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McKeon’s First Year Ends Well : Anniversary Marked With a 5-0 Victory Over Montreal

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Times Staff Writer

One year ago this morning, in the wakeup call heard ‘round the baseball world, Padre Manager Larry Bowa was rousted out of bed and fired.

Into hard feelings and mistrust that had collected in the clubhouse like puddles stepped a general manager wearing a cigar and double-wide baseball pants and making a strange promise.

Whatever else happens, new Manager Jack McKeon told his team, you will have fun. Much has happened since then, including plenty of whatever else. But Saturday night, the players celebrated the final day of McKeon’s first calendar year by showing how this funny man has mostly made good on that promise.

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In one of their easiest games of the season, the offense hit and ran and joined with pitcher Walt Terrell for a 5-0 victory over Montreal in front of a paid crowd of 36,477 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

“I’m not thinking about that,” McKeon said about his anniversary. “I’m just thinking about the next game--how we can get better.

“We got some hits, but we can’t do this every four days. We can’t win one, get shut out, then win another.”

Speaking of shutouts, Terrell’s six-hit effort gave the Padres their first complete game shutout by a pitcher this year (Eric Show and Mark Davis combined on another), while the Padres offense gave Terrell the shivers. After scoring just a total of five runs in Terrell’s five losses this year, and just five runs in their previous four games, the Padres came up with that many run in Saturday’s first four innings.

“I pitch the same if we’re ahead or behind,” said Terrell, 4-5 with a 2.66 ERA. “But by giving me a few runs early when I was struggling, it gave me time to make some adjustments.

Struggled? Although Expos reached base in each of the first five innings, Terrell ended three of those innings with strikeouts and another with a double-play grounder. Once Terrell reached the sixth, he cruised, facing just 14 batters in the final four innings, two over the minimum, to win his first game at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium since joining the Padres.

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The Padres chased Expos rookie starter Mark Gardner in the third inning, the earliest they have rid themselves of a starter all season. They wound up with 13 hits, tying another season high. And with Cincinnati losing, their 26-24 record puts them within 2 1/2 games of first place in the West, 9 1/2 games closer than when McKeon took over last May 28, when the Padres were 16-30.

In the ensuing year, McKeon has gone 93-72 for a .564 winning percentage, which would put him ahead of the other 10 full-time managers in Padre history if he quits now. But who’s thinking about quitting? Certainly not McKeon, 58, and certainly not after nights like Saturday.

Entering the game, Expo pitchers had not allowed a run in the previous 28 innings, which encompassed three consecutive shutouts. But not once during that time had they used rookie Gardner, a 27-year-old former Fresno State star who was making his first big league start in a career that already has a warped perspective.

Brought to the big leagues for the first time on May 9, the rookie right-hander has since faced nobody but the Padres. He entered Saturday with two appearances, both against San Diego, and had not allowed a baserunner in two innings.

Today it’s safe to say that the Padres know him. They racked him for four runs (three earned) and seven hits in 2 2/3 innings. They they scored a run on a couple of hits off reliever Andy McGaffigan. They were shutout in the final two innings by Steve Frey and former starter Pascual Perez, who was heartily booed in memory of the infamous 1984 beanball war between the Padres and Perez’s Atlanta Braves.

But by the time Perez came on, the Padres had already had their fun:

--Two of their runs came on Tim Flannery hits--an RBI double in the second and an RBI single in the third. It was Flannery’s first multi-RBI game since Aug. 17 against Montreal, and only his third and fourth RBIs of the year.

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And now for the real foot-stomper: Flannery stole a base. It was his first of the year and led to the Padres’ third and final run in third inning when Garry Templeton followed with an RBI single. Who says 30,000 people won’t fall over themselves clapping for a 31-year-old utility player?

--Jack Clark started off with a walk and two singles, one of them scoring the Padres’ final run in the fourth. At the time, it gave him a streak of reaching base five times in six plate appearances.

And now for the real foot-stomper: Clark stole a base. It was his fourth stolen base of the year, equaling his past two seasons combined. He has apparently become such a threat that the Expos actually called for a pitchout with Clark on first in the fourth. There was great cheering down the first-base line and a great smile from Clark, who hasn’t done much of that lately.

“I was kind of flattered,” he said.

--The Padres finally took advantage of somebody else’s foulup. In the third inning, after Clark had singled and stolen second, Benito Santiago lined a ball that dropped in front of left fielder Tim Raines and rolled into his glove . . . and then underneath his glove and all the way to the left field wall. Santiago went all the way to third, then scored on Flannery’s single. It was Raines’ first error of the season after he made just three all of last year.

Padre Notes

Expos Manager Buck Rodgers missed Saturday’s game to attend the wedding of his daughter, Jill, in Yorba Linda. The Expos were bossed by third base coach Jackie Moore, who is the answer to this trivia question: Who was the Oakland A’s manager before Tony LaRussa. Moore was 163-190 with the As from 1984-86. . . . For the second consecutive night Saturday, the Padres used Montreal broadcaster Rodger Brulotte to sing the Canadian national anthem. He was pressed into service Friday because the Padres did not have the proper half-French, half-English recording. Speaking of impromptu pregame stuff, on Saturday the Padre also didn’t have a player to catch the ceremonial first pitch. A bat boy did it. . . . Eric Show takes his first shot at becoming the all-time Padre victory leader today when he takes on Mark Langston in Langston’s National League debut. Langston was traded Thursday from the Seattle Mariners. Show (6-4) has 92 career victories, equaling Randy Jones’ mark set from 1973-80. Show has pitched here since 1981, a span covering roughly the same time as Jones. The 1:05 p.m. matchup also features a post-game concert by the Beach Boys. San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium is understandably sold out, which should worry the Padres. In games here with more than 30,000 in attendance, the Padres are 3-5. . . . Andy Benes, the top Padre minor league pitcher, had one of his worst outings of the season Saturday night and still allowed just one run in six innings in a no-decision for double-A Wichita. Benes was taken out of the game after allowing seven hits in six innings with what Gary Lance, the pitching coach, told club officials was poor mechanics. Nonetheless, Benes is 6-1 in 10 starts with a 1.20 ERA and 89 strikeouts and 26 walks in 89 innings.

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