Padres Enjoy a Laugher, Then the Laughter : Baseball: After an 13-3 rout of Atlanta, the joke’s on Bilardello, whose baserunning costs Gwynn a hit.

Padre catcher Dann Bilardello sat in front of his locker Friday night with a look of horror. It was as if he were awaiting FBI agents to come around the corner any minute, slap on the handcuffs and take him away.

Everyone in the clubhouse could see he was embarrassed by his ninth-inning baserunning blunder, so how do his loving teammates respond? They openly ridicule him. They giggle in front of his face.

After the Padres got a season-high 20 hits to post their highest run total of the season in a 13-3 rout of the Atlanta Braves, laughter abounded.

“We don’t get to do this too often,” Padre Manager Greg Riddoch said. “It’s not quite the same when you lose.

If you didn’t know better, you would have thought the Padres were the ones in second place, breathing down the Dodgers’ necks in the National League West race.

In front of 34,466 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the Padres were the ones making the key hits with runners on base. They were the ones hitting the home runs. They were ones playing the flawless defense. They were the ones with the dominant pitching.

The Braves, the real team in the race, looked a lot like, well, the Padres. The Braves’ starter (Charlie Leibrandt) was out of the game after four innings. They were trailing, 7-2, entering the fifth. They already were using their fourth pitcher in the seventh. And their fans had headed for the exits by the time Bilardello stepped to the plate in the ninth inning.

“I’m sure plenty of people will see it before the season’s out,” Bilardello said. “I think what happened was that I was watching an ESPN blooper tape, and in the back of my mind, I guess I wanted to be on the same tape.

“I’m sure now I will.”

Bilardello, catching in his first game since July 15, when he entered in the eighth inning, came to bat with two runners on base and the Padres holding a 11-3 lead. He calmly stroked a two-run double to right field for his first RBIs of the season and his first extra-base hit in two years.

So perhaps he can be excused for allowing his mind to wander a bit. Still, he was on top of his game when Bip Roberts reached base on an infield single to shortstop, making sure to stay put so that he wasn’t thrown out at third base. Darrin Jackson, who equaled his career high with four hits and hit his 11th homer, struck out for the second out.

And up stepped Tony Gwynn.

Gwynn, finally emerging from his three-week slump, wasn’t about to leave this game early with the other star players. He singled in each of his first three at-bats, marking the first time he had three hits in a game since July 4. He had taken the league batting lead away from Terry Pendleton and Otis Nixon of the Braves. He then flied to center and lined to shortstop, but still held the batting lead.

In his final at-bat, he hit a sharp line drive that sailed past shortstop Rafael Belliard into left field. The scoreboard flashed hit. Gwynn’s batting average rose to .337.

Oops, not so fast.

Just as Gwynn rounded first and was clapping his hands. He looked toward third base to see if Bilardello was being waved home. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Bilardello was being thrown out at third base.

“You could say I was stunned,” Gwynn said. “You could say I was a lot of things.”

Bilardello, thinking there was only one out, had hesitated to see whether the ball would be caught. Left fielder Keith Mitchell saw Bilardello had stopped and quickly threw to third, nailing an embarrassed Bilardello.

Instead of a fourth hit and the batting lead, it simply was ruled a fielder’s choice. Gwynn dropped to .335, second behind Pendleton’s .336.

“I can see it now,” Bilardello said, his face breaking into an expansive grin, “Tony Gwynn loses the batting title by one hit and I get buried in San Diego.”

Said teammate Kevin Ward: “Oh, man, I can see this costing Tony a place in Cooperstown because he has only four batting titles instead of five.”

Said teammate Jackson: “How can you do that to Tony?”

Said Gwynn, the victim: “I’m not going to worry about it now, but along come Oct. 6, you better believe it.”

Gwynn tried to conceal his smile, and then broke out into laughter with everyone else.

“What do you know?” Gwynn said, “we’re having fun again.”

Third baseman Tim Teufel hit his third career grand slam in the third inning off Leibrandt, was out of the game by the seventh for Jack Howell and joked that this was the first time he didn’t last as long as his team’s starting pitcher.

Santiago got two extra-base hits for the first time this season and gratefully thanked the official scorer for changing left fielder Lonnie Smith’s error into a run-scoring triple.

Left-hander Bruce Hurst (13-5) wondered if perhaps he should start protesting all the bunt signs he has been getting this season, considering his two-run single up the middle in the seventh gave him a career-high five RBIs.

Padre shortstop Tony Fernandez wondered what the doctor put into his right thumb Thursday, allowing him to get more hits batting right-handed Friday than he had in all of July.

Fernandez, who has missed the past five games, took a flight to Charlottesville, Va., on his off day Thursday for a second opinion on his ailing right thumb by Dr. Fred McCue. The prognosis was the same: sprained right thumb, and surgery is not necessary.

Fernandez decided he might as well try it out. He took a round of batting practice, nodded his approval to Riddoch, was penciled in the lineup and went three for four.

And then there was Jackson, who went four for six, with three of his hits being ground balls through the infield, and the fourth a home run that hit the foul screen.

“I can’t believe this night,” said Jackson, who raised his batting average to .280. “It’s the luckiest night of my life. You couldn’t ask for any more from anybody.”

Jackson then looked at Bilardello and started giggling.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t say it was lucky for everyone.”

Said Bilardello: “Wow, now I’m going to be a nervous wreck going down the stretch in this batting race.”