The Padres Are Finished for Year, but Talking About Them Isn’t

Put away the thermometer. The fever has gone away.

Welcome to The Lost Weekend, or Spring Training II.

The Padres came so frustratingly close to making this weekend’s series with the San Francisco Giants a high-voltaged affair before the plug was pulled late Wednesday night by the Cincinnati Reds.

So now the Giants are here for what amounts to a dress rehearsal for the National League Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs.

And the Padres are here because the schedule says so.

So what is left of the 1989 baseball season hereabouts?

Only the race for the National League batting title.

In the third base dugout will be the challenger, Mr. Will Clark, first base, San Francisco Giants, now hitting .333.

In the first base dugout will be the champion, Mr. Tony Gwynn, right field, San Diego Padres, now hitting .332.

The question at this point is whether this race will be enough to get these battered and bruised bodies out of the dugout and onto the field. Aches and pains have caused both to tumble from the .340-plus range.

Obviously, with the pennant race just wrapped up, the temptation might be to rest. It makes particular sense in Clark’s case, because the Giants just might need him next week.

Here’s a guess that Clark sits down and watches to see what Gwynn does and then responds accordingly.

So what about this notion of pitching to Eric Davis?

Man on second, two outs, 13th inning, Eric Davis at bat, Todd Benzinger on deck and Calvin Schiraldi pitching. Nothing more at stake than staying alive in the pennant race.

Conference on the mound.

Pitch to Davis.

Bang.

Double off left field wall.

And a few minutes later it was over.

Situations like these are part of baseball’s charm. They are also managerial nightmares. Managers get defensive when they are second-guessed, but they had better appreciate the fact that someone cares enough to second-guess. Baseball would be just another game without it.

And, just because I care, I will advise that there is no way in the world I would have let Schiraldi pitch to Davis, even though all involved said it was the pitcher’s call. The manager is paid to tell the pitcher what he wants done.

(FYI: Davis and Benzinger both have .333 career averages against Schiraldi.)

And about the irony of Eric Davis knocking his future teammates out of the pennant race . . .

OK, let’s not get too far ahead of things while we are looking back, but Davis has said he would like to play for the Padres.

There may be no time like ’90.

Davis is under contract to the Reds through next year, but it does not make sense that a club would want its best player to be what would amount to a distracting lame duck. The Reds should have had their fill of distractions this year.

So the Padres just might be able to put together a package to get him on their side next spring. And the Reds might actually prefer Sandy Alomar Jr. to Benito Santiago, given their reputation for pinching pennies.

What about those sellouts tonight and Saturday? Pretty impressive, huh?

For what? Promotional gimmicks? Fireworks? Gifts?

The real fans were the 17,136 who showed up for that honest-to-goodness down-the-stretch win-to-stay-alive game Wednesday night. That kind of game would have drawn more than 40,000 in places such as Toronto, Detroit, New York, Anaheim and a number of others, and capacity crowds in Boston and Wrigley Field.

It isn’t that San Diego fans are not interested. They just don’t go. It’s ironic that one of the world’s great participatory cities would be a boom box baseball town.

And, finally, isn’t it a shame that it all came down to an error and a questionable decision in the final week?

Are you kidding?

This pennant was lost in April, May and June, not by anything anyone did or didn’t do in the final week. The Padres just dug too deep a hole to reasonably expect to get out of it. That’s why miracles are called miracles.

That game Wednesday night--considering the next three are little more than exhibitions--was reminiscent of the games that got the Padres in such a predicament in the first place.

As Tony Gwynn said late Wednesday: “It ended the way it did because we played the way we played in the first half. We had the opportunities, but we didn’t cash in on them.”

Should be pretty exciting next year after a finish like this?

Where have I heard that before?