Gross Injustice in San Diego? : Baseball: Dodger pitcher, angry after being warned by an umpire, is hit hard in a seven-run inning that keys a 10-5 Padre victory.

While trying to escape a jam in the fourth inning against the San Diego Padres, Kevin Gross suddenly needed to escape a dark moment in his past.

He could not do both, as the broken light dangling from a ceiling outside the Dodger clubhouse at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium confirmed.

An angry Gross hurled a chair into that light Thursday, shortly after being warned by umpire Terry Tata about defacing the baseball with his fingernails. The warning preceded the key hit in a seven-run inning that led to the Dodgers’ 10-5 defeat before 26,331.

“The warning was ridiculous,” Gross said after giving up six runs and eight hits in 3 2/3 innings. “If I was really cheating, do you think I would have been in the clubhouse in the fourth inning? It stunk. It should not have been a problem.”

After losing for the fourth time in as many meetings with the Padres, the Dodgers have several problems, Gross heading the list.

He entered Thursday’s game after having given up five runs against the Padres in 1 1/3 innings in his Dodger debut last week. He was booed almost as hard as he was hit.

In his chance for redemption, he was given a 3-0 lead in the first inning and pitched well until the fourth, giving up one run on four hits and working out of two jams.

“I was feeling good. I was battling everybody,” Gross said.

But after giving up a couple of hits to start the fourth, he lost that battle. With runners on first and second and two out, with a 1-and-1 count on Bip Roberts, second base umpire Tata stopped the game.

He approached Gross and accused him of digging his fingernails into the baseball to raise the seams for a better grip. It is a common ploy among pitchers that is illegal but rarely cited.

“He was riding the seams of the ball with his fingernails,” Tata said. “That is defacing the baseball. You cannot do that.”

Gross told Tata that what he was doing was not cheating. And Gross is very sensitive about cheating. He served a 10-day suspension in 1987 when he was caught scuffing the ball with a piece of sandpaper in his glove while pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I was just rubbing up the ball. I have done it before, and Terry Tata is the only umpire who has ever said anything to me about it,” Gross said. “I remember asking (umpire) Doug Harvey about it once, and he said I could do it as long as I turned my back and nobody saw it. A lot of guys do it. It doesn’t give you any advantage.”

Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda ran to the mound. According to Tata, Lasorda said: “Other pitchers do it, and it’s never called.”

Tata said he replied: “I don’t care about other pitchers. I just care about what is going on right here.”

The argument ended when Gross agreed to stop rubbing up the ball. But in that two-minute period, according to the batter, Gross’ mental state may have changed.

“I think if anything, it broke his concentration,” Roberts said. “He had it on his mind. He wasn’t able to recover.”

Said Gross: “Maybe subconsciously, it did affect me. Why did Tata pick that time to tell me about it? I had been doing it the whole game. Why then? But really, I was just mad. And sometimes when I get mad, I do better.”

Not this time. He walked Roberts to load the bases. Then after getting ahead of Tony Fernandez with an 0-and-2 count, Gross hung a curveball.

Fernandez bounced the ball over the left-center field fence for a two-run double, and the Dodgers lost the lead for good. Gross lost his temper after giving up a two-run double to right field by Tony Gwynn for a 5-3 Padre lead.

Gross was relieved by Mike Hartley, who gave up a three-run homer to Jerald Clark after an intentional walk to Fred McGriff.

But don’t talk to Lasorda about home runs or even defaced baseball.

“The story of this game was the two-strike curveball that was hit for the double,” Lasorda said. “He made a bad pitch, and he knows it. You can’t make a pitch like that in that situation. If you do, you get hurt.”

And how Gross is hurting. Including spring training, he is 0-6 since putting on a Dodger uniform after signing as a free agent last winter. He has given up 53 hits in 33 innings and has an 8.72 earned-run average. During the regular season, he is 0-2 with a 16.50 ERA.