This day 25 years ago, rookie phenom Andy Benes picked up his sixth win in his ninth start as the Padres defeated reigning Cy Young Award winner Orel Hershiser and the reigning World Series champion Dodgers, 1-0. It was a classic pitcher's duel, with each starter trading zeros for six full innings.
The Dodgers looked like they might be the first to break through when they loaded the bases with one out on two singles and an error in the bottom of the sixth, but Benes struck Lenny Harris out and got Mickey Hatcher to pop up to Garry Templeton to nullify the threat. Benes left the mound, grabbed his helmet and bat, and grounded out to lead off the seventh inning. Switch-hitters Bip Roberts and Roberto Alomar followed that up by both hitting singles to the opposite field, giving the Padres runners on the corners. While hitting a single to the opposite field sounds like a totally Tony Gwynn thing to do, he flipped the script by lofting the second out to center fielder John Shelby, deep enough to allow Roberts to tag and score the game's lone run. That was one of Gwynn's four plate appearances, but he had zero official at-bats in the game. Along with the sacrifice fly, Gwynn also laid down a sacrifice bunt and walked twice; it is one of only nine times in team history that a player has had four plate appearances without an at-bat in a game.
Benes lasted into the eighth inning, but was replaced with two outs and two men on. San Diego closer Mark Davis, Hershiser's successor as Cy Young Award winner, came in and recorded the last four outs for his league-leading forty-second save. The victory raised the second-place Padres' record to 86-70, five games behind the division-leading Giants. It also dropped the Dodgers to 73-83, which is really fun to type.