McKeon Loses the Battle to Keep His Job : Baseball: Reds maintain lead by routing the Padres, 10-1, in front of a large crowd that boos the home team.

It would be stretching the point to say that the Padres offered even token resistance to the title-seeking Reds at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium Friday night.

The Reds mauled ex-teammate Dennis Rasmussen for five runs in the first inning and two more in the second en route to a 10-1 victory that preserved their 3 1/2-game lead over the Dodgers in the National League West.

A paid crowd of 44,717, lured in large measure by a postgame fireworks display, booed loudly and often as the Padres were mathematically eliminated from the race that many experts predicted they would dominate.

Coincidentally, the Padres also were knocked out by the Reds at home a year ago, but the circumstances were quite different then. Instead of stumbling along in fourth place as they are now, the Padres of 1989 were to finish second, only three games behind the San Francisco Giants.

Reds right-hander Jose Rijo was as sharp as Rasmussen was flat, breezing to a five-hitter that ran his record to 13-7 and lowering his ERA to 2.75. He was in trouble only in the first and final innings. In the first the Padres loaded the bases with two out before Benito Santiago bounced in to a force-out. In the ninth, the Padres touched Rijo for their only run.

Barry Larkin and Eric Davis hit home runs and Mariano Duncan contributed three singles as the Reds totaled 13 hits off Rasmussen, Calvin Schiraldi and Eric Show.

Bip Roberts was the only Padre who wasn’t mystified by Rijo’s pitching. He had three singles in four at-bats, raising his average to .311., and his third started a ninth-inning “rally,” by which the Padres averted a shutout.

Roberts moved up on a walk to Jerald Clark and scored on Joe Carter’s single.

Rijo was pitching on three days rest for the first time this season, but continued a streak in which he has posted a 5-1 record and a 1.11 earned-run average in his last seven starts.

“He has just been overpowering,” Reds Manager Lou Piniella said. “We’ve got him throwing between starts, which he wasn’t doing earlier because of tenderness in his back. I was going to get (remove) him after they got that run, but he wanted to stay in.”

That dismayed Padre catcher Mark Parent, who batted against Rijo twice. “My first at-bat, I hit the ball well,” he said. “But the next time up (with the bases loaded in the ninth), I was mad that Piniella left him in. He threw three of the nastiest sliders I’ve ever seen.”

The victory reduced the Reds’ magic number to 9 with 12 games remaining, and Piniella said, “The Dodgers (16-3 winners Friday over the Giants) are scoring a lot of runs, but if we win nine, we don’t have to worry about anything.

“These guys out here have stayed loose through all this (recent slump), contrary to what some people say about them. We feel real good right now.”

In the Padre clubhouse, Manager Greg Riddoch was philosophical about his team’s elimination from the race.

“The fat lady sings,” Riddoch said. “I have to look at things realistically. We knew there was a point where we were no longer in it, but we weren’t trying to be in it after that. We were trying to find ourselves, and I think we’ve done that.”

The Reds wasted no time with Rasmussen. An error by shortstop Garry Templeton made four of their five first-inning runs unearned, but there was nothing tainted about any of the four hits that keyed the uprising. They batted around in a marathon session that brought no fewer than six choruses of boos from the big crowd.

Billy Hatcher led off with a single, was sacrificed to second by Duncan, stole third as Larkin struck out and scored on Davis’ double.

It was when Davis doubled that the fans began booing. The hit should have been only a routine single, but center fielder Carter was so slow in fielding it that Davis kept on running and the Padre faithful showed their displeasure.

Chris Sabo followed with a grounder that Templeton picked up, then dropped. That brought more boos, and by that time the fans were on as big a roll as the Reds. They booed after a walk to Glenn Braggs filled the bases, after Hal Morris singled in two runs, after Joe Oliver doubled in two more, and even after Rijo made the third out at last by missing a bunt attempt on the third strike.

His horrendous first inning notwithstanding, Rasmussen was allowed to answer the bell for the second. He retired the first two batters, but then Larkin and Davis hit successive home runs, and Sabo singled. The flurry set off three more rounds of boos, the last of which suddenly subsided when Sabo made too wide a turn and was run down between first and second.

Mercifully, Rasmussen was removed for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the second. Schiraldi then matched zeroes with Rijo for four innings before yielding a run in the seventh on Duncan’s single, Larkin’s double and Davis’ infield out.