Padres Like Their Position, but They Have Little Room for Error

Excuse me, football, but your time has not quite come. At least, the stage is not yours alone.

Just when everyone thought it was safe to concentrate their efforts on whether the Chargers would be able to move the ball and whether San Diego State would stop anyone from moving the ball, the Padres have up and caused a late and belated trace of baseball fever hereabouts.

OK, so the body temperature is only 99 degrees, but at least the body is alive.

As the Padres departed August for September, they trailed the first-place San Francisco Giants by a modest 6 1/2 games. While not in Position A, they are not exactly X’d out, either.

“We’re in it,” said Garry Templeton, shortstop and captain, “but nobody’s looking at us right now. That helps. Everybody knows we have a good ballclub, and now we’re in good position to do some damage.”

This was in the clubhouse after the latest success, a splendid 5-1 victory Thursday over the Philadelphia Phillies. And this was a game in which the Padres did all of the big things--such as a three-run home run by Benito Santiago and six innings of no-hit pitching by Dennis Rasmussen--and all of the little things championship-caliber teams must do to win.

“This was the way we have to play,” pitcher Ed Whitson said. “The defense was awesome, the pitching outstanding, and we got the clutch hits when we needed them. We have to play our best from here on out.”

Given the 6 1/2-game deficit, the Padres may have to play better than their best to catch the Giants. There is also the little matter of not forgetting about Houston, because the Astros were still 2 1/2 games ahead as September dawned.

“We’ve got to have a great month of September,” Tony Gwynn said.

And how might great be defined?

“Great would be 24-5,” Gwynn said, momentarily forgetting only 28 games remain. “That would be a great September.”

That would be. In reality, 24 victories might not be enough . . . but maybe 19 or 20 might be. Everything the Padres do will be relative to whatever it is that the Giants, in particular, and the Astros are doing. Last year, for example, when the Padres surged into third place with an 18-11 record for the last month, they gained only one game on the first-place Dodgers.

The key is that the Padres have positioned themselves to have an opportunity to turn this heretofore summer of disappointment upside down. They play six more games with the Giants, Sept. 15-16-17 in San Francisco and Sept. 29-30 and Oct. 1 here, and four more with the Astros, Sept. 6-7 in Houston and Sept. 11-12 here. The Giant series here concludes the season.

“A dream scenario,” Gwynn said, “would be to have those games at the end of the season mean something.”

“If we can keep going like we are right now,” Templeton said, “that would be a real head-to-head collision.”

As Templeton observed, no one elsewhere seems to be paying too much attention to the Padres right now. This is understandable. They have more work to do before others take note, though I suspect the Giants and Astros are aware that an intruder is close to crashing their party.

“We just have to play it day by day,” Manager Jack McKeon said, “and see if we can sneak up without a lot of fanfare.”

And the mood in the clubhouse is that this thing can get done.

“You can feel the adrenaline start flowing every time you walk into the dugout,” said Whitson.

There is a charge to this team as it enters September. You can call it chemistry or electricity or maybe simply momentum. The word confident also comes to mind.

But the reality is that the Padres have left themselves little margin for error or slippage. They will need three rather rapid steps forward for each step back.

But they are close enough to fantasize.

“Actually,” Gwynn said, “we have to feel fortunate being where we are. We haven’t played like a lot of people thought we should until lately. We’ve gotten into as good a position as we could possibly get into, considering the way we were playing. The key now is realizing that every game is important.”

And taking care of business.

“We have to forget about San Francisco and Houston,” Santiago said. “We just have to keep doing the little things it takes to win ball games. We keep winning day by day and you never know what might happen.”

What might happen is that the Padres could find themselves in the middle of a pennant race for the first time in their 21-year history. No, they were not in one in 1984, when they went to the World Series, because they ran away and hid from the rest of the division.

This time, the Giants are trying to do the running and the hiding . . . and the Padres are doing the chasing and the hoping.

It may be too late to make it, but it isn’t too late to make it interesting.