Padres Hitting Finish Line, or Trip Wire?

Even the worst division winner is still a division winner.

So, the San Diego Padres are hanging a panel from a left-field balcony that declares their magic number in the NL West, and they’ll play four games against the San Francisco Giants starting Monday beneath that number, opening the series with their best pitchers, Jake Peavy and Adam Eaton.

The Padres finish the season with three home games against the Dodgers, who might by then be playing to hold off the Colorado Rockies. The Giants finish with three against the Arizona Diamondbacks at SBC Park, everyone wondering, perhaps, if any of it will have been worth the effort by October.

Padre General Manager Kevin Towers’ immediate goal was to reach the Giant series with a five-game lead, hand it to his aces and hope for the best. It is a little late to assume their 22-5 run in May was anything more than a fluke; they are 14 games under .500 since.

“Sometimes we’ve played almost like we’re waiting to get caught,” Towers said. “Maybe it’ll take the pressure off if we win the division. And if we do, we should be the one team in the postseason that feels no pressure.”

If the Padres do manage to collapse over the finish line ahead of the Giants, maybe they won’t be complete pushovers in October.

They are a better offensive team on the road, in part because Petco Park is a pretty good pitchers’ park, and in part because the Padre roster isn’t suited to the dimensions of the park, a defect Towers will address this winter. They have allowed more home runs and doubles than they have hit at Petco, despite their 41-33 record there.

And, if optimism counts, the Padres were 5-1 against the Atlanta Braves and 4-3 against the St. Louis Cardinals, one of which they’d play in the first round. They won two of three games at Turner Field and three of four (in May, the only time all year they were a good team) at Busch Stadium.

Bats and Pieces

Given the sudden attentiveness to performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, it is baffling that Rafael Palmeiro would, as the story is being told, accept a syringe from a teammate and inject its contents -- or have them injected -- into his body.

During his appeal, Palmeiro reportedly told an arbitration panel that Miguel Tejada had provided him a vial of B12, a vitamin believed to enhance energy and recovery, and legal under the joint drug agreement.

It does not appear that Palmeiro claimed the vial contained Stanozolol, the steroid for which he tested positive this season. According to sources, Palmeiro had not intended to finger Tejada, only to list the substances he’d ingested over the last year or so, and the discussion eventually led to who gave it to him.

Still, given government and media scrutiny, along with baseball’s fresh interest, Palmeiro’s decision to medicate himself was at best reckless and at worst idiotic.

We’re assuming here that Tejada had not used his vacation time to become a licensed physician, but good for both of them, knowing their way around a syringe.

Palmeiro’s life, undoubtedly, gets worse from here. Baltimore Oriole management and players had been supportive of their fallen slugger, even as the heap of damning evidence had grown large enough to clog the Inner Harbor.

Now, he will be viewed as a cheater and a snitch. Clearly, ballplayers view the former more favorably than the latter.

Mark Shapiro, then the assistant general manager of the Cleveland Indians, attended a wedding four years ago in which his friend was marrying Bill Parcells’ daughter.

He had a pretty good time, and learned a little something about running a sports franchise.

When they were introduced, Parcells asked Shapiro how the Indians were doing. Shapiro shrugged and told Parcells a couple of injuries were hurting them and a couple of guys weren’t playing that great and, well, what are you going to do?

Parcells stopped him.

“You know what, Mark?” he said. “Nobody gives a [darn].”

Shapiro saw Parcells again in the receiving line.

“Hey, Mark,” Parcells said, “nobody gives a [darn].”

Then, again in the bathroom.

“Mark,” Parcells said, and Shapiro knew what was coming. “Nobody gives a [darn].”

A few months later, Shapiro was the general manager and began the process of rebuilding the Indians, and in the next three years finished 20 1/2 , 22 and 12 games out of first place in the AL Central.

As the team struggled and the ballpark stood nearly empty many nights, he came to better understand that in the business of sports, payroll limitations, injuries and other rationalizations are best kept to oneself.

“You know what,” Shapiro said this week, his Indians vying again for the playoffs, “Bill was right. Nobody gives a [darn].”

White Sox GM Kenny Williams, rallying the semi-faithful as their Southsiders were giving back most of a 15-game lead in the AL Central:

“I’ve been here a long time, and I think they’ve earned the right to feel a little nervous and a little anxious on the whole situation. I feel a lot of it too, honestly.

“All you can say is, you’ve got a good group of guys to pull for because they want it and they want it badly. Hang in there with us, give us a little bit of your support and stay off those ledges.”

The White Sox finish the season with three games in Cleveland.

When citing his job requirements this week for Times staffer Paul Gutierrez, Angel hitting coach Mickey Hatcher included knocking over the upright water cups in the dugout to soothe Darin Erstad’s superstition.

What evil is held in those cups, Erstad couldn’t say.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I probably should have a psychiatrist examine that.”

The habit of tipping cups has a vague beginning for Erstad. It just started to happen, and it didn’t stop until recently, when playful teammates began to line the dugout with dozens of cups. The superstition was in the randomness, apparently, of the standing cup.

Erstad grinned and agreed.

“It might have been more out of boredom than anything else,” he said. “This game will do those things to you.”

In a quiet moment during spring training 3 1/2 years ago, when everybody else had gone home, Paul Byrd scaled a fence surrounding the bullpen and sat on the mound.

Over the previous two seasons, Byrd had become a tortuously mediocre pitcher, or worse, and in the early part of spring with the Kansas City Royals, he said, “I felt like I was pitching under water.”

So, he sat. And he contemplated. And he wondered if he’d ever get another hitter out. After some time, he stood and began to toy with his delivery -- no ball, no glove, no catcher. After half an hour, Byrd had scrapped his cookie-cutter windup and gone to the old-school delivery he still employs.

Since then, and despite Tommy John surgery that cost him all of the 2003 season, he is 37-28 with a 3.83 earned-run average. His 3.72 ERA this year is the lowest of his career over a full season.

Byrd said the momentum gained from rocking backward, both hands flipped upward, then driving to the plate had increased the velocity on his fastball by three or four miles per hour, the activity hiding the ball longer. Depending on the day and the moment, Byrd’s fastball can go anywhere from 83 to 90. Therefore, he relies on deception and location.

“I’d love to have [Greg] Maddux’s movement, or [Roger] Clemens’ splitter, or [Randy] Johnson’s heater,” Byrd said. “But I don’t. I play the hand that’s dealt me.”

The trade being batted around in New York: the Mets’ Carlos Beltran for the Red Sox’s Manny Ramirez. Beltran has a no-trade clause, however, and Ramirez becomes a 10-and-five player this winter, meaning they’d both have to agree.

In Pittsburgh last Monday, Clemens (340 wins) opposed Ian Snell (0 wins). According to Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first time there had been such a victory gap since Aug. 27, 1965, when the Giants’ Warren Spahn (361 wins) opposed the Mets’ Darrell Sutherland (one win).

Sutherland, who was born in Glendale and attended Glendale High and Stanford, won five big league games from 1964 to ‘68, then retired to became a banker in Portland, Ore., where he lives today.

Sutherland’s brothers, Gary and Dale, work for the Angels. Gary is a special assistant to GM Bill Stoneman and Dale is a major league scout.

The working list of candidates for Pittsburgh’s managerial job: interim manager Pete Mackanin, Jim Leyland, Art Howe, Ken Macha (if he does not return to the A’s), Jim Tracy (if he does not return to the Dodgers) and the dark horse, Kent Tekulve.

Depending on the plans for Jerry Narron, the Reds’ list should look similar, except for Tekulve.

Jimmy Rollins, whose on-base percentage is .327, to the Philadelphia Inquirer, on whether he is an effective leadoff hitter: “The only opinion that matters is 41’s [Manager Charlie Manuel’s]. If he says I’m hitting first, I’m hitting first. If he says I’m hitting second, I’m hitting second. Everyone else can go make their own fantasy team.”