Black Clouds Still Around; Padres Lose
The Padres kept peeking outside Saturday night, asking anyone they could find for the latest weather forecast.
Hey, the rain washed away their batting practice; could it possibly be that their game could be postponed, too?
Sorry, guys, but just like everything else lately, the weather didn’t cooperate either. The Padres were forced to play the St. Louis Cardinals. What happened?
What else? The Padres lose, 4-2, in a rain-shortened, seven-inning game in front of 38,535 at Busch Stadium.
It was their sixth consecutive defeat and their 21st in the past 25 games. The only time they’ve ever had a worse streak of this length was July 26-Aug. 27, 1969 when they lost 26 of 29.
“When it rains, it pours,” said Greg Riddoch, now 1-9 as Padre manager. “I’m embarrassed. It’s humbled me very fast. And I’m thoroughly embarrassed.
“I can’t accept the fact that we’re losing like this. There’s got to be a better way.”
If there’s any relief, Riddoch said, it’s that he has experienced similar misery when he was part of Larry Bowa’s staff in 1988. That team opened the season with a 12-42 record.
“That got to be so embarrassing,” Riddoch said, “that when we’d walk by little kids, they’d say, ‘We don’t even want your autograph. This is the worst team in baseball.’ ”
No one can say that about the Padres quite yet, but as it is, there are only three teams in major league baseball--the Yankees, Atlanta and Houston--with worse records. They are 20 games behind the division-leading Cincinnati Reds and have dropped 10 games in the standings in the past three weeks.
Of course, that’s quite easy to accomplish when you’re playing like the Padres. If they continue at this current pace (38-52), they will finish with a 68-94 record, 36 games behind the Reds.
Not only aren’t the Padres winning, but they’re not even getting into a position to win.
Incredibly, they have now gone 52 consecutive innings without owning a lead at the end of a full inning. Of the past 201 innings, they have led 36.
The Padres looked as if they might actually put that streak in jeopardy in the third inning Saturday. They started a two-out rally when Roberto Alomar singled, Garry Templeton walked and Tony Gwynn loaded the bases.
Clark then drilled a 2-1 pitch off Bob Tewksbury (5-2) into left field, scoring Alomar and Templeton. Hey, what do you know? The Padres had a 2-1 lead.
But that euphoria was short-lasting. In the bottom half of the inning, Pedro Guerrero lined a 3-1 pitch into right field, scoring two runs, and being all of the offense the Cardinals would need on this night.
And once Guerrero hit his 10th homer of the year in the sixth, it made the Padres’ defeat automatic. You see, they haven’t scored more than three runs in any of their past six games and have done so in just four of the past 22 games.
Absolutely nothing is going right for the Padres these days, who had a players-only team meeting before the game. The focus was to discuss a segment of a story that appeared in Thursday’s editions of The Times and was reprinted in Saturday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The reprinted item said, in part: “Heck, all Padre chairman Tom Werner has to do is just throw nine players, any nine, on the field to generate the kind of laughter that has people tumbling down the aisles. . . . Maybe that’s what Werner had in mind when he invited Roseanne Barr to sing the national anthem. . . . When she’s done, she can stick on a uniform and play a few innings.”
The Padres had the story photocopied for every player and talked for 15 minutes about their image. It’s one thing to lose games, they said, another to be ridiculed.
“I can see if you say we’re . . . ,” Padre left fielder Bip Roberts said, “but Roseanne Barr? That’s cold. Now, we’re the joke of San Diego.”
At least on this night, they didn’t have to play all nine innings, the game being called with one out and Clark at the plate.
Starter Eric Show (1-8) lasted just 5 1/3 innings, then sat on the bench for another inning before he was ejected in the seventh by home-plate umpire Mike Winters.
“He blurted some obscenities,” said Pat Dobson, Padre pitching coach. “He thought he was getting squeezed a few times, and he was being vocal.”
Show was unavailable for comment, but of course, who feels like talking these days?
Padre Notes
Padre catcher Tom Lampkin stole the show defensively by throwing out Willie McGee in the first inning and Vince Coleman in the seventh. It was the first time since May 31 that the Padres had thrown out two baserunners attempting to steal in a game. In fact, when Lampkin threw out McGee in the first, it was the first time since June 12 that a Padre catcher had thrown out a baserunner who bothered to slide. The catcher? Benito Santiago, who broke his arm on June 14. . . . If the Padres lose today, they’ll finish with the worst record on a trip since they went 1-11 in 1973. . . . The trip ends today with a game at 11:15 a.m. (PDT). Derek Lilliquist (2-8) will make his first start for the Padres against Bryn Smith (7-7).