Hurst Puts Hurt on the Mets Again : Baseball: Padre left-hander strikes out 10 to wins his 12th game of the season. Jackson homers to support him in 8-2 victory.

Padre starter Bruce Hurst talks about himself as if he’s being grilled by the grand jury. He accepts praise as if there’s a punch line to follow. Personal achievements to him are getting his kids to school on time.

In a season that’s going down as perhaps the finest in Hurst’s career, he remains as unpretentious and unassuming as if he had spent the season on the disabled list.

“The fact of that matter is,” Padre Manager Greg Riddoch said, “I don’t know where we’d be without him.”

Hurst, off the to the finest start of his major league career, shut down the New York Mets, 8-2, Friday night at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He yielded only four hits and struck out a season-high 10 batters in eight innings.

It’s the earliest date Hurst (12-5) ever won 12 games in his career and puts him on pace to become the first Padre since Gaylord Perry in 1978 to win 20 games.

But forget about Hurst being the ace of the staff. Forget about his sneaking into the picture as a Cy Young candidate. Hurst, who is one victory from the National League lead, has emerged as the most valuable player on the Padres. The team has won 14 of the 21 games he has started. The rest of the original Padre rotation is 13-25, with no starter winning more than four games.

“What can you say?” fellow starter Andy Benes said. “He’s been our anchor. When he goes out there, you know we have a good chance to win the game. Let’s put it this way, we got a whole lot better chance of winning the game when he goes out there than any of us.”

The biggest misconception of Hurst is that he’s the timid sort. Being a devout Mormon and all, Hurst is not portrayed as the kind of guy to lose his temper, mutter under his breath or kick a water cooler.

“That’s the funniest part, you guys don’t see the side of him like we do,” Padre pitcher Ed Whitson said. “He throws things around on the bench when things don’t go right. We hear him screaming in the tunnel. He’s so damn competitive, he can’t stand when things don’t go right.

“He just goes about it differently than the rest of us.”

Said Benes: “Yeah, he’ll get as mad as the rest of us. There’s just one difference.”

And that is?

“He doesn’t use the bad language.”

Oh.

This night was typical Hurst. Although he struck out the side in the first inning, throwing only 11 pitches, he still found himself in a 2-2 game through five innings. Then, he waited for his teammates to take over while facing the final 14 hitters without yielding a hit.

The Padres, who have scored 27 of their past 45 runs in the sixth inning or later, once again saved their heroics for the fans who didn’t try to beat the traffic.

They began to tee off on Met starter Sid Fernandez in the sixth when Tony Gwynn, who had his first multiple-hit game since July 11, led off with a single to right. By the time the inning ended, Darrin Jackson hit his career-high 10th homer of the year, and Benito Santiago hit a sacrifice fly.

The Padres scored three more in the seventh inning off reliever Jeff Innis on a two-run single by Jerald Clark and another RBI by Jackson. It was Jackson’s third RBI of the game, equaling his career-high and providing the Padres with an 8-2 lead.

The Padres might have put the Mets on the brink of extinction with the victory. The Mets, who have lost four consecutive games, dropped to seven games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League East, the furthest they have trailed since June 12, 1990.

Padre second baseman Bip Roberts once again was responsible for driving the opposition crazy by going three for four with a walk and raising his batting average to .277--the highest it has been since May 23. In the past nine games, Roberts is hitting .410, with three hits in three of the past four games.

Roberts’ exploits helped the Padres to highest run total and largest margin of victory since June 8.

The game spoiled the return of shortstop Garry Templeton, who spent 9 1/2 years with the Padres until being traded May 31 to the Mets for Tim Teufel. It was the first time since 1981 that Templeton lockered in the visiting clubhouse at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

“It really feels weird today,” said Templeton, who ranks second behind Gwynn as the Padres’ all-time leader in games played. “I started walking down the hallway, and I wanted to keep on going toward the Padres’ side. It felt strange pulling into a different parking lot.

“The whole situation still feels strange.”

Templeton took the team flight Thursday afternoon from San Francisco to San Diego. His family, with the exception of Garry Jr., is back in New York. So he caught a ride to his home from teammate Howard Johnson, who moved to Poway in the off-season.

The big problem awaiting at home was the alarm system. It had been so long since he’d been home that he had forgotten the alarm codes. And when he finally did get into the house, his dogs jumped all over him as if he were a stranger.

“I realized that when you’re gone for two months,” Templeton said, “nothing’s going to be the same.”

Templeton was kept out of the starting lineup for his return but is expected to start today against right-hander Adam Peterson. That would be fine with him, considering he’ll have more than two dozen relatives coming down from Orange County and Los Angeles to see him in that strange uniform.

“I’ll tell you, it really feels good to be back,” Templeton said. “People are a little different (in New York). Everybody there seems so tense. It’s like everybody’s in a hurry to go nowhere. I refuse to even drive in the city.

“The nicest part is playing on that infield again. That infield’s terrible in New York, just terrible. It’s like coming home again.”