Padres Win the Nightcap After Expos Take Opener

MONTREAL —  The Padres showed up for their doubleheader Saturday night, but--in the first game, at least--they didn’t seem to be all there.

By the sixth inning, the Montreal Expos led, 10-0, and when Gene Orza (who is fighting Ballard Smith’s suspension of Goose Gossage) of the Players Assn. heard the score, he said: “I guess Ballard will criticize them for losing 10-0. Well, it’s his doing, not theirs.”

The game finally ended with the Padres losing 10-1, and the easy assumption was that Gossage’s suspension was having an adverse effect on the club. But, somehow, the team overcame a 3-0 first-inning deficit in the second game and won, 5-4, on Garry Templeton’s ninth-inning single.

Lance McCullers, who replaced Gossage as the bullpen ace, pitched a scoreless 1 innings and earned the victory in front of 22,721 at Olympic Stadium.

“Any questions about whether this controversy is affecting our play?” Manager Steve Boros asked with a laugh afterward. “They showed me something right there, to come from behind like that.”

Second-game starter Andy Hawkins, Gossage’s best friend on the team, said the suspension had taken its toll on him emotionally, but he would not blame the situation for his poor first inning. The Expos got to him for four hits and three runs, and the Padres appeared in trouble.

But Templeton drove in two runs with a single and, after the Expos jumped ahead, 4-2, Steve Garvey tied it in the sixth with his 20th homer. That’s the most he’s hit in one year since he had 26 with the 1980 Dodgers. He hit only 25 home runs in the last two seasons combined.

“I was shooting for it (20 homers), and I was really hoping I’d get it,” Garvey said. “It’s kind of a personal statement. . . . I don’t know what the team will do (with him) in September, but I’d like to play every day and contribute.”

Then Garvey, in a rare explicit moment, gave his opinion of the Padres in general:

“The sad part is that it (the Gossage situation) probably shouldn’t have happened. Everyone suffers in a situation like this, but it’s just another case where we have to pick up the pieces and go on from here. . . . There has to be a redirection. Once the season’s over, there has to be some serious meetings and direction begun then. You can’t wait until later in the off-season. It must be right after the season or even in September.

“This is not a debacle. This is not a disaster. It’s been a very difficult season. A lot of ingredients have caused it to be strained, but the pieces can be put back together. The ingredients are there. Just like today, we had a lot of guys here giving 100% to this team and dedicated themselves to it. That’s a hell of a base. It’s been a clouded season, but I think the clouds will break and we’ll go on from here.

“That was my commitment four years ago, to help this team build a winning tradition and win for the first time. We did win. . . . There’ve been setbacks, but I’m not giving up my commitment to it. . . . We just need to kick this matter out of the way. That’s paramount. Once this is taken care of, I think we’ll be in the right direction.”

The player of the night was Templeton, who played with a sore knee and hamstring and had five hits in the two games.

But the highlight of the night was when reserve Dane Iorg pitched two innings during the first game and became the first Padre pitcher all night to retire the side in order. Back in June, he had given up two home runs in an 18-1 loss to San Francisco and he thought he would never get the chance to redeem himself.

“Well, I got a split-fingered fastball now,” he said. “Really. I taught myself.”

But he came up to bat in the ninth and struck out.

“I hit like a pitcher, too,” he said.