Alomar Can Handle All Tough Chances

Maybe if it didn’t happen so fast and hadn’t come so easily. One of the biggest problems with success is not knowing failure, and Roberto Alomar has experienced lots of the former, little of the latter.

“Things have come to him too easy,” said Sandy Alomar, Padre third base coach and Roberto’s father. “Who else can say better than me, because I raised him? He hasn’t experienced failure.”

Certainly not Thursday afternoon at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium against Montreal.

Alomar watched his son make four defensive plays--two that should make the highlight films. He gave an otherwise quiet crowd something to cheer about. And he drove in the tying run as the Padres defeated the Expos, 3-2, in 11 innings.

It was a satisfying finish to a series that saw Alomar setting a record for Padre second baseman Wednesday for the most assists in a game. Alomar’s 12 assists in the 17-inning game against Montreal broke the 18-year record of 11 set by Derrel Thomas on June 7, 1972.

But his finest hour struck in the 10th inning. Alomar nailed Junior Noboa by a step after backhanding Noboa’s two-hop grounder up the middle, pivoting off his right foot, spinning in midair, lurching forward and throwing to first.

Alomar, 22, was just getting started. He liked the play so much, he went for broke on another grounder up the middle. Once again he backhanded the ball, this time from one knee, and made the second out.

“After that first one,” said Manager Greg Riddoch, “I turned and I said to (pitching coach Pat Dobson), ‘I don’t think you’ll ever see a better play by a second baseman.’ . . . Then how about that second play. I guess lightning does strike twice.”

There was a time this season when the only thing striking Alomar was a streak of bad luck.

Alomar committed 13 errors in the first half of the season, three less than in his first major league season with the Padres in 1988. He tried to ignore the growing public and media perception that he was inattentive and sloppy on defense.

“Sometime you have to put (what people are saying) out of your mind,” he said. “You have to play the way you play, play nine hard innings and not worry about what the media guys are saying. You can’t let the comments bother you. You just have to play the best you can.”

It was Alomar’s first minor scrape with failure.

“When you’re playing ball the way he was playing, people were starting to wonder,” Sandy Alomar said. “The good thing is that he never let it bother him at the plate or on the field. The bad part is it had come too easy for him. He’s not aware of the other side of the coin.”

Maybe not, but he’s heard the change rattle. Alomar wasn’t happy with his 1989 season, when he committed 28 errors.

“Last year was a bad year for me,” he said. “But I never let that year bother me. Maybe if I let it, I’d come in this year and do worse. The past is the past. Now let’s go to the present.”

Part of the problem, Alomar said, was that he was trying too hard.

“I’m growing up a lot,” he said. “Now I’m trying to have fun. Before, when I was 20, 21, I was trying to do too much. That made it tougher. Now I’m, just playing the game. Those people who said I couldn’t play defense, I showed them. Because I’ve been playing good defense and helping the team a lot.”