Padres Leave Reds’ Best-Laid Plans Awry : Baseball: Santiago’s double in the ninth gives San Diego a 2-1 victory, chilling any hopes for a celebration.

The Cincinnati Reds were quizzed all afternoon Friday on their preference of teams to play in the National League playoffs. When they finally got away for batting practice, they spent the next 45 minutes in a team meeting, dividing playoff and World Series shares.

While the Reds were breaking up their meeting, debating among themselves which brand of champagne would be best to spray on each other, a crowd of 35,399 was congregating at Riverfront Stadium, preparing for their celebration.

There was only one element missing in all of their gala preparations.

Wouldn’t you know it, the Reds had to go out and play a baseball game.

Yep.

San Diego Padres 2, Reds 1.

The champagne stays chilled and, for at least one more day, the Reds remain dry.

“It seems like we’ve been waiting for this a long time,” said right fielder Paul O’Neill of the Reds, “but what’s another day?

“People aren’t going to roll over dead for us because we’re in first place. San Diego proved that tonight.”

The Padres hardly resembled the team that was swept last weekend in San Diego, when they lost four games by a combined score of 34-12.

“It was certainly a refreshing change,” Padre first baseman Jack Clark said.

There was Bruce Hurst pitching a four-hit complete game, with only Chris Sabo’s home run in the second inning preventing him from obtaining his major league leading fifth shutout.

There was Clark, tying the score with a 450-foot homer in the seventh inning against starter Danny Jackson.

There was Benito Santiago winning the game with a two-out double in the ninth.

And there was Red Manager Lou Piniella, taking his frustration out on reporters for being--ready for this?--too positive.

“We’ve got two more games to win,” Piniella said angrily. “This thing isn’t over yet.

“I know the media in this town has made a big hullabaloo of this, and it’s given this team a false sense of security.”

Still, the Reds still have a commanding lead and to blow it now would make the Phillies’ collapse in 1964 look like a letdown.

But when you’ve been in first place all season, began selling playoff tickets a week ago, and were displaying videos celebrating the 1979 division championship on the scoreboard Friday night, the Reds can’t be faulted for looking a little silly dragging this division race into the final days.

“It’s gone on too long already,” said Red pitcher Jose Rijo, the man who claimed the race was over a week ago. “Let’s get it over with. Enough’s enough.”

Perhaps that’s what the Padres were thinking Friday. This is a team that has watched six teams celebrate championships in the past eight years.

“I’m tired of watching other teams celebrate against us,” Santiago said. “It gets old.”

Said Piniella: “I don’t care if people here have been waiting 11 years or 30 years. The schedule says 162 games, and until a team is mathematically eliminated, you don’t clinch.

“We’re in a great position. We expect to win. But let’s win first, before we start doing anything else.”

“It was nice one to win,” the Padres’ Bip Roberts said, “especially what they did against us in San Diego. But we want to be competitive. We don’t want to let anyone back into it.

“If they earn it, they earn it. But we’re not just going to give it to them, and watch them celebrate in front of our faces.”