Benes Will Face Padres With Complete Arsenal

Andy Benes talks about the good feeling of being wanted. A two-year, $8.1-million free-agent contract can make you feel wanted.

Benes, in his best season, returned dividends, going 18-10 after a 1-7 start with the St. Louis Cardinals. He credits pitching coach Dave Duncan for his support during that early struggle and for arming him with more weapons--a changeup and curve that people in San Diego had been encouraging him to throw for the 5 1/2 years before he was traded to the Seattle Mariners last July.

“Sometimes you can hear the same thing that others have been saying in a different way and it finally registers,” Benes said. “I’m not so limited in what I can throw now.”

Benes faces the Padres and Scott Sanders in Game 2 of their division series today. He had ultimately asked San Diego to trade him, frustrated by the club’s “year-to-year” approach to his contract and a lack of commitment to winning.

“It was like we were just playing out the string in so many of those years,” he said. “For a while there, we were just overmatched.”

Benes has seen that change under owner John Moores, applauds it because “the commitment has to start at the top” and insists that he doesn’t look at today’s game as a grudge match.

“I was excited when they swept Los Angeles because I knew what it meant to the team and city,” he said of the Padres. “You always have a place in your heart for your first team, but it’s been a year and a half and I’ve been with two teams since then.

“I’m sure they don’t have any strong emotions about me, and I don’t have any about them. It was always year to year. It’s difficult to develop a strong attachment that way.”

Benes, who beat the Padres, 8-2, in August, gave up seven runs in 11 2/3 innings of two postseason appearances with the Mariners last October but said, “I have more weapons now.”

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Tony Gwynn said he wasn’t bothered by Dennis Eckersley’s characteristic windmill exultation after turning his hot grounder into the final out of Game 1.

“Some of our fans back in San Diego may have said, ‘Look at what that guy is doing,’ but it’s his way of releasing emotion,” Gwynn said. “He does it at the end of the game and Rickey [Henderson] does it the whole game. They’re entertainers. And to be honest, in this case I think Eckersley was just happy to find the ball in his glove. He didn’t catch it. The ball just found him.”

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Henderson, who will be back in left field today, played with and off the crowd throughout Game 1. Todd Stottlemyre, the winning pitcher, said of his former Oakland and Toronto teammate:

“If he has a pulse and a heartbeat and it’s a big game, Rickey is going to show up and do something. It’s no secret that before he came to Toronto and helped us win a pennant, I hated him. However, he became a true friend and I had nothing but respect for him the way he played for us there. Now that he’s a Padre, I hate him again.”

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Catcher John Flaherty, who has sat out San Diego’s last seven games because of a sprained ankle, is expected to play today. . . . Cardinal center fielder Ray Lankford, sidelined since Friday because of a torn rotator cuff, said he had no problems during off-day batting practice Wednesday and would try to talk Manager Tony La Russa into letting him play today. La Russa said Game 3 in San Diego on Saturday is a better possibility. . . . Left-hander Donovan Osborne, who missed his Sunday start after cutting his left thumb on a broken champagne bottle as the Cardinals celebrated their division title, threw for 20 minutes Wednesday and said he will be ready to start Game 3. Osborne protected the cut with a Band-Aid Wednesday, but he won’t be permitted to wear it Saturday.