective sigh that said, OK, now the season can begin.

“Now we can go to Houston with the monkey off our backs,” said Gwynn, who has talked often of this club avoiding the identical 0-5 starts the last two seasons.

“We needed this,” said Wynne, who doubled and scored a run in the second and then singled in a run in the third. “Coming before we leave town, it was like perfect timing. Now it’s like we can start over again.”

Padre Notes

Padre Manager Jack McKeon seemed to push the right buttons in retooling his lineup Wednesday, an area in which he was uncannily successful last season. Feeling that hitless Carmelo Martinez (zero for eight) and hitless John Kruk (zero for seven) could use a couple of days off, he brought in Marvell Wynne (left field) and Luis Salazar (right). The two reserves combined to go five for eight with an RBI. “With an off day coming up (today), I figured I could get a couple of guys some good rest and keep a couple of other guys sharp,” McKeon said. “This is something I thought about all morning. I just wanted to take the pressure off some guys.” It didn’t work completely the way McKeon envisioned. Kruk was needed as a defensive replacement, and when he batted in the eighth, he grounded into a double play to drop him to zero for eight. . . . After Jack Clark’s RBI single in the third, Martinez and Kruk are the only two starters without a hit.

The game-time temperature was 98 degrees, although the players didn’t seem visibly affected. . . . The Padre relievers have yet to allow a run in the three games thus far, throwing a total of 8 2/3 shutout innings.