NOTEBOOK / BOB NIGHTENGALE : Gwynn’s Injury Is Diagnosed as a Sprained Knee Ligament

Padre right fielder Tony Gwynn missed his third consecutive game Friday, but hereceived encouraging news when he learned that he did not sustain a torn ligament or tendon in his left knee.

Instead, a magnetic resonance imaging test revealed that Gwynn is suffering from a sprained medial collateral ligament. He hopes to play tonight against the Cincinnati Reds.

“It was a thing where I just didn’t know what it was,” Gwynn said. “When you’re at home, you can drive over to the Scripps Clinic and find out what’s wrong. But when you’re on the road, you let your imagination run wild, which is what I did.”

Gwynn was injured while running toward a ball in shallow right field in the 16th inning of Tuesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants. He was able to take batting practice Friday without pain, but he still felt pain in his knee while taking fly balls and ground balls in the outfield.

“When I run straight ahead, I’m OK,” Gwynn said, “but running side to side is tough.

“The good news is that there’s no tears, nothing, so I should be back real quick.”

Gwynn, who is hitting .319 this season, says he still has aspirations of winning his fifth batting title. Yet he knows it will be a longshot.

“I’d like win No. 5, no doubt about it,” Gwynn said, “but I don’t think it can happen. It’s no big deal. I’m not going to worry about it or lose sleep over it.

“You can’t make a run unless you’re out there.” The guy with the strange haircut playing left field Friday night was Oscar Azocar.

Azocar spent the afternoon having half of his head shaved, courtesy of Padre teammate Gene Harris.

“I lost a bet,” Azocar said, “I had to do it.”

Said Padre first baseman Fred McGriff: “He told us (Thursday) that if he didn’t get a hit, he’d shave his head.

“Well, he kept half of his promise.” Padre second baseman Kurt Stillwell came off the disabled list Friday and was inserted into the starting lineup.

“I feel like I’m amongst the living again,” said Stillwell, who has missed 41 games this season. “Boy, what a year.” Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., on the possibility of a lockout next spring now that Commissioner Fay Vincent is out: “We have assumed for a year now that they’d reopen the contract. The bottom line is Fay is right, you can’t do a job if a majority of your constituents don’t want you to. Power doesn’t come from a piece of paper. Whether they reached this decision for good, bad or indifferent reasons, they made the change. That’s their right. We’ll have to deal with it.

“If the owners persuade the players that change is essential, they’ll get a response. If they can’t persuade them, it will be hard. Historically, the only thing the owners have agreed on is that the players are making too much money. In past negotiations, what we’ve been told is, ‘Take it or leave it.’

“There has been a better atmosphere with Vincent than any time in the early ‘80s; now that has changed.”