After Roberts Goes, So Go the Padres in Loss to Cardinals

Bip Roberts, having what he believed was the game of his life, stood in the on-deck circle in the eighth inning Friday night watching Cardinal reliever Ken Dayley jog in from the bullpen.

Roberts smiled, barely able to suppress his delight. Having reached base four times already, scoring three runs, he now had the opportunity to be the hero. There were runners on first and second. Two outs. And the Padres were trailing by a run.

“That’s the situation any hitter wants to be in,” said Roberts, who had a triple, two singles and a walk in his first four plate-appearances. “Man, I was looking forward to that.”

Particularly considering it was Dayley that was coming to the mound.

His confidence would have been soaring with the night he was having anyway, but with a left-hander coming in and a .326 average from the right side of the plate this season, Roberts was feeling cocky.

And why not? The only other time Roberts had faced Dayley this season, May 11 in St. Louis, he tripled, knocking him out of the game.

But all of a sudden, while deep in concentration, he heard someone calling his name. Who me? He turned around, heard Padre Manager Jack McKeon call his name again and watched Carmelo Martinez emerge from the dugout as a pinch-hitter.

Roberts slowly retreated to the dugout, put his bat in the bat rack, watched Martinez work the count to three-two and closed his eyes when Martinez hit a soft popup to right fielder Tom Brunansky for the third out.

One inning later, the game was over. The Padres were 4-3 losers to the St. Louis Cardinals. And McKeon was behind his desk answering rounds of questions about why he hit for Roberts.

“He’s a much better hitter from the left side,” McKeon explained.

But didn’t Roberts enter the game hitting .326 from the right and .234 from the left?

“Is that what it is?” McKeon said. “Well, he drives the ball much better from the left side.”

But doesn’t Roberts have three triples and one double from each side of the plate?

“Well, they would have played him shallow,” McKeon said, “and he might not have even driven in a run.”

But how about the fact that Roberts already had three hits in the game?

“What’s the odds of him getting four?” McKeon said.

All of that was beside the point, McKeon said. He explained that Martinez is his best pinch-hitter, with four hits in his past five pinch-hitting appearances before Friday. So what if he’s hitting .221 this season, while Roberts is hitting .301?

“I didn’t understand that one,” Cardinal Manager Whitey Herzog said. “I guess he (McKeon) was going for the long ball. I was kind of surprised.”

Said Martinez: “I’m glad he had confidence to put me in that situation, but to tell you the truth, I was a little surprised myself. Bip was hitting the ball great.”

McKeon’s strategy would have been a moot point, anyway, if the Padres had managed to hit in clutch situations, but they instead squandered most of their 12 hits, stranding 12 runners.

They even had a chance to at least tie up to the final out of the game, after Tony Gwynn hit a one-out double in the ninth. But there he remained, as Jack Clark hit a weak popup and Marvell Wynne grounded to first.

It all provided Scott Terry (6-7) with the victory. Walt Terrell lost his 11th game of the season.

But while Terrell could have joined in along with almost everyone else and second-guessed McKeon’s decision, he was left deep in thought over his own misery.

He didn’t deserve to win anyway, not with a linescore that showed that he allowed eight hits and four earned runs in five innings.

But one pitch, a changeup that hung over the plate, left him with a feeling of misery.

The game-winning hit was not provided by Tom Brunansky. Not Pedro Guerrero. Not even Ozzie Smith.

He was beaten by a home run that traveled 408 feet by--oh, no--Terry, the pitcher.

“That’s very tough to take,” Terrell said.

“I had him oh-two, so I figured I’d waste a pitch. I’d throw him a changeup in the dirt and come back with a fastball.

“I never got the chance to come back with that fastball.”

To be fair, Terry is not your typical pitcher. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds for the outfield, where he spent the first 3 1/2 years of his professional career before becoming a pitcher in 1983.

Still, until this season, he had not hit a home run since 1982, when he played for Cedar Rapids in single-A.

“We’ll never hear the end of it now,” Brunansky said. “A pitcher has got the two longest home runs here (this season). But really, that’s bull. I could believe the first one, but no way this one went over 400 feet. They got to be bring some professor in to measure this one again.

“If we don’t get on the stick, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

Padre Notes

The Padres did not arrive to their hotel in St. Louis until 7 Friday morning, just 12 1/2 hours before game time. “Everybody was complaining about it, but you know what?” third baseman Tim Flannery said. “I kind of liked it. I got to see the see the sun come up. It was kind of a spiritual thing.” Teammate Garry Templeton, overhearing the conversation, said: “You’re crazy, man.” . . . Pitcher Fred Toliver, acquired Wednesday by the Padres from the Minnesota Twins in exchange for pitcher Greg Booker, was in uniform Friday for the first time. Toliver originally was penciled in as the Twins’ No. 1 right-handed starter at the beginning of spring training, was out of the rotation by the start of the season and was down to the Twins’ triple-A club by mid-May. “I think there was too much hype, really,” Toliver said. “I think I should have been left in there and given a chance to get in a groove. They had me all messed up. When I went to the ballpark, I didn’t know if I was going to be sitting around for four days waiting for me next start, or pitching in the fifth inning.” . . . The Padres pulled a prank on third-base coach Sandy Alomar by putting the jersey of batting coach Amos Otis in his locker, and Alomar, perhaps still weary from the trip from Los Angeles, never noticed. He wore Otis’ jersey in the first inning before finally being told of the gag, then switched by the time the Padres batted in the second. . . . Jerald Clark homered on consecutive at-bats in triple-A Las Vegas’ 4-3 victory over Phoenix Friday. Reliever Dave Leiper, on rehabilitation assignment from the Padres, allowed just one hit in two innings for the victory.

Ozzie Smith, the Cardinals’ $2 million shortstop, broke the third toe in his right foot during the Cardinals’ off-day Thursday morning when he bumped into a cedar chest on his way to the bathroom. Smith will remain in the lineup, however, with his third and fourth toes taped together.