Padres Unable to Slow Down Unbeaten Reds

Maybe there will be a time when the Padres will be able to sit back and laugh at their two-day adventure in this city. Perhaps they’ll forget all about it during their upcoming two-week home stand.

But the Padres were left with an indelible impression that could last an entire season:

The Cincinnati Reds are for real.

The Padres fled town Wednesday night, after losing for the second consecutive night to the Reds, 11-7, with the hope that by the time they meet again in three months, someone will have beaten them.

“The way they’re going,” said Joe Carter, the Padre center fielder, “I’m glad we played just the two games. We were able to get out of here with our lives.”

The Reds tied a 121-year franchise record by opening the season with their eighth consecutive victory, leaving the Padres firm believers that this club is no fluke.

The Reds beat them with pitching the first night, winning 2-1, and, oh, how they beat them with hitting this night, lashing out 15, reaching base 24 times and slamming three home runs.

“That’s a hot team right now, and when things are going like that, anyone would be awfully tough to beat,” said Padre reliever Greg Harris, who yielded his first runs of the season. “Just so many things are going right for them, but it’s not going to last forever. I mean, no man has ever hit .600 in the big leagues. They can’t keep playing like that all season.”

Can they?

Just how well are things going for the Reds?

--Shortstop Barry Larkin, the No. 3 hitter, went two for three, scored four runs and was on base five times. He now has had at least two hits in every game. Little wonder the man is hitting .600 (21 for 35).

--Third baseman Chris Sabo, who had six home runs all of last season, hit his fourth, in the eighth inning off Harris.

--Left fielder Billy Hatcher, who was given up by the Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates in the past seven months, went two for five with a stolen base, raising his batting average to .400.

--Right fielder Paul O’Neill, who didn’t even start Wednesday, went four for four with a three-run home run off Rafael Valdez.

--Second baseman Mariano Duncan, who hit just .248 with three homers and 21 RBIs for the Dodgers and Reds last season, went three for five with his second home run, raising his average to .444.

Yeah, the boys in Cincinnati are having a ball, and it’s the National League West that’s paying.

The Reds have already built a three-game lead over the Dodgers (6-4) and a 3 1/2-game bulge over the Padres (5-4). It’s still early, but wasn’t the American League saying the same thing six years ago about the Detroit Tigers, who went 35-5 in their first 40 games and cruised to the World Series.

“I’m not conceding anything to the Reds just yet,” Padre Manager Jack McKeon said. “Now, if they get off to a start like Detroit’s, yeah, I’ll say they might be the team to beat.

“I’m not taking anything away from them, but things are just going right for them now. Everything’s going their way.

“But eventually, things will go wrong. Things won’t always go right.”

Won’t they?

“I don’t know,” said Padre right fielder Tony Gwynn, who went one for five and struck out for the second consecutive night. “We did what we wanted to do. We wanted to knock (starter Danny) Jackson out of the game and get to their middle man. We figured we’d be cruising then.

“As you can see, that didn’t work, either.”

The Padres became the first team to even take a lead against the Reds when Carter hit a two-run homer off Jackson in the third inning--his first career National League home run--to make it 5-3.

That lasted about five minutes.

Valdez, making his major league debut, gave up a leadoff single to O’Neill, induced a foul pop-up to Joe Oliver and then watched left fielder Jerald Clark crash into the wall as Duncan hit a 381-foot homer.

“I didn’t even see the wall,” said Clark, who lay on the ground momentarily stunned. “I do some pretty funny things around here sometimes, don’t I?”

The Reds took the lead for good in the fourth when O’Neill hit a three-run, 413-foot-homer that left the crowd of 18,487 gasping. It did the same to Valdez, who yielded six hits and five earned runs in 2 2/3 innings of relief.

It wasn’t quite the debut he had in mind, but, of course, he didn’t envision entering the game under such circumstances, either.

Valdez was brought into the game in the second inning, relieving starter Dennis Rasmussen after 1 1/3 innings. The last time Rasmussen pitched here on the afternoon of Sept. 21, 1989, he had a 6-0 lead before he threw a pitch. But when he came in, he lasted all of seven pitches and five batters, leaving with a 6-5 lead.

This time, he didn’t get his first out until the fifth batter. He surrendered three runs by the time the first inning was over. Rasmussen’s pitching line for his last two outings at Riverfront: 1 1/3 innings, eight hits, eight runs, 54.00 ERA.

Enter Valdez, who was so nervous warming in the bullpen alongside the field that two of his pitches sailed past catcher Mark Parent, stopping the game.

So when he finally was called upon, the bases were loaded. There was one out. Eric Davis was up.

Well, Valdez pitched three consecutive balls, and Davis swung on a 3-0 pitch, popping it up to first baseman Jack Clark. Next up was Benzinger. He swung on a 2-0 pitch and hit a routine fly ball.

Valdez, who turned 22 on Tuesday, was mobbed when he came into the dugout. But, as Carter would say later, “Our celebrations were short-lived.”

The Reds proceeded to score in five of the next six innings, and not once the entire game did they ever go down one-two-three.

“That’s a hell of a team right there,” Jack Clark said. “I don’t think they’re catching any breaks. They’re just playing great baseball right now.”

Certainly, Clark has seen enough of them to last the summer. He struck out three times Wednesday, giving him seven strikeouts in his past 10 at-bats, and was so frustrated he entered the clubhouse with two outs remaining.

The Padres even tried to shake up Reds reliever Rob Dibble, telling umpires that he was violating Rule 1.11 (c) for having slits in his uniform sleeve. Dibble was stopped when he went to the mound, forced to change and came back wearing the uniform top of 53-year-old pitching coach Stan Williams.

“They were trying to rattle me, they were trying to mess with me,” Dibble said. “But it didn’t work, did it?”

Dibble yielded just one hit and struck out three in 2 1/3 innings, and when the game finally ended 3 hours 32 minutes after the start, there was Dibble standing on the mound in jubilation.

“They don’t call us the ‘Nasty Boys’ for nothing,” Dibble said. “We’re just giving everybody a little taste of what we’re made of.”

For now, the Padres have had quite enough, thank you.

Padre Notes

The Padres were amused before the game upon hearing that Linda Smith, owner Joan Kroc’s daughter, was pursuing a divorce from Jerry Kapstein, who then stepped down as the team’s top executive. Smith previously was married to Ballard Smith, the former Padre president. Said one Padre, who asked for anonymity: “People talk about how crazy everything is in New York, calling it the Bronx Zoo. I tell you what, it’s got nothing on the San Diego Zoo, absolutely nothing.” . . . The Padres have changed the time of their Tuesday game against the Chicago Cubs to 7:35 p.m. to accommodate ESPN.