Santiago’s on a Roll, Not Padres : Catcher’s Streak Is Now at 26 Games, but Cincinnati Wins, 5-4

CINCINNATI — It has become the streak that mirrors the Padres’ second half. The better it gets, the more confusing it gets.

Padre catcher Benito Santiago and his light-headed bat set another record Thursday, maybe coming closer to more records than Santiago can keep track of.

In the fourth inning of the Padres’ 5-4 loss to the Cincinnati Reds, Santiago hit safely in his 26th straight game. He set a Padre club record. He tied a modern major league record for rookies. The streak is the second-longest in major league baseball this season.

He passed a guy he calls “awesome” (Tony Gwynn), tied a guy he has never heard of (Guy Curtwright, Chicago White Sox, 1943), and generally became so bewildered by it all that he wandered about the Riverfront Stadium clubhouse until he almost missed the team bus.

“When I get 10 games, I play for 15 . . . when I get 15 games, I play for 20 . . . but now that I got 26, I just play for 27,” said Santiago, shrugging. “That means if I don’t get a hit tomorrow, I’ll still be happy.”

Confusing? How about what happened to the other guys in the dugout? Once again, his success was noteworthy because it underlined what some of the rest of the club still lacks.

His streak goes 26 games, yet the team gets a 4-2 lead and the pitchers can’t hold the lead for the last four innings. Against Jimmy Jones and Lance McCullers, the Reds scored a total of three times in the fifth and sixth innings to get the win. During both of the Padres’ scoring innings, the Reds followed with their own runs in the bottom of the inning. During Santiago’s streak, the Padres are just 13-13. Confusing.

“That’s the one thing that stands out in my mind this year--I don’t know how many times we get a team down, and then let them come back and score in the same inning,” said Manager Larry Bowa, who became so excited about Santiago Thursday he was thrown out of the game over him.

“You get a good team down and let them up, they can just smell it. They know they are better than you and know they will come back at you. We got guys on the ropes, we have to start beating them down, not letting them climb up and go back at us again. It’s the killer instinct.”

Bowa was not talking about Santiago, 22. On Thursday, Santiago walked to home plate in the second inning for his first at-bat against left-hander Guy Hoffman, against whom he was hitting .714 (5 for 7).

But it was barely 12 hours after Wednesday night’s 13-inning game. Santiago, looking tired, swung at the first pitch and grounded out weakly to shortstop.

Two innings later, he led off again. Once again, he swung at the first pitch. It’s something he has been doing with increasing regularity since the streak began Aug. 25 with a second-pitch single in the second inning off Montreal’s Bryn Smith.

This time, he hit another grounder to shortstop. But the ball was to the far left of Barry Larkin and skipped toward center field. Larkin raced over and leaned, but he could barely slap at it with his glove hand. The ball nicked the webbing and ricocheted into right field, and Santiago was safe.

For the first time in the streak, Santiago stood on first base and clapped. For the first time, it’s sinking in.

“I think for somebody my age, in his rookie year, to put those kind of numbers up there, I have to feel great,” he said. “If Larkin catches that ball, I’m out, but that’s OK. Playing the day game after a night game, that’s not so easy.”

Since hitting streaks cannot cover two seasons without being accompanied by the creation of a new record, Santiago has no shot at Joe Dimaggio’s 56-game mark. He doesn’t even have a shot at Paul Molitor’s 39 games, which will lead the major leagues this season. If Santiago gets a hit every day for the rest of the season, he can reach 36 games.

Yet both he and Bowa insist that he will play every remaining day possible if the streak remains intact, a feat that would likely give him the most games caught in the major leagues this season. He has caught 136 of the Padres’ 152 games.

“I ask him every day if he feels good enough to play, and he’s been pretty honest with me, so I’ll believe him,” Bowa said.

“Some days I’m tired, some days I’m not,” said Santiago, who has nonetheless hit .343 during the streak (36 for 108) to improve his average to .297, 10th in the league. “But mostly, I think I can go.”

Throughout the streak, there has developed a sort of bond between Bowa and Santiago, as if they are in this together. Witness Thursday, when Bowa was thrown out of a game for the fifth time this season.

In the eighth inning, in the middle of a Padre thud in which the final 17 batters went went hitless, Santiago checked his swing on an outside pitch that would have made the count 3-and-2. Home plate umpire Dutch Rennert called it a ball, but catcher Terry McGriff appealed to first base umpire Dave Pallone. He called it strike three.

Bowa disagreed. While the next batter, Randy Ready, was up, Bowa screamed down at Pallone from the dugout. Within a minute, Pallone had thrown him out of the game.

Bowa reacted with his most unique argumentative ploy this season, a little dugout dance that appeared to be a mockery of the way Pallone walked. At least Pallone thought so, as he angrily approached the dugout. Bowa left the dugout and approached him and, well, after following him around the diamond for a while, order was restored.