Padres Seeing That Giants Aren’t So Bad After All

The Padre clubhouse, all of a sudden, is awfully quiet.

No longer is anyone gloating about the alleged demise of the San Francisco Giants. No longer is anyone talking about cruising to a division championship. No longer is anyone being smug about the team’s offensive potency.

When you lose to the Giants, 3-1, obtaining just three hits off a pitcher who has not won a game in more than 10 months, you tend to be rather subdued.

“There’s not a whole lot to talk about when you’re playing the way we are,” said Jack Clark, the Padre first baseman, after Sunday’s loss. “We haven’t been doing much at all.”

The Padres, the same team that swept the Giants in San Francisco last weekend and laughed about it all of the way to Cincinnati, have now lost four of their past five games, dropping their second in a row to the Giants.

This time it was Atlee Hammaker who shut them down. Yeah, really, that Atlee Hammaker.

The only reason Hammaker was starting Sunday night was because Scott Garrelts had an inflamed disc in his neck, and his start was pushed back to Tuesday.

Sure, Hammaker is the Giants’ designated emergency starter, so you say the Giants should have all of the confidence in the world with him. Yeah, and Congress has a whole lot of faith in Dan Quayle being this country’s emergency president too.

Hammaker is a guy who had not made a start since Aug. 3, 1989. His last victory was June 13, 1989, against the Atlanta Braves. His longest stint of the season was all of two innings, including exhibition games.

So what does Hammaker do Sunday in front of 26,976 stunned fans at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium?

He pitches eight complete innings, yielding three hits, just eight fly balls out of the infield, and retires 15 of the last 17 batters he faces before the ninth.

“He kept everything down,” Padre right fielder Tony Gwynn said, “and he never gave you anything to hit.”

The only real mistake he made was the home-run pitch to Jack Clark in the second inning. Besides that, he yielded a double to pitcher Eric Show in the third inning, a single to Benito Santiago in the fifth and walked Clark in the seventh and Darrin Jackson in the ninth to account for his only flaws.

Once he walked Jackson to open the ninth, Hammaker was relieved by Steve Bedrosian. Three batters later, the game was over.

And, all of a sudden, it was the Giants’ turn to talk, ridiculing all of those who had already given them up for the dead.

“It’s irritating to hear all these people talking trash about us,” Giants left fielder Kevin Mitchell said. “The season just started, and people are writing us off. Even my grandmother got into an argument in the stands (on Saturday).

“But it doesn’t matter. People were writing us off last year, too, and look what happened.”

Still, there were concerns in the Bay Area. The Giants, the defending National League champs, had lost six of their past seven games after their 9-2 defeat Friday night to the Padres. Sure, the second week of the season had yet to be completed, but after seeing what a miserable first-half did to the Padres last season, Giant Manager Roger Craig wasn’t about to sit back and take chances.

He held a closed-door team meeting before Saturday night’s game, telling his club to start acting like the Giants of old and quit using injuries and bad breaks as alibis.

“I said, ‘Walk out there like you’re on a 10-game winning streak,’ ” Craig said. “ ‘This crap has got to stop.’

“I’m not going to lie, I’m guilty of it too, saying we’re not getting the breaks. But good clubs make their own breaks. they keep battling. They keep hitting the ball hard. They keep making things happen. That’s what we have to do. . . .

“I’m not going to panic. I know we have a hell of a ball club.”

Said Will Clark, who hit a triple along with three other balls that reached the warning track: “Roger’s a great motivator. But the speech wasn’t a motivator as much as a matter-of-fact speech. He told us to keep busting our butts, keep battling and things will go our way. That’s what’s happening right now.

“There’s no reason in the world to panic. If it was the last week in August, yeah, you have every right. But not now. You’re talking about the first 10 games in a season. We still had 152 left. When a team gets on a roll, little things go right, and that’s what’s happening now.

“With a team like this, the way we’re swinging and the way we’re capable of swing the bats, we knew things would change.”

And on this night, Hammaker never even gave the Padres a chance. The way he was pitching and the Padres were swinging, it was, “like he and (Terry) Kennedy were playing catch,” Craig said.

Said Kennedy: “It was unbelievable, man. I’ve never seen someone throw so many splits (split-fingered pitches) for strikes. He threw splits at all times in all counts. And when you have the kind of split that he had, it looks like a bodacious sinker.

“Really, that’s as good as I’ve seen Atlee throw.”

Even Hammaker was a bit surprised at his success. When he took the mound, he said he was hoping he could give the Giants a good strong five innings. If he could leave after five, with the Giants still in position to win, he figured his job would be well-done.

“I never thought about going eight, not at all,” Hammaker said. “That’s a good-hitting team up there, an aggressive hitting team. I’m pretty predictable, took. I throw a fastball, slider and split-finger, and that’s it. And I probably threw only four or five sliders.”

But to the Padres, it might as well have been Cy Young on the mound. Only Jack Clark’s home run into the right-center-field seats prevented them from being shut out for the second time this season. After Show’s one-out double in the third, not a single Padre was able to advance past first.

“We just didn’t hit,” Padre Manager Jack McKeon said, “and that’s the name of the game right there. With this club, we always said if we hold them to three runs, we should win.”

Show (0-2) did just that--yielding a two-out single to Mitchell in the first inning and a two-run homer to Kevin Bass on an 0-2 pitch in the fourth--but it proved to be too much. Even though the Padres allowed just one hit after Bass’ homer, with Mark Grant and Craig Lefferts pitching three hitless innings, the Padres didn’t provide so much as a glimpse of a rally.

“I think we know what they’re capable of, and they know what we’re capable of,” Will Clark said. “It’s not like a mutual admiration, or anything like that, but these are two good ballclubs that can kick your butt on any field.”

And as the Padres have found out, the Giants indeed are alive and kicking.

Padre Notes

Padre batting coach Amos Otis on catcher Benito Santiago, who’s hitting .415: “You know, I bet he hasn’t swung at more than 11 bad pitches all season. Last year, he’d swing at about 15 bad pitches in just two games. The way he’s being patient now, and the way he’s willing to hit to all fields, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to see him hit .330.” . . . Jack Clark is batting .350 (seven for 20) with three home runs and seven RBIs against the Giants this season; he’s batting .105 (two for 19 3/8)with no homers and no RBIs against the rest of the league. . . . Padre second baseman Roberto Alomar, who opened the season with a nine-game hitting streak, is hitless in his last 14 at-bats, lowering his batting average from .375 to .277. . . . Padre catcher Mark Parent saw a familiar face in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated--former professional quarterback Sonny Sixkiller. Sixkiller just happens to be his uncle, his mother’s brother. . . . Even though the Giants have made nine errors this season, and entered the game ranked just seventh in fielding, Manager Roger Craig said: “I don’t think there’s any club who has a better defensive club, in my opinion.” . . . Will Clark on his .347 batting average: “I’m smoking the ball. Every game for the last six games, I’ve been hitting the ball on the screws.” . . . The Padres will conclude their four-game series against thee San Francisco Giants at 7:05 tonight. Andy Benes (1-1) and Eric Gunderson (0-0) are the scheduled starting pitchers.

PADRE ATTENDANCE Sunday: 26,976

1990 (6 dates): 235,976

1989 (6 dates): 142,937

Increase: 93,039

1990 Average: 39,212