Dodgers Get Help Over the Wall, 4-0

SAN DIEGO â€”  When it came to hitting home runs, apparently all the Dodgers needed was a little shove.

Tony Gwynn, the San Diego Padres’ Gold Glove outfielder, started the Dodgers scoring in the first inning Friday night by gently pushing Eddie Murray’s fly ball over the right-field fence.

Thus inspired, Juan Samuel added a home run in the sixth inning, giving the Dodgers as many homers in one game as they had in the previous nine games combined.

Mike Morgan, not quite used to such support, showed his appreciation by throwing the Dodgers’ first shutout of the season, holding the Padres to seven hits in a 4-0 victory before 30,795 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

“You know you are in deep trouble when that happens,� said Ed Whitson, the Padres’ starting pitcher, of the freak play. “You don’t see that but once every 100 years.�

In defeating the Padres for the first time in five games this season, the Dodgers benefited from what could have been a great defensive play by the four-time Gold Glove winner.

Instead, it was a play that left Gwynn standing in front of the wall with an empty glove, kicking the warning track and shaking his head.

“It maybe was a sign that we are finally starting to get the breaks,� said Darryl Strawberry, who preceded Murray’s hit with a two-out triple. “That play is made, we don’t score, and who knows what happen?�

With Strawberry on third base, Murray lofted Whitson’s first pitch high down the right-field line. Everybody should have known the ball was trouble, as Murray had a career average of .417 (10 for 24) against Whitson, with three homers.

But Gwynn thought it was merely an easy fly ball. He drifted over to the foul line when he realized he was facing a tough play. At the last moment, he jumped and stuck up his glove as the ball was landing on the orange-lined top of the blue fence.

The ball hit the tip of the glove, rolled along the top of the fence, then disappeared. It had fallen to the other side for Murray’ first homer.

“I didn’t know that it hit my glove, to tell you the truth,� Gwynn said. “I thought it hit the fence and went over. I was fooled by the swing and I was fooled by the ball.�

Perhaps nobody was more excited about the homer than Morgan. After all, he had been victimized by four Dodgers errors in his first start this season, a 5-3 loss to San Diego in which he gave up only three unearned runs in 6 2/3 innings.

This time, he took the mound with a 2-0 lead and never really came close to losing it. The Padres hit a ball off his left shin and a ball off the top of his head, and still he hung in to finish them with only 100 pitches.

“That is Morgan at his best,� Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda said. “He throws strikes, he doesn’t go deep into the count, he gets you out fast.�

Morgan has given up no earned runs in 15 2/3 innings. But then again, he is always at his best in April and May, a tribute to his off-season work.

When Morgan faces trouble is in the second half of the season. In 1989, for example, he led the league with a 1.79 earned-run average at the All-Star break and pitched so poorly in his next couple of starts, he finished the season in the bullpen.

Last year, he started the Dodgers’ late-season push by throwing a two-hitter against Cincinnati on July 30. But Friday marked his first complete game since then.

“This year, I think, will be different,� said Morgan, who came to spring training in great shape after extensive rehabilitation of an off-season hip injury. “I think I can keep my weight off during the year, avoid late-night dinners, things like that, and stay strong later.�

Morgan, who was the top ground-ball pitcher in the National League last year (2.35 for every fly ball), worked off that strength Friday. Only six of the first 21 batters he faced hit the ball into the air.

“During spring training, everybody thought I was gone. . . . I was going to Milwaukee, to Montreal, everywhere,� Morgan said. “But here I am. And I’m ready to help us win a championship.�

And Strawberry still does not have a home run. His drought of 10 games without a homer to start the season equals his career high, in 1986. But he still hit 27 homers that season.

“Just wait, when I hit them, they will be in bunches,� Strawberry said.