Padres Rally, Go Overtime, Defeat Expos : Gwynn’s Hitting Revives and Provides Victory

It wasn’t like the Padres were just one out away from losing a game. They were one out away from losing their minds.

“Tonight,” Tony Gwynn said, “was the night we could have quit.”

It was the ninth inning, the Padres had runners on first and third, but there were two out and they trailed the Montreal Expos, 4-3. And oh, what a mess they had made.

The Padres’ offense had just failed to send a runner home on an apparent game-tying sacrifice fly. Earlier, the defense had given the Expos two runs on errors and another run that Montreal literally stole.

Into this carnage stepped Gwynn, who looked at pitcher Tim Burke with one thing on his mind: “I thought, ‘What are they going to do to me now?’ ” Gwynn said.

But then Burke threw him a lovely fastball and Gwynn, who had fought away off-speed stuff all night, was caught by a pleasant surprise and took it for a strike. And then Gwynn did it, on the next pitch, hitting another hard throw to center field for an RBI single to tie a game that the Padres calmly won two innings later, in the 11th, 6-5.

The Padres, who had lost five of their previous six games, won it with two runs in the 11th on Marvell Wynne’s one-out RBI double and an angry Jack Clark’s two-out RBI single.

Wynne had followed a one-out walk to Bip Roberts by loser Andy McGaffigan by hitting a two-and-one pitch into right field. And then one out later, Gwynn was intentionally walked, which angered Clark, who hit a McGaffigan fastball into center field to drive in the second run.

Reliever Mark Davis finished it in the bottom of the inning after allowing the Expos a run on an RBI single by pinch-hitter Mike Aldrete, just his fifth hit of the year. Davis needed to retire Tim Raines (fly out) and Rex Hudler (strikeout) to end the game with runners on first and second.

Just another day in the land of the scratching-their-heads Padres.

“A weird game,” pitching coach Pat Dobson said. “Man, what a weird game.”

This was a game in which Padre catcher Benito Santiago dropped four third strikes--which in all decency should be a major league record, if those records were kept. This was also a game in which Padre coaches fought with umpires who had accused them of watching the game through a dugout television camera.

There was little wonder that by the time it ended, nearly four hours after it had started, most of the crowd of 12,110 had gone home. They will watch cleaner games in the Stanley Cup finals.

The only sanity was provided by Gwynn, who went three for four with three stolen bases to improve another remarkable mark. Since the dome was put on Olympic Stadium in 1987, Gwynn has batted .429 (18 for 42) with seven RBIs and eight stolen bases.

“I just see the ball batter in here now,” he said. “Before, the sun would shine through funny places. Now, though, I’m seeing the ball so good, my best at-bat tonight was my walk.”

That came in the eighth inning, when the Padres’ rally actually began. At that point, the Padres trailed, 4-2.

Part of that deficit was because Santiago put an attempted pickoff throw into right field, leading to a run in the second inning. Another part of it was because Garry Templeton booted a double-play grounder that brought about a run in the seventh.

Then a few minutes after that grounder, with Spike Owen on third and Raines on first, the Expos pulled a double steal. It worked when Templeton, who was thrown the ball by Santiago as a decoy, couldn’t get it out of his glove in time to throw out Owen at the plate.

“I made some bad mistakes tonight and if the game had not turned out the way it did. . . . “ Templeton said.

Santiago was a little more forgiving. As he was walking to the clubhouse after getting eight assists, which would have been a club record for catchers if the game had lasted only nine innings, he asked onlookers: “Hey, you got a sandwich in your pocket? I’m really hungry.”

It was after that double steal that the umpires, according to the Padres, questioned the coaches about questioning calls after watching the slow-motion replays from the bench.

“He said we were watching the monitor, but there is no monitor on the bench, just a camera,” said Dobson, who watched Manager Jack McKeon argue with umpire crew chief John Kibler. “And I’m not using any camera. I can watch a game with my own eyes better than through some small camera. It was crazy.”

Thus Gwynn was really caught by surprise when he opened the eighth by falling behind 0-and-2 to reliever Joe Hesketh, who just entered the game. But seeing the ball well, he watched four straight for a walk.

Enter Tim Burke, the Expos’ stopper, who did his job on Clark by getting him to strike out, Clark’s second of three whiffs this night. But Burke was so worried about Clark, he forgot about Gwynn, who stole second.

A Rob Nelson grounder moved Gwynn to third with two out, where he was just a hit away from scoring. Santiago did it for him, knocking a Bruke pitch into left field. At the time, it was Santiago’s fifth hit and sixth RBI in his last 13 at-bats.

The run moved the Padres to within 4-3 and set up another rally minutes later. With one out in the ninth, Tim Flannery swung at Burke’s first pitch and knocked it into right for a single. In came pinch-runner Roberts. Three pitches later, he was on third base as Wynne knocked a ball to right for a single.

Still with just one out, it was up to Roberto Alomar to hit a fly ball to score Roberts from third and tie the game. And so he did. But Otis Nixon caught the ball in medium center field and Roberts was told to hold.

“Nixon was running in and with Tony coming up, there was no way I could send him,” third base coach Sandy Alomar said.

“I thought he was coming,” Gwynn said of Roberts. “When he didn’t, I thought, ‘Oh well,’ and went back to get my bat.”

Within two pitches the score was tied, setting the stage for the winning rally.