The Dodgers Fizzle as Show and Padres Provide the Fire, 4-0

To cap their most successful home stand of the season, the Dodgers reverted to form Wednesday night.

Which is to say that, on an otherwise spectacular night of fireworks at Dodger Stadium, a show that no doubt attracted part of the sellout crowd of 45,722, the Dodgers provided the duds.

For the third time in six days, and the second time in a three-game series against the last-place San Diego Padres, they were shut out--this time by Eric Show.

Show (4-9) faced only three batters in seven of the nine innings and limited the Dodgers to only four hits in a 4-0 victory that also included a pair of home runs by Kevin Mitchell.

It was the eighth time the Dodgers have been shut out in 40 games this season at Dodger Stadium.

And so, after sweeping a three-game series from the Atlanta Braves last week and winning two of three against the first-place Cincinnati Reds over the weekend, the Dodgers will take to the road with a bad taste in their mouths after losing two of three to the Padres.

“He looked like Walter Johnson,” Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said of Show, who has won his last two starts.

Against a Dodger lineup that did not include Pedro Guerrero, who was given the night off, Show retired 12 straight batters between the first and fifth innings, then retired 10 straight at the end of the game.

“I studied them in the first two games of the series,” Show said of the Dodgers, “and I felt that I knew what pitches to throw them in crucial situations.”

Not that he faced many.

The Dodgers put runners on base in only the first, fifth and sixth innings, squandering scoring chances in the first and sixth. They left John Shelby at third base in the first and left the bases loaded in the sixth.

“We couldn’t cash in,” Lasorda said. “We were getting men on base, just not knocking them in.”

Show, who has been the subject of trade rumors, got Danny Heep on a short fly ball to left field and Mike Marshall on a grounder to third base to end the first, and got Heep to hit into a double play on a 2-0 change-up to end the sixth.

“When I got into trouble, I changed speeds well,” he said. “And I made some big pitches.”

Meanwhile, Dodger starter Rick Honeycutt struggled.

“I pitched bad,” said Honeycutt (2-8), who hasn’t won since May 13 despite a respectable overall earned-run average of 3.51. “I didn’t throw the ball well, and when you don’t throw the ball well, you don’t win.

“I don’t feel I had very good stuff and I made several bad pitches. It seemed like every time I made a bad pitch, they jumped on me.”

Benito Santiago, who sat out Tuesday night’s game after being hit on the left elbow by a Bob Welch pitch Monday night, gave Show a 1-0 lead in the second inning when he singled home Randy Ready, who had led off the inning with a double.

In the fourth, Mitchell hit an 0-2 Honeycutt pitch over the wall in straightaway center to make it 2-0.

Two innings later, after Carmelo Martinez had bounced a double into the box seats in right field, Mitchell homered again--this time over the 370-foot sign in left-center, about five rows into the pavilion.

“He kind of made a couple of mistakes,” Mitchell said of Honeycutt. “On the first one, he threw me a fastball away and I was able to get my arms extended.”

On the second, Mitchell said, Honeycutt hung a curveball up in his eyes.

That’s all the Padres needed on a night when Show walked only one, struck out two and said he was in total command after the sixth.

“His velocity was there,” Padre Manager Larry Bowa said. “He kept the ball low and had great stuff tonight. Our pitching this whole series was outstanding.”

Conversely, of course, the Dodgers’ hitting was anything but.

Dodger Notes

Orel Hershiser, who was 5-1 with a 0.90 earned-run average in June, is tied for the league lead with six complete games, leads in innings pitched with 132 and is second with a 2.39 ERA. “Same old Hershiser,” said the Padres’ Tony Gwynn, “except I think his split-finger has improved. He threw me one (in a 4-0 Dodger win Tuesday night) that looked like a fastball and then the bottom just dropped out. It causes you to step back and reflect. In my case, it caused me to go back through the video library of my mind. And I couldn’t remember ever seeing that one before.” . . . Hershiser also was one of the Dodgers’ hottest hitters in June, batting .313 to raise his average to .261.

The Padres’ Tim Flannery, on former teammate LaMarr Hoyt, who agreed to terms Wednesday with the Chicago White Sox: “I go back and look at film of him and there wasn’t a better pitcher I’ve played behind. I hope he stays in that league. When I read that he might sign with Atlanta, I thought, ‘God, I don’t want to have to face him.’ He’s a genius. When he’s right, he’s a master.” . . . Mike Marshall left the game after the sixth inning with a slight strain to the quadricep muscle in his left leg. . . . Gwynn, a good enough basketball player at San Diego State to be drafted by the Clippers in 1981, still plays in a series of charity games each winter in San Diego. Last winter, he said, his team was 5-1, losing only to a team from Los Angeles that included major league players Darryl Strawberry, Chris Brown and Eric Davis. Between them, he said, Strawberry, Brown and Davis scored more than 100 points, with Davis scoring about 45. . . . The Dodgers open an 11-game trip Friday at Pittsburgh and play their next seven games on artificial turf. On artificial surfaces this season, they are 4-16.