Things Go the Padres’ Way in 12th Inning

Desperate men, desperate measures.

The Padres entered the ninth inning against the New York Mets and Dwight Gooden Friday night with just two hits and one run and a likely fourth consecutive loss. The Shea Stadium crowd of 32,530 was bellowing. Gooden, who had recorded six of the previous nine outs with strikeouts, was smoldering.

“Almost a crisis situation for us,” Tony Gwynn said.

So what happens? Over the next hour, Benito Santiago actually doesn’t swing at a couple of pressure pitches. Rookie Greg Harris, making his first playing appearance in New York, actually ignores the 12-year-old boys who insult his relatives. And Gwynn runs the bases with all the forethought of a man running to his car in the rain.

Desperate men, desperate measures, and oh, what results. After 12 innings and nearly four hours: Padres 4, Mets 3.

“A night like this,” Manager Jack McKeon said, “may be the answer.”

The game was tied on Santiago’s RBI single off Gooden in the ninth after Santiago had worked the count to three and two. It was held there by the shutout pitching of Harris, who struck out six of the seven batters he faced before giving the mound to Mark Davis.

And then the game was won, essentially, by Gwynn, whose base-running in the 12th shook up the New Yorkers and helped result in three Met errors and two Padre runs. Those were just enough as Davis allowed just a run in the bottom of the 12th to get his first victory after 13 consecutive saves.

“We needed to make something happen, anything ,” Gwynn said.

And so he did. Gwynn led off the 12th with a routine grounder to first baseman Keith Hernandez, who picked up the ball and tossed it gently to pitcher Roger McDowell covering first. Except Gwynn was steaming down the line. As if to avoid a collision, McDowell caught the ball and jumped away from the base. Problem was, he never touched it, and Gwynn was safe on his error.

Gwynn then surprised everybody but himself by stealing second, arriving safely after surprised catcher Barry Lyons double pumped the ball. Marvell Wynne singled to right, scoring Gwynn, and took second when right fielder Darryl Strawberry bounced a throw off Lyons’ shin guards. Wynne scored one out later when first baseman Keith Hernandez booted Rob Nelson’s grounder.

That was all Davis needed, as he allowed an RBI single to rookie Mark Carreon in the bottom of the 12th but nothing more.

“We got a break or two for a change,” marveled McKeon, whose team has lost more than three in a row just once since he took over last May 28.

“A very, very big win,” said Gwynn, who explained that his baserunning was out of necessity. “I wasn’t going to beat out my grounder so I figured I would run hard and maybe he would get off the base, and sure enough he did.”

But about that steal . . .

“So what if I got caught?” he said. “After all we had been through lately, it wasn’t going to hurt us any. We had been hurt bad enough. I had to be a renegade out there.”

The title of renegade has recently belonged to Santiago, who was zero for three against Gooden before his ninth-inning appearance and looked to be just another casualty in a well-pitched game in which Padre starter Bruce Hurst allowed one earned run in eight innings while Gooden had allowed just two hits entering the ninth.

Leading off the ninth was Roberto Alomar, who had been hitless against Gooden in seven big-league at-bats but put his second pitch into center for a single. Two pitches later, Alomar took off for second just about the time Luis Salazar was punching another Gooden fastball into center. Alomar ended up on third, Salazar on first, with free-swinging Santiago up.

He swung at the first pitch and missed. But then he managed to wait on the next pitches, both balls. He fouled one off. Then another ball. Then another foul.

These are the kinds of battles that Santiago has often lost this year. Not this time. He lashed Gooden’s next pitch to left--with Salazar running off first--to score Alomar and tie the game.

“I feel so great after hitting that pitch,” said Santiago, who was benched for three games earlier this week because of impatience at the plate. “After what I’ve been through, now I think everything will be all right.”

The rally got rid of Gooden and give a little breathing space to Harris, who replaced Hurst to start the ninth and promptly struck out Strawberry, Gregg Jefferies and Hernandez. In the 10th, he struck out Lyons and Lee Mazzilli, then allowed Kevin Elster an infield single and stolen base before Davis came on.

Davis watched a Mookie Wilson grounder bounce off his hand and roll through the infield, putting runners on first and third. But after battling Howard Johnson through a couple of foul balls, Davis fooled him on a curve that Johnson bounced back to the mound to end that threat and eventually save Harris and the Padres.

Not that Harris felt like he needed saving.

“The adrenaline was going so much, I didn’t hear anything or feel anything,” said Harris, who passed his first big pressure test this year and now has an 0.87 ERA in 10 1/3 innings. “Before the game, running the outfield, I heard everybody shouting at me, even little kids, and I thought, ‘Oh my goodness.’ But once I got on the mound, it was fine.”

Padre Notes

There was still grumbling in the Padre clubhouse Friday concerning Thursday’s 6-5 loss in St. Louis, but the talk had nothing to do with the game. Several players were upset because, according to them, starting and losing pitcher Eric Show didn’t show up for the 12:35 p.m. game until around 11:50 a.m., or later than the rest of the team and many of the 40,146 Busch Stadium fans. Making it worse was his absence from an impromptu, players-only meeting called by shortstop and captain Garry Templeton. Show then proceeded to give up four earned runs in the first two innings and get knocked from the game for his third consecutive loss, a stretch in which he has allowed 11 runs in 13 innings. The Padre bosses took no action against Show because, as Manager Jack McKeon said, “There’s never been a time limit for when our starting pitcher has to be there.” But the rest of the team realizes that the traditional arrival time is two hours before a game. Usually Show makes that unofficial deadline by taking the team bus, one of only a few players who do not arrive at the park earlier. But because Busch Stadium is about five blocks from the team’s hotel, there is no team bus. Coincidentally, some players said, the meeting Show missed was about teamwork. “I was just following my regular routine,” Show said Friday. “What did I do wrong? I guess I lost. I don’t know what else to say.” Although no Padre player wished to comment, one coach did. “Does it concern me? Let’s just say I’m not very happy about it,” pitching coach Pat Dobson said. “If he feels he can arrive at that time and still be prepared for the game, fine. But I know when I pitched, I couldn’t.”