Padres Conked by Hernandez : He Hurts Them More Than They Hurt Him as Mets Win, 5-2

SAN DIEGO — Say this much for Padre pitcher Jimmy Jones in his tiff with Keith Hernandez Tuesday night. He tried.

He pitched him inside on the knuckles. He pitched him out past the fingertips. The New York Met first baseman was so impressed that in his first two at-bats, he singled and doubled and drove in a run.

Finally, in the fifth inning, Jones dispensed with ceremony. He stuck his knee in the side of the man’s head. Left him face down in the first-base-line chalk. Knocked him out.

Didn’t work.

Within a minute of the collision at first base, Hernandez found consciousness. Within 30 minutes, he found heroism, as his seventh-inning two-run homer eventually supplied the Mets with a 5-2 victory in front of 18,021 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Said Jones: “I guess he wasn’t knocked out long enough.”

Said Hernandez: “I was fine. I got a pitch out over the plate, and I hit it.”

The two-out blow, a 380-foot shot to right-center field, broke up a 1-all tie for good. It was frustrating to Jones for two other reasons. It was on a 2-and-0 pitch, and it came after pitcher Bobby Ojeda had led off the inning with a single.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for their team and all,” said Jones, shaking his head after his record fell to 3-5 and his ERA rose to a still-fine 3.12. “But I’ve got to make the pitches.”

Thus, on a night when the Padres were out-hit, 12-2, with Ojeda carrying a one-hitter into the ninth before he tired and gave way to Roger McDowell, those figures weren’t even the hottest news. Remember, this is a Padre team that has been held to two hits twice and three hits twice. This is a team that, in the past week, has suffered through scoreless streaks of 22 and 19 innings.

No, this game’s focus was on a guy who had only had one hit in six previous at-bats against Jones. Wednesday night, Hernandez equaled that in 10 minutes. With two out in the first, he hit a fly ball to shallow center as Shane Mack broke back. By the time Mack reached the ball, it was on the ground for a single, and Hernandez’s night had begun.

Cut to the third inning of a scoreless tie. Hernandez followed shortstop Dickie Thon’s fielding error--a ground ball off his chest that gave Wally Backman first base--with the best at-bat of the game. After running the count to 2-2, he battled Jones for two foul balls before skying a ball to the gap in left-center field, crash-landing it in front of the fence for an RBI double.

“I thought I had struck out on his 1-and-2 pitch,” said a relieved Hernandez.

“He’s a real battler,” said Jones of an at-bat that would later prove to be an omen. “I was throwing him fastball, fastball, fastball, and then he fouled off a couple of changeups before getting my fastball.”

The Padres’ first hit, and the hit on Hernandez, occurred in the fifth inning, when, with one out, Keith Moreland broke an 0-for-19 drought with a bloop single to right.

After Shawn Abner hit into a fielder’s choice and Mack walked, putting runners on first and second with two out, Jones hit a slow roller that eluded a diving Ojeda. It was picked up by charging third baseman Howard Johnson, who hurried his throw to first, pulling Hernandez up the first-base line. He stretched and grabbed the ball just as Jones was upon him.

He tagged Jones in the left knee but was cracked on the head by Jones’ other knee. Jones has a small welt to show for it. But while Jones was just out, Hernandez was face down.

“I tried to get up, but I remember Lee Weyer (the first base umpire) yelling out,” Hernandez said. “I thought, ‘To hell with this, I’m going to lay here awhile.’ I felt I could probably take (Mike) Tyson’s right hand. But if (Jones) had come back with a combination, I think I would have been knocked out. I was definitely seeing stars.”

Said Jones: “I asked him if he was all right, but he didn’t say anything. He just lay there. I thought it was serious. Until he got up.”

After being helped from the field, Hernandez had a cup of coffee in the clubhouse and was on the field for the bottom of the sixth.

Jones seemed to settle, and entering the deciding seventh, had allowed just that one unearned run on six hits.

The inning started with the single to left by Ojeda, who then went to second when catcher Benito Santiago made a high throw to that base on Lenny Dykstra’s bunt. Ojeda was then picked off, and Wally Backman struck out, but up stepped Hernandez, and his fifth homer later, the game was done.

Padre Notes

Manager Larry Bowa, who has said he will not return sore-wristed Chris Brown to the lineup until Brown says he is ready, still had not heard from his third baseman as of Wednesday night. It was Brown’s eighth consecutive missed start, and the frustrated Bowa has finally grown tired of it. “If the doctor said he could not pick up a bat, it would be different. We could put him on the disabled list,” Bowa said before Wednesday’s game. “But it’s all a matter of how much pain he can stand.” Bowa said the nature of injury is common, which makes this an uncommon problem. “It’s tendinitis, the same thing I have when I get out of bed in the morning,” Bowa said. “I think every player on this team has some kind of tendinitis. Some play with it, some can’t. But most play.” Bowa said that once Brown does decide he can play, there may not be room for him: “I don’t know where we’d play him when he is ready. Our third baseman (Randy Ready) has been doing a heck of a job. It’s unfair to take out a guy if he’s producing, just because another guy is healthy. The only time you would do that is if the guy coming back hit 40 or 50 homers or something.” Ready hit in each of the first seven games in which he replaced Brown, going 9 for 25, a .360 average. Furthermore, Bowa said, he doesn’t know if he can trust Brown’s health anymore: “I just don’t know how many games he can play in a row without getting hurt.” Coincidentally or not, Wednesday’s game was the ninth consecutive game Brown has missed against the hard-throwing Mets. In fact, he played only three times against the Mets all last season and has batted against them only 65 times in his 3 1/2-year career. For comparison’s sake, Benito Santiago, who is in just his second season, already has batted 55 times against the Mets.

On the other side of the medical chart, Keith Moreland, who ended an 0-for-18 slide with a single in three at-bats Wednesday, has played in all but six games despite a sore left shoulder. Wednesday night, he talked for the first time about the shoulder, which he hurt diving for a fly ball in an exhibition against the Angels on March 4, in the first at-bat of the spring. “You get paid to play,” Moreland said. “You can’t play this game and not be hurt. You have to overcome things like this. There are no excuses.” Moreland, who has just one homer and eight RBIs, admitted that his method might not always be the best--”You could look at it like, why am I in there if all I’m doing is hurting the team?” But he said that until he dove for another fly ball last week in Chicago, the shoulder was getting better. “I was getting close until that dive,” he said. “The only thing is, I have been doing different things in my stance to protect it, and maybe picking up bad habits.” Moreland said nothing can be done to the strained shoulder short of arthroscopic surgery, and he won’t even think about that until this winter.